Re: Newbie says hi

On Fri, 8 Nov 2002 10:14:18 -0700, Dirk Elzinga <Dirk_Elzinga@...>
wrote:

>At 2:41 AM -0500 11/8/02, Jeff Jones wrote:
>>On Tue, 5 Nov 2002 12:56:06 -0700, Dirk Elzinga <Dirk_Elzinga@...>
>>wrote:
>>
>>>At 8:22 PM -0500 11/4/02, Nathaniel G. Lew wrote:
>>>>
>>>>Bendeh makes no distinction between nouns, verbs, and adjectives.  All
>>>>words (including prepositions) are substantives.
>>>
>>>I just looked at the website, and you distinguish between "concrete",
>>>"stative", and "dynamic" words; only "stative" and "dynamic" words get to
>>>be transitive or intransitive. Sounds like nouns and verbs to me. So what
>>>is the difference between what you describe for Bendeh and the more
>>>traditional notions of 'noun' and 'verb'? Clearly there is a morpho-
>>>syntactic difference between concrete words on the one hand, and stative
>>>and dynamic words on the other.
>>
>>Hi Dirk,
>>
>>I'm hoping for more discussion, since some of this applies to my languages
>>as well, but I haven't seen a reply from Nat Lew yet. I suspect that "no
>>distinction" was an unintentional overstatement on his part. I may have
>>misread his website, but I think that the difference between "concrete",
>>"stative" and "dynamic" is *morphosemantic* (if that's a term) but not
>>*syntactic*.
>
> That may be, but I was talking about the formal properties of the words
> in question. Stative and dynamic words are alike in being potentially
> transitive and selecting for a direct object; concrete words do not
> permit this. While the distinction between the classes can be cast in
> semantic terms, the website is pretty clear in demonstrating that
> transitivity is a formal property which involves object pronouns and
> accusative case marking. The lack of such formal marking for concrete
> words seems to put them in a separate category, which just happens to
> look like traditional nouns.
I'll have to take a closer look at Bendeh again, then. I was probably
interpreting it in terms of 'Yemls, where semantic nouns are identical to
semantic adjectives (stative verbs) with regard to objects, differing only
in tense marking options.

> I'm not just taking potshots at Bendeh;
I didn't think you were. This type of comment is always helpful.

> I'm wrestling with similar issues in Miapimoquitch, but the problem for
> me centers around the switch reference markers. Miapimoquitch shows no
> formal distinction between 'noun' and 'verb'; all lexical stems are
> inflected alike. This inflection includes transitivity, which must be
> explicitly marked for any predicate regardless of its lexical semantics,
> and a prefix indicating the object (subjects are marked by proclitics
> and are outside the inflectional system proper.)
>
> The switch reference system includes a set of proclitics which mark
> whether the subject of a subordinate clause is the same as or different
> from the subject of the matrix clause. Here are a couple of sentences:
>
>nkipe aqiiwika  [i'kiB1 a'Ni:wiGa]
>n-  kipe a=  qiiwi     -ka
>TR- poke DS= whistle:U -UN
>'He/she/it poked the (one who is) whistling.'
>
> The subject of the subordinate clause is different from the subject of
> the main clause, and this difference determines the selection of _a=_ as
> the determiner (glossed here "DS" = 'different subject').
>
>nkipe eqiiwika  [i'kiB1 1'Ni:wiGa]
>n-  kipe e=  qiiwi     -ka
>TR- poke SS= whistle:U -UN
>'The (one who is) whistling poked him/her/it.'
>
> Here the subject of the subordinate clause is the same as the subject of
> the main clause, so the determiner _e=_ is used (glossed here "SS" =
> 'same subject.')
<irrelevant>DS= and SS= remind me of the 8086 assembler segment prefixes
DS: and SS:</irrelevant>

> If you squint, the clitics _a=_ and _e=_ look like case markers since
> _a=_ appears on a subordinate clause which is coreferential with the
> object of the main clause and _e=_ appears on a subordinate clause which
> is coreferential with the subject of the main clause.  This means that
> there may in fact be a formal distinction between nouns and verbs; nouns
> have case marking (nee switch reference markers), verbs don't. I'm not
> entirely pleased with this development.
I'm a little dull-witted today; I don't think I understand this completely.
The subordinate clauses in these examples are nominalized?
They're equivalent to relative clauses when DS= and SS= are used as their
subjects?
Thus DS= and SS= mark case.
Are there other proclitic subjects that can occur, that is, what do
subordinate clauses of fact look like?
What about "He poked the bear" and "The bear poked him" ?
Also, can you give examples with object prefixes?

In MNCL, the final suffix determines if a wordform is syntactically a verb,
a coverb, an adjective, or a noun (in which case, it also marks the case).
I think something like this is necessary, unless the same can somehow be
marked by position. But it's not the same thing as having a class of words
that can only take the noun endings.

>> >Look at Nootka or the Salish languages if you're interested in languages
>> >which have been described as having no noun/verb distinction (though not
>> >everyone agrees on that description).
>>
>> I took your suggestion myself and googled for Nootka language.
>> Unfortunately, I have no skill at web searches, and got more results
>> than I could look through. A lot of descriptions of books I can't buy,
>> and pages with only incidental references, mostly by conlangers. There
>> was one that mentioned Chinese language classes at Nootka elementary
>> school.
>
> If you have access to a university library, that would be a good place
> to look. Some have also made the same claim about Salish languages; that
> might be another avenue of web research. Sorry I can't be more helpful
> than that!
That's OK. I don't have access now. I could use the FIU library (they just
built a big new one; I suppose they have a lot more books than they used
to) if I paid my alumni association dues, but that would also involve
money. Also, I'd have to find parking. Well, I haven't tried googling for
Salish yet, anyways. If nothing else, I'll continue to read the posts on
Miapimoquitch, on other relevant conlangs.

Jeff

>Dirk
>--
>Dirk Elzinga                                   Dirk_Elzinga@byu.edu
>
> "It is important not to let one's aesthetics interfere with the
> appreciation of fact." - Stephen Anderson

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