Re: Agency and the lexicon, and Modexúr Olo

>
>The Bantu connection is not deliberate but welcome, as it puts me in
familiar waters.  What do y'all think of this system?  does anyone know of
any langs, con- or nat-, which have a similar system?
>
(Re: Your subj=AGENT / subj=EXPERIENCER distinction that has semantic
results for the meaning of the predicate)

(Sound of one blowing one's own horn.)

Bendeh does something similar with markings on the verb.  Every predicate
is either essentially transitive or intransitive in the lexicon, but verb
markings differ according to transitivity (j- prefixes for transitive and
p- prefixes for intransitive).  Transitive predicates inflected with
intransitive p- prefixes become neuter, and intransitive predicates
inflected with transitive j- prefixes become causative.  This process is
completely productive.

   Fym jelzil ecus.
   mother TRANS-past-see OBJ-house
   Mother saw (could see) the house.

   Cus pelzil.
   house INTRANS-past-see
   The house was visible.

(zil, "see," is inherently transitive.)

   Zak pelzur.
   story INTRANS-past-good
   The story was good.

   Fym jelzur ezak.
   mother TRANS-past-good story
   Mother improved the story.

(zur, "good," is inherently intransitive.)

Obviously, in Bendeh, the results are less interesting in your project,
because the semantic alternation is mechanical or "logical".  What
particular appeals to me about your idea is that the pairs of meanings are
linked metaphorically/psychologically.

I think that this is a result of your careful attempt to find pairs of
meanings where the SUBJ="agent" and the SUBJ="experiencer" are the same.
At the same time, perhaps unwittingly, but crucially, you keep the
predicate either transitive or intransitive in both uses.  This forces you
to come up with interestingly-related pairs of meanings.

Note, therefore, that in your last examples with nugro, "bend," you
implicitly shift the OBJ NP in the "agent" version ("I bend the stick")
into the EXP NP position in the "experiener" version ("the stick is
flexible"), and shift the meaning from transitive to intransitive.  This
is precisely parallel to the Bendeh system, but is a small departure from
the earlier examples.  I am curious - what would a
transitive "experiencer" version of nugro mean?

By the way, can your distinction be applied to all predicates, or only a
select set?  Might you might reserve the true agent/experiencer
distinction for predicates of feeling, emotion, human experience, etc.,
and use the same syntactic pattern for the transitive/neuter distinction
on more physical predicates?  That is sort of what your nugro example
implies.

- Nat

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