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Re: Mnau Clause Patterns

From:Vasiliy Chernov <bc_@...>
Date:Friday, May 26, 2000, 18:23
Is Mnau an isolating lang? Does it have many grammatical words/particles?
What do you have for role marking, besides the word order?

>AVPXR
<...>
>"A donated P, making it Mary's." >(i.e. A gave P to Mary.)
This is nice! But I think you can't treat all indirect objects this way. Or can you? And I am still curious how your X's work! Do (semantic) adjectives work like verbs or like nouns?
>VPX >"A melted." >"A was eaten."
(I guess you meant "P melted" etc.)
>VPXR >"P was beaten to a pulp." >"P was made happy." >"P was donated, making it Mary's." >(P was given to Mary)
You'll have to distinguish these from imperatives somehow (dunno how Old Chinese managed this). Doesn't seem too hard. Do you also allow omitting S? It would be nice to imply that 'no noun' equals to 'somebody' sentence-initially. But you'll have to forbid omitting/adding nouns in that position for other purposes (ellipsis, topicalization, etc.). I don't see much problems thus far, but they may arise with sentences with more actants/circumstants. Basilius, wondering if they are spelled _circonstants_ or anything...