Re: A New Conlang For Your Consideration

On Sat, 24 Jan 2004 10:59:58 +0100, takatunu <takatunu@...> wrote:
>
>It a Great website designed like a book you can browse. Downloaded it all
to
>read it sipping my coffee :-)
>
>I am just a bit disappointed with the philosophical viewpoint expressed
>there because it is quite academically "PC"--like your example of the
>opening door, key, John, etc. Why say that the semantic roles of the key
and
>of the door have a connection with each other? They have one on the basis
of
>the English verb "to open" because in the English language the verb "to
>open" may also refer to the continuum of "to unlock in order to allow the
>door to open" but in languages I do know, the key unlocks the door while
the
>door moves on its hinge or groove. The key is not an instrument to move the
>door open so the key is not an instrument of the lexy "to open". Same with
>the room or house or other structure to which the door pertains which
>"opens" as well in English, "opening on a room", i.e., making it
accessible,
>etc.
>
>Also in many natlangs the semantic role of "recipient" may be subdivided
>according to the preexisting or resulting underlying behaviour of the
>arguments: some "recipients" are expected to interact as partners, some
>others to "react" (they are expected to understand, yield, help), some to
>change and some to be mere patients (they incorporate the item they receive
>or are planted in or taught to, or just are mocked or yelled at.) Because
>the expected respective behaviours of all these "recipients" are considered
>quite different from each other, these natlangs break down the English
>continuum phrase (made of a verb and prepositions drawing their meaning
from
>the continuum underlying the verb) into a chain of independent serial
>predicates like give-transfer-receive, talk-listen, order-aim-obey,
>judge-undergo, consume-make-result, etc.. Isn't it a bit artificial to
>consider that "receive", "listen" and "obey" are the same "recipient roles"
>just because in languages like English the verbs "to tell", "to give", "to
>order" use a single preposition or a single case to express them all?
Thanks for your comments.  The reason the site reads like a book is
because my original conception 20+ years ago for presenting the grammar was
as a book (since there was no WWW of course); I preserved the chapter-based
format because it seemed easier to organize things that way.  As for your
critique on the semantic role relations, I'm fascinated by the subtlety to
which you think it should be taken.  I thought I'd already "sub-divided"
the usual semantic roles you see from case grammar into lower level
divisions (e.g., the distinction between my Absolutive vs. Inducive case,
or my Ergative vs. Effectuative case), but had not deeply considered
subdividing the Experiencer role.  I can only say two things, one
subjective, the other practical:  1) perhaps overt sub-delineations of the
Experiencer role aren't necessary if the would-be sub-delineations
themselves are mutually exclusive.  So if the "obey" schema takes only one
kind of experiencer, and the "listen" schema takes a different kind, but
together they both qualify as Experiencers in general (i.e., party
undergoing an unwilled affective experience whether self-induced, self-
enabled, etc.) then can't the overt case-marking simply point to the higher-
level delineation and not the sub-delineations?  2) Given that the 9-by-9
morpho-phonological sheme for case marking (nine mutations of the second
consonantal radical times nine vowel-infix mutations) limits the number of
cases to 81, well, I would run out of room for case-marking if I started
adding more cases at this point.