Re: Core Cases (was Re: Ditransitivity (again!))

On Tue, Feb 03, 2004 at 01:23:41PM -0500, jcowan@REUTERSHEALTH.COM wrote:
[snip]
> > P.S. I'm also duly impressed by Lojban's dispensation with the natlang
> > misfeature that one particular verb argument must always be present (eg.
> > the nominative or subject).
>
> Mandarin (I don't know about the other Sinitic langs) is also good at this:
>
>         (in the context: "Where is she?")
>         Hai2 mei2 lai2
>         still not come
My L1, Hokkien, is more or less identical in this respect. However, in
both cases, the subject can be dropped only with prior context. There is
no equivalent of the Ebisedian method of eliding the equivalent of subject
to make the sentence passive.

> >         jhit0' fww't3 ebu'.     I see her / she was seen by me.
>
> Is it all one whether you say the above or "ebu' fww't3 jhit0'"?
Word order does not make a difference here, except for emphasis (see
below).

> > When both are present, the distinction between active and passive
> > is semantically irrelevant, and the Ebisedian neatly (if I may say so
> > myself) uses the same expression for both.
>
> They aren't quite equivalent, though.  "England conquered Wales" is most
> felicitous when the topic is England, whereas "Wales was conquered by
> England"  is most felicitous when the topic is Wales.
That's not a problem in Ebisedian. You would simply front the topical
noun, or use a topic-comment construct (below). There is also an emphatic
marker _iro_ which can be prefixed on the topical noun, but that would be
inappropriate here (it would carry the force of "it is England that
conquered Wales", or vice versa).

In Tamahi, you would use the topical suffix -i on the NP in focus, to
achieve the same effect. Eg:
	gilui' f3't bist0.	[gI"lwi hw@\t bIs"tA]
	"Gili saw the woman."

	bist0i' f3't gilu.	[bis"tAj hw@\t gIlu]
	"The woman was seen by Gili."

In both instances, "Gili" is in the receptive case and "woman" in the
originative. The verb _f3't_ remains the same.

(In addition to the topical marker, Tamahi also prefers to front the
topical NP, just like Ebisedian.)

In any case, Ebisedian tends to take a distanced, objective view of
things. The raw fact (that England conquered Wales) is more important than
what is being focused on (whether it is England which conquered Wales or
it is Wales which was conquered by England). So although it does allow one
to specify such a focus, the simplest form of the utterance is neutral,
neither active nor passive.


> Lojban has a particle that allows the construction of topic-comment
> sentences explicitly:
>
>         England (topic) conquered Wales.
>         Wales (topic) England conquered.
Ebisedian has a topic-comment-comment-... construction which may be
employed here as well. Roughly speaking, it looks like:

	England(loc): <ref>(org) conquer Wales(rcp).

where <ref> is the short-range pronoun _kili_, inflected for the case
function of the topic (the locative noun, "England" in this case) in the
comment. Usually there would be at least two comments present in this
construction, each of which would refer to the topic using _kili_.

The second sentence could be rendered:

	Wales(loc): <ref>(rcp) conquer England(org).

> The topic, indeed, need not be an argument at all:
>
>         la gliban. po'e ko'a zo'u le nu cusku cu xamgu mutce
>         The English of-INALI her (topic) the event-of speaking is good extreme
>         As for her English, (her) speaking (of it) is very good.
>         Ta1 de Ying1wen2, shuo1 de hen3 hao3.
>
> (INALI = inalienable possession)
[snip]

Nice one. The Ebisedian equivalent would be something along the lines of:

ieng3li'ch.  tras33'     n0         jhit0'   kil3       da
English(loc) fluent(cvy) <sub>(org) she(org) <ref>(cvy) <aux>(instr)

t3m30'.
speaking(org)

Translation: "English: fluent [is] her of it speaking."

<ref> is the short term pronoun referring to the topic, _ieng3li'ch_
[i?&N@\"liS], used here as the conveyant argument to the participial
relative pronoun _da_ (indicating that which was spoken by her).

<sub>...<aux> delimit a subordinate clause modifying _t3m30'_. The
originative marking of _n0_ agree with the originative _t3m30'_; the
instrumental _da_ is an instrumental relative pronoun in the subordinate
clause. The instrumental case here is used in a participial function ("her
speaking of it").


T

--
Don't modify spaghetti code unless you can eat the consequences.

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