Re: Strategies for disambiguating ad*

On Tue, 27 Jun 2006 Roger Mills wrote:
>
> Yahya Abdal-Aziz wrote:
>
> > *** ObConLang, two questions for you:
> > A.  Do you have any conlang in which adverbs and adjectives may
> have the
> > same form, as in Malay?
>
> Coincidentally :-) Kash, yes-- although the adverbial form is sometimes
> reduplicated, or has the all-purpose -ni suffix attached, so there's less
> chance of ambiguity. But adj. follow nouns, and adv. usually
> precede verbs--
> but the main difference from Ml/Indonesian is: NO PASSIVE VOICE, so a
> sentence like your Ml. example couldn't occur.  Here's the counterpart:
>
> anju irundingar areyal velu yu, irucunu arañi ratu, yukar "ratu areyal
> marok"
> When they built the/that new temple, they changed the name of the street
> (become=to) "Old Temple Street"
>
> i-ruN-ningar 3pl.-CAUS-stand.up 'they built''
> i-ruN-çunu  3pl-CAUS-be.different 'they changed'
>
> Lit: when they-built temple new that, they-changed name-of street, become
> "street temple new"  OR:
>
> anju veluni irundingar areyal (velu) yu, .....
> when recently they-built temple (new_) that....
>
> Here's a case where both the adv. and adj. could occur together:
> areyal velu, veluni cakumbor 'a new temple recently collapsed'
> areyal velu yu, veluni cakumbor 'they new temple recently collapsed'
> but there would be a break in intonation (indicated by the comma) making
> these topic/comment sentences.  If you wanted them to be specifically SV,
> you'd have to reverse word order in this case:
> veluni cakumbor areyal velu (yu).
>
> Another way: areyal velu yu re veluni irundingar, cakumbor 'the/that new
> temple REL recently they-built (it), collapsed'
>
> These are all quite formal and proper; I suspect in everyday speech one
> could drop the 3pl prefixes without creating a problem. Ambiguity could
> result if the topic of the S were animate:
>
> anju kalowe irundisa, irucunu (yarucunu) arañi, yukar vilem
> when Kalo-DAT they-made.king, they (he) changed his name to Vilem --(i.e.
> who decided to change his name?) but of course that's a rather formal
> situation anyway...
>
> Aaack, vocabulary gaps. There should be a basic verb for "build" I think;
> and surely there are Post Offices....And sometimes the lack of a passive
> voice results in cumbersome circumlocutions, ...
I've tried several ways of changing the patterns
of Malay, but all those that are tolerably clear
are also more verbose and cumbersome ... It's a
remarkably *efficient* design for a language,
I think.  Which is not to say that you can't find
a sentence or two in every language which it
expresses more concisely than does Malay ....


> ... but NO PASSIVE was a deliberate
> decision on my part (if only to avoid total resemblance to Ml/Indon.).
> =====================================================
Thanks to everyone who replied to my questions.
Apparently, it's not a common problem.  Perhaps
most of us tend to produce inflected conlangs?


NATLANG, USAGE:
> > Consider the following sentence in Malay:
> > 1. "Bila Pejabat Pos baharu dibina, jalan itu ditukar nama_nya menjadi
> > Jalan Pejabat Pos Lama."
> > "When Office Post new was_built(%), road that changed(%)
> name_its becoming
> > Road Office Post Old."
>
> ..jalan itu ditukar namanya... is certainly understandable, and common--
> but kind of tangled up, no? jalan itu must be a sort-of topic.
> More correct
> would be: ...nama jalan itu ditukar... 'the name of that street was
> changed...' --just my non-native intuition.
Certainly, it's formally correct, since it has
the structure:
nama <sesuatu.> ditukar menjadi <sesuatu.>
or
name <of something> was_changed becoming <something>

You could read "jalan itu" as a topic, to which
the "-nya" refers back (we've just recently
been playing with these pronouns, yes?):
"jalan itu, ditukar nama_nya menjadi <sesuatu>"
"that street, was_changed its_name becoming <something>"

 - with the rest of the sentence after the comma being
a comment on the topic.  My (equally non-native) intuition
tells me that the word order in the comment also matters;
the general pattern (rule?) I've seen is that ideas appear
in order of decreasing importance - and that's what
"head-initial" really seems to imply.

So the example above has a different emphasis from
(although equivalent factual content as) this one:
"jalan itu, nama_nya ditukar menjadi <sesuatu>"
"that street, its_name was_changed becoming <something>".

The only difference here is that the change is emphasised
less now than the name.  In both, the street is emphasised
more than either.  To make the change the central fact of
the assertion, one would need to recast the entire thing
with "ditukar" as the very first word of the main clause:
"ditukar nama jalan itu menjadi <sesuatu>"
"was_changed the name of that street becoming <something>".

THEORY:
Here I'd like to note that before joining this list I'd never
heard of the Topic - Comment structure, but it seems such
a good fit to the patterns we see, that I'm now often torn
between analysing a given (head-initial) sentence as Topic,
Comment OR as Subject, Predicate.  I frankly don't know
which approach is more fruitful or applicable.  Anyone?


> Actually, both the Ml. and Kash sentences are ambiguous another
> way-- they
> could both mean that the street where the _new_ building is, is
> now called
> "Old ... Street", which clearly wouldn't be the case.
Very true -  I was wondering whether anyone would spot
that weak point in my example. ;-)

Regards,
Yahya

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