Re: MNCL5 really long

On Wed, 26 Dec 2007 03:59:12 +0100, taliesin the storyteller <taliesin-
conlang@...> wrote:

>* Jeffrey Jones said on 2007-12-25 09:54:33 +0100
>> What the heck, maybe somebody will have a comment on one or
>> two of these.
>
>Optimist :) Most are busy with christmas I'd wager :)
But you answered all of them!!!  Thanks!!!

>Wow, long indeed, but it's *morphosyntax*! *swoon* Thx for the
>christmas-gift :)
You're welcome.

>> Note: "medial" is my term for "non-final suffix".
>
>I'll be calling your lang "5" so as to avoid typos.
I may name it Faiviz-.

>> 1. Negative Requests
>> Currently, requests are made by combining the question medial
>> -uk- with the imperative final -u. However, there's a rule
>> prohibiting the use of the negative medial -un- in the same
>> word as -uk-, requiring an awkward auxiliary + complement
>> clause construction. Possible changes are (a) changing the
>> rule, (b) using something other than -uk-, or (c) a distinct
>> negative request medial.
>
>Is there an underlying reason for preventing -un- and -uk- in
>the same word:
>- because they'd have to occupy the same slot? (does 5 use slots?)
sort of (and sort of). Also, I want to avoid negative questions and it's simpler
to say you can't have both medials than to explain under which conditions you
can.

>> 2. Argument Structure Conflicts
>> In some situations, certain verbs need a different argument
>> structure from what they currently have. For example, lez-
>> "read" and rait- "write" could use a core argument for the
>> person read to or written to,
>
>a target/goal/benefactive?
I think the benefective might be something different for these. (BTW, lez-
should be leiz-, darnit)

>> which would require that the existing patientive argument
>> become thematic. Sail- "sing" has so far been treated as
>> monovalent, but could use both/either a person sung to and
>> something sung. This change would require an obligatory object
>> for non-verb forms.
>
>Dos 5 allow implicit default (fallback) objects, like: (3rd
>person) animate for this set of verbs, (3rd person) inanimate for
>this other set?
I'm not sure what the question is. In most constructions, optionally omitted
arguments are indefinite. Some are likely to be animate while others are likely
to be inanimate. Does this help?

>> Under the same heading, the morphemes for beneficial (ufr-)
>> and harmful (ivl-) require that what/whom they're beneficial
>> or harmful to be thematic and what's beneficial or harmful be
>> patientive/agentive in order to be used as the benefactive and
>> the malefactive. This conflicts with their potential use as
>> judgemental adjectives, where what's beneficial or harmful
>> must be thematic and the person making the judgement must be
>> patientive (with no provision for what/whom they're beneficial
>> or harmful to). Probably, I'll have to resort to (a)
>> suppletion (if there aren't too many like these) or (b) an
>> argument structure changing medial.
>
>Have you tested that this is an unwanted ambiguity? With several
>sentences, to see how much of a drawback changing nothing would
>be?
Test sentences (which I haven't done yet) are always good. I think I'll have to
answer this in a separate post with more background information and examples.

>> 3. Trivalent Imperatives
>> Currently, a number of trivalent verbs have two translations,
>> depending on either grammatical voice or phrase order. These
>> include geb- "give/receive", vend- "sell/buy", and lern-
>> "teach/learn". There's a problem, however, which of the two
>> meanings is to be used with -u forms (these are primarily
>> imperatives and requests, with implied 2nd person arguments,
>> but may be used with 3rd person or 1st person inclusive).
>> Possible solutions include (a) a new medial (like the
>> grammatical voice medials, but used on -u forms instead of
>> non-verb forms) such as -s- for the 2nd translation of each
>> pair, with the unmarked form used for the 1st translation, and
>> (b) allow the existing grammatical voice medial -m- to be used
>> on -u forms to indicate the 1st translation, with the unmarked
>> form used for the 2nd translation.
>
>Or c), inject something from natural languages (trivalent verbs
>are rare) and have each verb has a preferred imperative that
>fits with that verb's meaning, and an inverse marker if you want
>to preserve the oppsite possibility.
I thought that was what I was doing in (a) and (b). Either I've misunderstood
or what I wrote wasn't clear.

>> 4. Habitual and Frequentive
>> The question here is how to determine whether adverbial
>> expressions such as "often" or those specifying how many times
>> refer to a single occasion (frequentive) or multiple occasions
>> (habitual).
>
>Why adverbs instead of TAM?
I'm referring to things like "42 times" as adverbial expressions. I suspect a
parsing ambiguity ....

>> Related to this is under which circumstances can the habitual
>> medial (-oft-) or the frequentive medial (-ebd-) be omitted?
>
>Adverbs means non-affix in my world...
in mine too. These medials would be instead of/in addition to the adverbials.

>This also depends on the prototypical meaning of the verb: to
>chop firewood, you don't chop just once, and it's commonly done
>habitually... Can you have both freq. and hab. marker on the
>same verb?
Yes, I can have both. You brought up something I'd forgotten about: whether
I should make the frequentive the unmarked form for certain verbs and come
up with a singulative (?) medial.

>> 5. Conatives
>> This deals with the morphosyntax used for expressing something
>> like "try to", where either success hasn't been determined or
>> the attempt has failed.
>
>Wouldn't "try but definitely fail" be something else?
It might be, but I _think_ it could use the same morpheme.

>> Since the person trying is already referred to by one of the
>> existing arguments, a medial, rather than an auxiliary, might
>> be used.
>>
>> Another question is for which TAM combinations has the attempt
>> failed and for which has success not yet been determined?
>> Complicating this is the fact that tense marking is relative
>> rather than absolute.
>
>You really need to Venn-diagram your verbs to get an overview of
>the types. Try drawing the semantic map for English TAM to see
>exactly where 5 differs.
>
>Reference: http://www.ling.canterbury.ac.nz/documents/Adams.pdf
Wow, there's a lot of stuff there about conatives and related things -- it will
take me a while to read it (184 pages) -- but I didn't see anything about Venn-
diagrams for TAM (I might be able to figure out how for 5, but English is
definitely too complicated). Was that the link you intended to give?

>Where'd I put the copy of the adverb/adjective/complement
>semantic map prototype...
>
>> 6. Spatial Relations
>> I'm trying to figure what spatial relations I need distinct
>> words for; I have three kinds so far: (a) directions such as
>> north, south, etc., (b) those relating to an object's
>> structure, such as front and back, and (c) those relative to
>> someone's viewpoint. An additional problem with the last kind
>> is that there is a 2nd object specifying whose viewpoint is
>> used.
>
>What meaning of object are you using here? Unclear.
It seems I'm using "object" to mean both a thing (b) and the phrase referring
to it (c). Darn English!

> Do you operate with default viewpoints?
That's one of the things I'm trying to figure out.

> Do all things have the same dimension or do some (like a road) just have a
> subset?
I suppose using the vertical dimension wouldn't be very useful for a road.

> Said in a different manner: Do you map from the viewpoint to the thing
>observed (possibly with a transform) or does the thing observed
>have inherent left, right, up, length, number,
>togetherness/scatteredness, etc...
Different things will have different sets of inherent properties (under (b)), e.g.
a human body will have front, back, to, bottom, left, right, while a tree will
have only top and bottom and a sphere will have none of those. When the
property doesn't apply, the relations under (c) [transform?] or (a) would have
to be used. BTW thanks for mentioning togetherness/scatteredness, which I
hadn't thought of.

>> 7. Tetravalent Verbs
>> Obviously, I'll have to use an adverbial or secondary
>> predicate final (-i or -in) for the 4th argument. The main
>> question is which?
>
>"bet" is 5-valent, which 4-valent verbs are there in 5?
It is? I could only come up with four arguments. I guess "sell/buy" could take a
4th argument.

>> 8. Adverbs
>> I need to figure out the different kinds of adverbs that must
>> be distinguished (such as manner, instrument, time when, how
>> long, etc.) so that I can assign medials to them, and decide
>> which can be used without any such medial.
>
>You are aware of a difference between langs as close as English
>and French: whether manner/path is adverb(ial) or verb?
>
>French/romance style: "The branch seawardsmoved floatingly"
>English style: "The branch floated towards the sea"
Yes, and 5 is actually designed to allow both styles (although there could be
unknown cases where only one choice works). I didn't mention it, but many
medials can also be used as roots (always (?) divalent static verbs).

>> 9. Partitive and Superlative Constructions
>> I came up with some morphosyntactical possibilities for the
>> partitive construction, but I don't like them.
>
>What's the semantics of the partitive? It's too vague a word to
>just bandy about. Maybe there are several partitives, each with
>its own best solution?
I had in mind things like "three of the (four big) dogs" -- specifying a subset,
by size, of some defined set. I don't know what else to call it.

>> In some of my other languages, the superlative construction is
>> formed by adding a simple (lexical) adjective to the partitive
>> construction. I'm not sure that will work here.
>
>Maybe superlative is not right for this language. Not all langs
>have it, after all. How would you do without?
I don't know. All the natlangs I know of have either an analytic or synthetic
superlative.

>> 10. Compound Phrases
>> What I mean is expressions such as "John and Tom". I'm
>> thinking of creating a new final (maybe -al) to be used for
>> "and" on each subphrase but the last. The same final might
>> also be used in compound numbers.
>
>Compound number: higher than the base? number+fraction?
something like "forty-five" and more complicated things. I guess that would be
higher than the base. Number + fraction would also qualify, I think.

>> That's all I've found in my notes, except for a neverending
>> list of lexical decisions.
>
>Those, like the poor, you'll always have with you...
>
>
>t.

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