Re: If you were to mark only one participant on the verb...

On Wed, 6 Jun 2007 10:52:38 +0200, Benct Philip Jonsson
<conlang@...> wrote:
>
>If you were to reference only one participant on the verb in
>a direct-inverse language (WP: <http://tinyurl.com/2su787>),
>which of the following would you prefer to reference?
>
>  (1) the participant which is higher on the nominal
>      hierarchy,
>  (2) the participant which is lower in the nominal
>      hierarchy,
>  (3) the participant which is the topic,
>  (4) the participant which is the comment.
I would go with (1). Note that if you had special markings for purely "local"
situations, then the person of the 2nd participant would always be implied. I'll
have to think more about (3).

Jeff

>For the concept of nominal hierarchy see on Wikipedia
><http://tinyurl.com/2w4eo6>, and/or on FrathWiki
><http://tinyurl.com/2osdhu> (in all honesty, I wrote the
>latter), and for topic-comment see Wikipedia
><http://tinyurl.com/2ss5zy>.
>
>Note that it would make little sense to choose to reference
>the agent or patient in a direct-inverse language, since
>direction marking would be expected to sort out who is agent
>or patient!
>
>Note also that (1) and (3) would often but not always
>coincide with each other. The same would be true of
>(5) and (4).
>
>Please note rhat I'm not so much asking which choice you
>think would be most natural or compliant with linguistic
>universal, but rather which you think would be most
>communicatively 'useful'. I might well be in a universals-
>breaking mood, for all that I know! :-)
>
>
>/BP 8^)>
>--
>Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch atte melroch dotte se
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~
>"Truth, Sir, is a cow which will give [skeptics] no
>more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull."
>                            -- Sam. Johnson (no rel. ;)