Re: preferred voices?

On Sun, Sep 24, 2000 at 02:12:41PM +0200, Irina Rempt wrote:
> On Sat, 23 Sep 2000, H. S. Teoh wrote:
>
> > Hmm. Your example here wouldn't quite work in my conlang, because in my
> > conlang, *any* of the verb arguments can be dropped at will. For example:
> > 1)      pii'z3d0 Kyy'kh mangu'.
> >         man      harm   horse
> >         (org)    (verb) (rcp)
> >         "The man harms the horse." (Same as "The horse was harmed by the
> >         man".)
>
> Would plain _Kyy'kh_ mean "Harm was done" ?
[snip]

Well, the short answer is, yes. The long answer is that it depends on
context. In some contexts, the verb may pick up implicit arguments (this
is also true when you drop verb arguments). "Harm was done" is a bit too
passive for a translation of "Kyy'kh" though... a better translation would
be "[Something/someone] was harmed", or "[Someone/something] harms". The
impact is quite a lot stronger than the passive in the English.

I'd venture to say that single, isolated verbs like this would be used a
lot in poetry; the lack of verb arguments used as a device to refer to the
unspecified. ("Elliptical", anyone? :-P) But I haven't thought too much
about poetry yet, as my conlang is still in an early state of development.


T