Re: THEORY: Verb voice

>
>At 12:35 pm -0700 3/5/99, JOEL MATTHEW PEARSON wrote:
>>On Mon, 3 May 1999, R. Nierse wrote:
>>
>>> I don''t know for sure if the example I've encountered really is a voice. I
>>> haven't found it in other natlangs or conlangs, it is called 'Non-control'
...
>>> The -n@x- indicates that the actor has no control over the action. I was
>>> very much intrigued by this suffix at the time I studied the language. Are
>>> there any others that have examples of 'non-control'?
>>
>>I wouldn't call this a "voice" in the traditional sense - viz. morphology
>>on the verb which indicates a manipulation of the mapping between
>>argument structure or semantic roles (agent, patient) and surface
>>grammatical relations (subject, object; nominative, absolutive; etc.).
> Ray Brown:
>That's a pretty neat & useful definition of "voice" :)
>
....
>
>I agree and certainly both in your definition and in other 'traditional'
>definitions of voice, this is not a distinction of voice.
>
>I wonder at first if this were an aspectual difference; but this deals with
>ideas like completed or incompleted, habitual, iterative or frequentative,
>inchoative or inceptive actions/states etc.  Non-control is different
>since, I guess, any of these aspects may be encountered whether the subject
>has control over the action or not.
>
>Et dans un courrier dati 3/5/99 Mathias a icrit ::
>>Dans un courrier dati du 03/05/99 08:21:37  , vous avez icrit :
>[....]
>>There are lots of items that may be stuck (in)to voices like control,
>>volition, etc., regarless it's already implied in the meaning of the verb.
Ray:

>
>Ah, now 'volition' immediately suggests _modality_ to me, i.e. a different
>"mood".  Modal distinctions, whether made inflexionally or, as in English,
>with modal auxiliaries, cover a wide range of meanings, especially
>attitudes on the part of the speaker/writer towards the factual content of
>what is uttered or written, e.g. uncertainty, factuality, possibility,
>necessity etc.  It would seem to me that is 'non-control' a modal attribute
>of the verb.
Ray's paragraph just above expresses exactly what I thought when I
first read R. Nierse's post about the non-control grammar, but due to a
persisting mental haze from the flu, I didn't voice it. I like this
mode, and I would like to adopt it into NGL. I would call it the
"injussive mode" because it declares the lack of command and control.
Jussive has as its root, command. The jussives for Nilenga NGL are:

XA type of modals.   [jussives]
xa::-must,legal shall. x says y must make "p" true. No choice. x may be y.
xam::-may           x says that y may make "p" true.
xap::-permits       x permits that y  make "p" true.
xad::-demands       x demands that y make "P" true.
xas::-please        x politely asks that y  make "p" true.
xal::-should (ought to)   x ought to make "p" true, he has a choice.
        Default y is subject of "p".

And now there is the inverse of XA:
inxa::-helpless to affect  x says that y cannot exert control over the
                           underlying event that makes "P" true or false.
R. Nierse again:
>>> The -n@x- indicates that the actor has no control over the action. I was
Then we can say things like:

<inxa> The Kosovo women are losing their men and their homes.
Someone [speaker] asserts that someone else [actor] cannot influence
the event of the Kosovo women losing their men and their homes.

<inxa> Black holes attract matter.
No one can control that black holes attract matter.

I'm not quite satisfied with the definition of <inxa>, but it's the
best I can do until myu virus attack fully abates.

Thanks to R. Nierse, author; and Matt and Ray for a great thread.

Jerry

>
>Ray.
>