Re: Activity and Agency in niKòmbá

> >       In the examples I tried to find ways to use "stative" verbs
> > actively and "active" verbs statively.
>
> Some of the examples are ungrammatical in English, and they show a
> complete failure to get the meaning of "stative".  "I am owning a
horse"
> is ungrammatical, and it is just as stative as "I own a horse".  "I
run"
> is not stative in the least.  A stative verb is a verb that expresses
a
> state rather than an action.  Examples of stative verbs are "stand",
> "lie", "own", etc.
For the most part, your objections are true, but let's give the guy some
credit.  He's trying to come up with a way of recasting verbs which are
inherently stative in English as active, and vice versa, and of course
the result comes out flawed.  What he needs to do is use different
lexical items in English--for example, the active form of "to own,
possess" would probably be "to get, to take."  I think it's pefectly
plausible and rather creative for a language to express this difference
inflectionally, rather than with separate lexemes.

> And I cannot make anything of the following lines:
>
> > I see(stative).         Óvò onùki.              I can see.
> > I see(stative) the dog. Óvò kyuzúdli onùki.     I the dog is in
sight.
>
> What do the things in the third column mean, and how do they relate
to
> the first column?  What is the pronoun "I" doing in the 3rd column in
> the second line?  And does "Óvò onùki" mean "I see" or "I can see"?
I agree here.  These examples are confusing.  Perhaps the last column on
the second one is meant to be "The dog is in my sight?"

> > Perhaps I'm picking up some other distinction and calling it by the
> > wrong name.
>
> Indeed you do!  What you call "stative" seems to be an aspect usually
> called "habitual".  However, stative verbs don't have aspects at all.
> Aspects refer to whether an event is viewed as ongoing, completed, or
> whatever, but stative verbs do not denote events.  (Am I wrong here?)
You are right.  But so is the original author (who was *who*?  I've
forgotten.)  It is possible for a language to express an alternation
between active and stative verbs with an inflection, but the results
would be expressed by different verbs in English, whereas the original
author has tried to express these differences by aspect in English.

> >       Or perhaps what I'm trying to do is take two related semantic
> > ideas, one active one stative, asign both of them to one root, then
> > distinguish between them with sufixes.
A noble goal.  But do be more careful

> > Does any of this make sense, or am I completely messed up and need
to
> > rework the grammar completely?
>
> I'm sorry that I have to tell you that you are completely messed up
on
> this, but this is the most hideous mess I have ever seen in a conlang
> grammar, and it MUST be reworked completely.
Ouch!  That's a little unnecessary!  You are *not* completely messed up,
but you need to be more careful with knowing which verbs are actually
stative and actually active, and translating them correctly.  I actually
once made a conlang with almost this exact system, but I indicated the
difference with different noun cases!  So this is doable, but extremely
difficult, since your native language is so different.  I'd say keep at
it, though.

Jesse Bangs

>
> David
>
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