Re: Short Question: Actant

Muke Tever wrote at 2005-09-02 14:23:12 (-0600)
 > Tim May <butsuri@...> wrote:
 > > Muke Tever wrote at 2005-09-01 10:59:39 (-0600)
 > >  > English could be seen as doing this--if you take:
 > >  >
 > >  >    The president's    talking to you
 > >  >       (President-3SG) (verb--not marked for person)
 > >
 > > Even if you were so perverse as to analyze it that way, "-s" doesn't
 > > contrast with forms in other persons, so why would you gloss it -3SG?
 >
 > What do you mean?  The forms in all persons and numbers are:
 >     -'m  1SG
 >     -'rt 2SG    -'re PL (all persons)
 >     -'s  3SG
 >
 > [The 2SG -'rt is archaic, with the 2SG pronoun 'thou' having
 > been in standard registers replaced by the 2PL pronoun 'you'
 > (which still governs verbs as a plural, even when the sense
 > is singular).]
 >
 > The use of these clitics on the first and second persons--outside
 > of pronouns, where they are frequent--is admittedly rare,

Not rare, _unknown_.  Totally ungrammatical in any dialect I'm
familiar with, or can even imagine, really.

 > but again this is most likely due to habits of speech making the
 > use of nouns to refer to the first and third person rare.  :p
 >

Not at all - use of nouns with 1st or 2nd person reference is rare,
but it can be handled through apposition - "I, the president, am
talking to you".  "*The president'm talking to you" is ungrammatical.

In any case, the more you go beyond the original construction (e.g. by
considering pronouns), the more clear it is that these aren't
person/number affixes, but clitic copulas, and moreover the main verb
in the sentence.  It's not a case of "person marking on nouns", but
"indexing of person on an element that's phonologically attached to
the last word of the subject noun phrase".

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