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Re: antipassives in Tokana (long...)

From:David G. Durand <dgd@...>
Date:Monday, February 8, 1999, 1:35
At 3:10 PM -0500 2/5/99, JOEL MATTHEW PEARSON wrote:

>Snip
These following seem to be the really interesting bits (though the explanation that I smipped was great!).
>The antipassive construction is used in a number of contexts. For >example, if the direct object is not affected (in the usual way) by >the action, then it will normally appear in the dative case with >the verb in the antipassive: > > Na Tsion kahte-m > the:Erg John hit-me:Abs > "John hit me" > > Ne Tsion u-kahte-ma > the:Abs John Antipass-hit-me:Dat > "John did some hitting at me"
>The second sentence might be used if John took a swing at me and >missed, or if John hit me but it had no effect on me (e.g. I just >ignored it). >
Is this a variation of the partial effect usage, or are there some differences? Are there any verbs that can't take the antipassive? Of course, given that it's a new construction, it's greedy for us to expect that you've had time to discover the lexical ramifications...
>The antipassive is also used if the direct object is only partially >affected by the action. Compare:
etc.
>The antipassive construction can also be used to indicate imperfective >(or progressive) aspect. Since "John is building the house" entails >"John has built part of the house", the semantic extension from partial >affectedness of the object to progressive aspect seems natural to me >(and has precedents in other languages): > > Ne Tsion u-tiespe katia-i > the:Abs John Antipass-built house-Dat > "John is/was building a house" > or "John is/was building houses"
This is cool. I've been discovering ergativity in Toono, and though I think I want to split it between nouns and pronouns, I don't want cases. I'd love to steak this progressive usage, but I've put a moorphological progressive in, so I don't need it (or want that particular kind of redundancy).
>The antipassive construction also feeds nominalisation. Consider: > > iasa "to eat" > iasi "the one who is eaten" > > ukiasa "to do some eating" > ukiasi "the one who eats" > >In the same series as the antipassive prefix "u(k)-" is the prefix >"uma(k)-", which forms reflexive/reciprocal predicates. As with "u(k)-", >adding "uma(k)-" to the verb causes the underlying absolutive direct >object to drop, and the ergative subject to change into an absolutive >subject:
Totally sensible! I was wondering how this might interact with nominals, and then I started to read this! I like it.
> >What do people think?
It seems very nice and sensible, and seems clearer to me than the old way, too. Though I think that's more my (old) failing than your (new-found) virtue. Tokana continues great to read about and learn about. -- David _________________________________________ David Durand dgd@cs.bu.edu \ david@dynamicDiagrams.com Boston University Computer Science \ Sr. Analyst http://www.cs.bu.edu/students/grads/dgd/ \ Dynamic Diagrams --------------------------------------------\ http://www.dynamicDiagrams.com/ MAPA: mapping for the WWW \__________________________