Re: K'tle morphosyntax

On Mon, 16 Feb 2009 11:16:56 -0600, Eric Christopherson
<rakko@...> wrote:
>
>On Feb 15, 2009, at 7:13 PM, Jeffrey Jones wrote:
>
>> Except for a few particles, all K'tle words are inflected (and referred to as
>> predicates). The major division of the predicates is into nouns and verbs,
>> but note that nouns take many of the same inflections as verbs, the most
>> notable difference being that nouns have inherent gender.
>>
>> Words that might be classified as adjectives, adverbs, adpositions,
>> pronouns, or quantifiers in another language are all considered verbs in
>> K'tle. Verbs are inflected for aspect, mood (etc.), argument agreement,
>> and syntactical function. There are four syntactical functions: primary
>> (finite verbs), secondary, adjectival, and nominal.
>
>I'm looking forward to it. This sounds similar to a lang I'm working
>on, what with there being only one main class of words, which is
>inflected.
Good -- I wonder how similar.
I guess the next thing should be this:

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The most important property of a word is its argument structure. I've listed
the various kinds, how the arguments are marked, and the possible genders.

The codes in brackets are:
S = marked by suffix (in direct forms or if monovalent)
P = marked by prefix (in direct forms or if monovalent)
A = Animate only
I = Inanimate only
* = the suffixed argument of a type 4 verb should be animate when the verb is
inverse or reciprocal.

There are five kinds of verbs:
 1. Monovalent Verbs, Patientive (Arg = patient[S])
 2. Monovalent Verbs, Agentive (Arg=agent[PA])
 3. Divalent Verbs, Relational (Args = reference point[P], subject?[S])
 4. Divalent Verbs, Transitive (Args = agent[PA], patient[S*])
 5. Trivalent (Ditransitive) Verbs (Args = agent[PA], theme[PI], patient[SA])

There are also two kinds of nouns:
 6. Non-possessed Nouns (Arg = subject?[S])
 7. Possessed Nouns (Agrs = possessor[P], subject?[S])

(I'm not sure what role term should be where I have "subject?")

"Adjectives", "Adverbs", and "Quantifiers" usually have type 1 roots;
"Adpositions" and "Pronouns" usually have type 3 roots.

Other differences among the verbs involve what aspects are distinguished and
whether or not comparison is possible. Nouns lack both aspects and degree.
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Or maybe I should've gone into the syntactical functions instead?

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