Re: K'tle morphosyntax
| From: | Jeffrey Jones <jsjonesmiami@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Wednesday, February 18, 2009, 20:01 |
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On Wed, 18 Feb 2009 00:21:14 -0600, Eric Christopherson
<rakko@...> wrote:
>
> On Feb 16, 2009, at 12:53 PM, Jeffrey Jones wrote:
>
> > On Mon, 16 Feb 2009 11:16:56 -0600, Eric Christopherson
> > <rakko@...> wrote:
....
> >> 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.
>
> Don't worry -- not THAT similar.
I'm not worrying (about _that_ at least); it would be very interesting if they
were.
> (I would write more about mine, but I keep failing to hammer out the
> details.) Your description does sound interesting.
I've been having trouble filling in details myself. I know that adjective-type
agreement will use suffixes that distinguish animate and inanimate, singular
and plural, but I don't like any I've come up with.
> > Or maybe I should've gone into the syntactical functions instead?
>
> If you'd like :)
OK ....
The syntactical functions are primary, secondary, adjectival, and nominalized.
1. Primary: these are the finite forms, used in main clauses. All the others are
dependent.
2. Secondary: there are two kinds:
(a) coreferential or adverbial, with suffixes that replace one of the finite form's
arguments; uses include secondary predicates and "adpositional" phrases,
(b) finite forms that have been marked as secondary with an additional suffix.
3. Nominalized: these also are two kinds:
(a) coreferential, with a suffix replacing one of the finite form's arguments;
these are analogous to complementary infinitives,
(b) finite forms that have been marked as nominalized with an additional suffix.
Both of these act as elaborations of one of the containing clause's arguments.
4. Adjectival: these modify some noun (which may be implied) and distinguish
gender and number; like the coreferential forms, one of the finite form's
arguments is replaced.
Lexical nouns can take most of these forms as well, although the most
frequent forms are those for syntactical nouns.