Re: I'm back (was: Re: Leaving for three weeks...)

On 8/26/05, Julia Schnecki Simon <helicula@...> wrote:
> 
> Hello!
> 
> On 8/26/05, Patrick Littell <puchitao@...> wrote:
> >
> >
> > On 8/25/05, Julia Schnecki Simon <helicula@...> wrote:
> 
> [some musings about my verbal inflection system and object agreement]
> 
> > I'm not sure how universally this generalization holds, but
> > object-incorporated verb forms seem to tend towards an imperfective,
> > habitual, or durative interpretation. It makes sense. "He hoes the/some
> > beans" vs. "He bean-hoes", the second meaning something like "He 
> habitually
> > hoes beans" or "He's a bean farmer".
> 
> Hoo boy. I had almost forgotten about noun incorporation. What I wrote
> above refers to object agreement in the sense of "[I.NOM] read.1sg/3sg
> book.ACC", i.e. some morpheme in the verb form that gives us a clue
> about which form/gender/number/whatever we should expect the object to
> have...

Oh, I understood; I was just going off tangentially from that.

What you write about object-incorporated verb forms and their
> interpretation matches my experience, too, but then again, I've only
> looked at two languages with noun incorporation so far (Nahuatl and
> Mohawk).
> 
> Well, three such languages if you count German; some people claim that
> in colloquial constructions like _ich bin am Hausaufgabenmachen_ "I'm
> (in the middle of) doing my homework" (lit. "I am at [the]
> homework-doing"), the noun _Hausaufgaben_ is incorporated into the
> verb _machen_. Others consider _Machen_ a deverbal noun in this case
> and, therefore, there is no incorporation going on here but rather
> noun composition (I think that's the traditional view). YMMV. In any
> case, the meaning is definitely imperfective and in most cases I'd
> also say durative (not at all habitual, though).
> 
> > So maybe a *combined* TAM and object agreement system!
> >
> > Object agreement (person or class) and PAST suffix = past perfective
> > Object incorporation and PAST suffix = past imperfective
> > Object agreement (person or class) and NONPAST suffix = nonpast 
> perfective
> > Object incorporation and NONPAST suffix = nonpast imperfective
> 
> Good idea -- use object incorporation instead of aspect markers... :-)
> 
> > Now this necessitates the question of how to deal with aspect in
> > intransitive forms. Perhaps just a neutral interpretation, or an 
> indefinite
> > object marker can signal the imperfective.
> 
> Yes, an indefinite object marker would be the obvious solution, but
> then again, it would be dangerously close to a "real" aspect-marking
> morpheme. But maybe I can get around the issue by declaring all
> intransitive verbs reflexive in some way or another ("I swim" := "I
> make myself float" or some such) and deal with the problem by
> incorporating a word that refers to the subject/agent into the verb:
> 
> (1a) student.NOM book.ACC read.3sg/3sg "the student reads a/the book"
> (1b) student.NOM book-read.3sg "the student habitually reads books"
> (i.e. studies a lot, or is a bookworm)
> 
> (2a) dolphin.NOM swim.3sg/0 "the dolphin swims"
> (2b) dolphin.NOM REF-swim.3sg "the dolphin habitually swims; dolphins
> are water-dwellers"
> 
> (3a) swim.1sg/0 "I swim"
> (3b) REF-swim.1sg "I habitually swim"
> 
> ... where the REF morpheme could be the stem for "self", or a form of
> the pronoun for the appropriate noun class...

Another possibility is to stipulate that all sentences whose main verb is 
intransitive are imperfective. Since object incorporation is (in most langs) 
a detransitivizing operation, it becomes a special case of the intransitive 
=> imperfective rule. Same with an antipassive/indefinite object 
construction; at least in my subjective view, "I eat" is more imperfective 
than "I eat the dark chocolate m&ms." 

In order to make a perfective out of it, you then would have to make the 
main verb of the sentence a dummy verb (say, derived from "finish" for the 
perfective) that takes a verbal or deverbal noun as a compliment. I finish 
the walk. I finish the homeworkdoing. This would also be a nice way to do an 
inceptive or inchoative, from "begin".

What I would do: use a combination of all of these. Irregularly and 
lexically determined. 

(1) For some intransitive roots, say unaccusative ones like "walk", make the 
transitive form realize as object some relevant semantic role, like the 
destination. He walks Chinatown. The imperfective intransitive, habitual 
interpretation, would come out as He somewherewalks. (He's a walker. Doesn't 
matter where.) 

(2) For unergative roots, definitely the causative for the transitive form. 
The water boils. He boils the water. "The water boils itself" is kinda 
strange, unless we do mean to say that it's boiling despite no outside 
agency. (Creepy!) Instead, I think "It finishes the boiling" is a more 
reasonable perfective.

(3) For roots that are reasonably reflexive, like bathe and shave and so on, 
the reflexive route is the best bet.

(4) For transitive roots, no problem, of course.

For realism, a few prototypically unaccusative roots should be treated like 
unergatives, and a few unergatives like adjectives, etc. etc. In a 
completely unsystematic manner. And incorporation of body parts should work 
totally backwards, maintaining or even increasing a verb's valency. :)

That system would also solve the problem of how to derive causative
> verb forms (which hasn't come up yet, but never mind):
> 
> (4a) swim.1sg/3sg boat.ACC "I make the boat swim" (i.e. I'm putting it
> into the water, I steer it along the river, or whatever)
> (4b) boat-swim.1sg "I habitually make boats swim" (i.e. I work in a
> shipyard's Quality Assurance department, I'm a steamboat
> helmsman... woman... person... whatever)
> 
> Here, one wouldn't really be able to say that causative forms are
> derived from "basic" stems as they are in the natlangs I know that
> have causative forms; instead, the stems of all the verbs where this
> kind of thing makes sense semantically would be ambiguous in that
> regard, but each concrete verb form would have a causative or
> noncausative meaning depending on the kind of stem that is
> incorporated ("self"/pronoun/"neutral" : noun).
> 
> I like it. :-)
> 

-- 
Patrick Littell
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