Re: Unilang: the Grammar

In a message dated 4/25/01 11:39:09 PM, e-ching.ng@YALE.EDU writes:

<< [sheepishly]  What is a satellite language? >>

    Yikes!  I thought I explained, but now two people have asked, so I'll try 
again.  I really think the fault lies in my powers of explanation, not in 
anyone's comprehension, so there's no need to feel sheepish.  :)
    Okay, here's an example of the same sentence in a satellite-framed 
language and in a verb-framed language (I finally went to my notes and found 
the technical terms!):

English: "He ran out of the room"
Spanish: "Él salió del dormitorio corriendo." (Gloss: "I left from the room 
running")

    The difference between the two is how they deal with the actual motion.  
In English, if you simply say "I ran", you could be running any which way, 
not necessarily into or out of anything.  The same goes for Spanish: "Yo 
corré", "I ran".  This describes the manner of the motion.  If you want to 
put a constrain on the motion, however, indicating the relation of the motion 
to another object, you employ two different strategies.  
    In English, the satellite-framed language, all you have to do is add a 
preposition: "I ran into the room", "I ran out of the room", "I ran away from 
the bad man".  The verb doesn't change.  The preposition acts almost as a 
satellite of the verb itself, since the basic verbal idea in these sentences 
is "running into", "running out of", "running away from".  They're all 
central to the verb phrase.
    In Spanish, however, you can't say, for instance, "Yo camino en la casa" 
to mean "I walk into the house".  What a native Spanish speaker would take 
that to mean is "I walk (while I'm in the current state of being) in the 
house".  To convey the idea of entering a house, you have to change the verb 
to "entrar", meaning to enter.  This is why Spanish is called verb-framed, 
since to convey relational motion you have to switch the verb itself, you 
can't just add a preposition.
    Someone just gave an example of Chinese which is just like Spanish, it 
seems, in that you have to use basic "enter", "exit" verbs to convey 
relational motion, and if you want to say how whoever did the entering and 
exiting, you have to add another verb, but it's not the main verb of the 
sentence.
    So, that is the difference between a satellite-framed language and a 
verb-framed language.  Hadn't anybody else on the list heard of this?  I 
usually rely on guys like Ray and Older David to take my fledging responses 
and explain what I really mean.  :)

-David

Reply