Marcus Smith wrote:
> >We had a black out here for several hours, total darkness,
> >until I stumbled my way to some candles. The lack of
> >electricity made it impossible to work on my thesis,
> Aha! So that's your new excuse. :)
Hehe. Well, I _did_ read up a bit on Acehnese and Ts'ova Tush
as well. :)
> > so I
> >decided to do a little field work on Nakiltipkaspimak. And
> >I discovered a fascinating feature which I haven't seen in
> >any natlang. Yet.
> I haven't seen this yet either. Now that I look at it, I'm rather
> surprised - it is a very natural system, and the theoretical
> apparatus to handle it is already in place, almost no modifications
> necessary. Maybe this means I haven't looked hard enough. :)
I totally agree. When I came up with it, it just came to me so
naturally. Like this:
1. Pimak should be active.
2. Pimak incorporates objects (P)
3. Intransitive non-controlled subjects = P
4. Incorporated intransitive subjects = non-control
otherwise controlled.
Very natural.
> > (2) *mi-nitap-patam-0
> > 3SG-man-fall-PAST
> > 'The man fell (on purpose).'
> >
> > Example (2) is ungrammatical.
> Yes, indeed. You almost never get agreement with an incorporated
> noun. Unless you speak Mohawk. (But it is still uncommon in that
> language.)
Yup. That kinda goes against the idea of incorporation. At
least some of the ideas with incorporation, if I understand
correctly.
> > What I have discovered is thus that if a full NP is freestanding,
> > it is a controlled action. But if it is incorporated it means
> > that it is a non-controlled action.
> Is this for all sentences or just intransitives?
Just intransitives. But if you incorporate a transitive object,
that object is always non-controlled by definition, incorporated
or not, since it is always P.
> > (6) ? i-patam-0
> > 1SG:AGT-fall-PAST
> > 'I fell (on purpose).'
> >
> >Example (6) is more likely to be grammatical with a separate
> >pronoun, like example (7):
> >
> > (7) mis mi-patam-0
> > 1SG 1SG-fall-PAST
> > 'I fell (on purpose).'
> >
> >I'll have to investigate this a bit further, although I think
> >(6) is ungrammatical and (7) is the correct one.
> That would really be an interesting feature.
Yep. Especially since it's almost always just in the pronominal
system that there is some kind of active marking. So if I only
have one form for every pronoun (whether it's AGT or PAT), and
still make it an active system, that's kinda neat.
> > So what do you think? Anyone actually got through this? :)
> > Myself, I think it's pretty neat.
> Very nice system! I like it a lot!
Thanks!
daniel
--
<> KATTAWIKNIK PIMAKTASAL <> daniel.andreasson@telia.com <>
<> KATSAYUKNIK PIMAK <> Daniel Andreasson <>