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Re: Nakiltipkaspimak goes active!

From:Marcus Smith <smithma@...>
Date:Friday, November 3, 2000, 4:00
Daniel Andreasson 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. :)
> 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. :)
> It was also very inspiring to work in candle >light.
I'll have to try this sometime.
>What was interesting was the way the activity was marked. Take a >look at these examples: > > (1) nitap mi-patam-0 > man 3SG-fall-PAST > 'The man fell (on purpose).' > > (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.)
> 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?
> (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.
>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! =============================== Marcus Smith AIM: Anaakoot "When you lose a language, it's like dropping a bomb on a museum." -- Kenneth Hale ===============================