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!
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Marcus Smith
AIM: Anaakoot
"When you lose a language, it's like
dropping a bomb on a museum."
-- Kenneth Hale
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