Re: Disambiguation of argument reference

At 1:35 AM +0100 10/9/02, Tim May wrote:
>I've been trying to reform (or perhaps more accurately "form", as it's
>never really approached completion) the syntax of my conlang LC-01.
>I'm considering making it VSO now, although there are still some
>attractive qualities to an SOV scheme.
>
>What I'm thinking about presently is basic argument structure, without
>any complications of adjectives, adverbials or relative clauses.  With
>full case marking, you might think this would be simple.  However
>it's in the nature of LC-01 morphology (as I conceive of it) that any
>noun can be seen as a nominalization off a verbal root, and can thus
>take an array of arguments of its own.  (It's because I'm fairly
>committed to a Head-Modifier NP structure that I'm thinking of VSO,
>because arguments to a noun really have to be considered modifiers.)
>If these're simply marked for case, ambiguity can arise as to to what
>head a noun is an argument.
>
>A number of possibilities occur to me: Inflect case tags for level of
>reference, either absolutely or relative to the previous word;  or use
>postpositions and place them only after the entire NP to which they
>refer is completed.  These seem rather unnatural, though.  Certainly
>postpositions don't co-occur with modified-modifier NPs much
>naturally, and this scheme would leave the possibility of having to
>end a phrase with a string of them - I'm not sure it'd even be
>speakable in complex sentences.*
Here's another possibility, which I'm taking advantage of in
Miapimoquitch; it's ultimately inspired by Salish languages.

Suppose that verbs are only transitive when explicitly marked as such.

Suppose further that obligatory arguments occur only as inflection;
noun phrases which are co-referential with arguments are strictly
optional (this is the Pronominal Argument Hypothesis of Eloise
Jelinek).

If you have both of these features, then only those items which are
overtly transitive or have argument inflection will be construed as
verbs; everything else will be coreferential with some argument of
the verb and will be construed as nouns.

Here's how I deal with it in Miapimoquitch. In Miapimoquitch, only
the verbal element is obligatory:

wankipe
wa= n-  kipe
1=  TR- poke
'I poked him/her/it.'

Here, the subject is marked by the proclitic _wa=_. Transitivity is
marked by the prefix _n-_; this also implies a third person object,
since a first or second person object is not overtly marked.

When both arguments are third person, only the transitivity marker is present:

nkipe
n-  kipe
TR- poke
'He/she/it poked him/her/it.'

So that's essentially how argument marking works. There are some
wrinkles, but that's all of the machinery that's involved: proclitic
argument markers and prefixed transitivity markers.

Now let's add subordinate clauses; here are two parallel examples:

nkipe aqiiwika
n-  kipe a=  qiiwi     -ka
TR- poke DS= whistle:U -UN
'He/she/it poked the (one who is) whistling.'

The subject of the subordinate clause is different from the subject
of the main clause, and this difference determines the selection of
_a=_ as the determiner (glossed here "DS" = 'different subject').

nkipe eqiiwika
n-  kipe e=  qiiwi     -ka
TR- poke SS= whistle:U -UN
'The (one who is) whistling poked him/her/it.'

Here the subject of the subordinate clause is the same as the subject
of the main clause, so the determiner _e=_ is used (glossed here "SS"
= 'same subject.')

Anything looking like a noun phrase is optional in the same sense as
a relative clause and has identical syntax:

nkipe amasa
n-  kipe a=  masa
TR- poke DS= mountain.lion
'He/she/it poked the mountain lion.'

The predicate has the same structure as the preceding sentences; two
third person arguments implied by the transitivity marker. The
determiner _a=_ marks a predicate with a different subject from that
of the main clause (that is, the mountain lion is not doing the
poking). If the mountain lion were the subject, the determiner
changes form to _e=_:

The predicate has the same structure as the preceding sentences; two
third person arguments implied by the transitivity marker. The
determiner _a=_ shows that the predicate _masa_ has a different
subject than the main clause predicate. That is, the argument which
is being the mountain lion is different from the argument which is
poking). If the argument which is being the mountain lion is also the
same argument which is poking, the determiner _e=_ is used:

nkipe emasa
n-  kipe e=  masa
TR- poke SS= mountain.lion
'The mountain lion poked him/her/it.'

Both arguments can be included, though this is rare since the
identity of one or both can be inferred from context:

nkipe amasa etua
n-  kipe a=  masa          e=  tua
TR- poke DS= mountain.lion SS= man
'The man poked the mountain lion.'

>A lot can be done with mandatory marking of transitivity on heads, but
>this only really helps us with core cases (and required oblique roles,
>maybe**).  Likewise gender or person agreement.
Shoulda read down to here; seems you've anticipated my suggestion
regarding transitivity. However, I think that the Pronominal Argument
idea might come in handy. If noun phrases are strictly optional (that
is, they don't encode arguments), then I think that you can keep
track of which lexical items are verbs and which are (optional)
nouns; the verbs carry arguments, and the nouns are there for
explicitness.

Dirk
--
Dirk Elzinga                                             Dirk_Elzinga@byu.edu

"No theory can exclude everything that is wrong, poor, or even detestable, or
include everything that is right, good, or beautiful."    - Arnold Schoenberg