Re: THEORY: Expressing the outcome of "productive" actions

on 10/29/05 4:38 PM, tomhchappell at tomhchappell@YAHOO.COM wrote:

> --- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, "Harald S." <polysynthetic@I...>
>> wrote:
>> Hi people, thank you for the responses so far! :-))
>> On Fri, 28 Oct 2005 03:21:01 +0200, Henrik Theiling <theiling@A...>
>> wrote:
>>> Further, calling 'some words' a patient would be some kind of
>>> metaphor that treats abstract concepts as objects.  This metaphor
>>> strikes me as extremely normal, but of course, I'm influenced by
>>> the culture I grew up in!
>>>
>>
>> Right. But what I am currently pondering is the following: Would it
>> be perversly odd to interpret speech acts (like shouting in my
>> example sentence) as concepts essentially similar to witchcraft?
>> And if yes, then I am eager to do exactly that! *lol*
>
> I don't think it would be "perversely odd".  I don't know how "odd"
> or un-"odd" it might be, but IM(H?)O it isn't "perverse".
>
> I was going to correct/amend/emend/add to my previous post to suggest
> that in "I said 'some words' thunder.", one of "'some words'"
> or "thunder"  was essive, rather than genitive or equative, while the
> other was factitive.  E.g. suppose 'some words' is factitive;
> "I said 'somewords' /as/ thunder" would make "thunder" essive.
>
> However, while thinking about that, I thought "couldn't it
> be /translative/ instead of essive?"  Then, I read the post to which
> I am now replying.
I was not aware of the term factitive, and after googling it I'm still not
entirely sure what it means. It seems to be primarily used to describe
verbs, not nouns, that cause something to be changed. In Kar Marinam I use
the Translative case to mark any object that was "created" or changed
significantly. I put quotes around "created" because most of the time when
we talk about creation what's really happening is that one thing is changing
into another, even if we don't think of it that way, and this is why I use
the same case for both. So in Kar Marinam, a quote itself is left unmarked,
but if a regular noun is used, such as "words," it will be in the
translative case, because words do not hover around waiting to be acted
upon, but are brought about through the act of speaking. The thing that is
converted into speech is, I suppose, under ordinary circumstances, primarily
the air, as its molecules bounce around, and perhaps the tiny vibrating
bones and fluid in the listener's ear, and really also all the brain cells
that interpret those vibrations, and the muscles in the mouth and throat of
the speaker, and the mental states of both the speaker and listener. They
all combine to produce what we call words. These *could* be marked as the
Patient in KM, though I don't think anyone would feel the need to mention
them at all, just as they don't in English. Perhaps in poetry.

I'm not sure how one would convert thunder into speech. I'd think thundering
air is vibrating too much already to be overwhelmed by anyone's mouth. It
would be quite a feat!

> It seems to me that if one turns "'some words'" into "thunder", or,
> turns "thunder" into "'some words'", -- either way, it's a kind
> of "witchcraft", as you have written of it.
>
> "I said 'some words' (so that they became) thunder."
> or
> "I said thunder (so that it became) 'some words'.".
>
> Of course, "thunder" could be in an adverbal case, rather than an
> adnominal case; in which case the better translation might be
> "I thundered 'some words'."
>
>> Let me explain:
>>
>> If the utterance "I shouted some words" could  be understood as "I
>> turned some words into a shout", then it would be related
>> conceptually to the sentence "The witch turned a flower into a
>> dishwasher". Obviously then, speech acts actually have two objects:
>> the target of speech before the conversion and, secondly, the
>> target of speech after the conversion into sound. Not _that_
>> strange actually. Think of a tool that technology has given modern
>> people: Text-to-speech software which bears this conversion
>> process right as its name! ;-)))
>>
>> Anyway, the notion of "speech magic" makes me grin considerably.
>> Something for a not-very-usual conlang, I guess... :D
>>
>> Cheers and a wonderful day plus weekend,
>> Harald
>> :-)))))
I KM were more flexible perhaps you could say:

mshÿhbò lúnty gèremlëmpì
Trans-thunder words(-Pat) spoke (I-Ag)
'I thundered some words.'

But you can't, since "words" still can't be used as a Patient, since they
don't exist as such prior to the action. In fact, "words" and "thunder" are
created simultaneously and refer to the same thing. For this reason, you
couldn't even put both in the Translative case and conjoin them, since then
it would sound like they were two separate creations. So I would attach to
"words" what I call an appositive relational, for lack of a better term,
which indicates it and the following word are the same thing. (I don't like
to use the term case here because, unlike most other cases other that
genitive, it marks the relationship between two nouns, rather than a noun
and a verb.)

mshÿlúnto hbò gèremlëmp
Trans-words-App thunder spoke (I-Ag)
'I thundered some words.'

Same problem and solution for turning words into a shout. Text to speech
though, would work as a patient/translative sentence.

For your other example about painting, KM would have the object to which
paint is applied marked as the Locative, the image created as Translative,
the paint itself as the Patient, the painter as Agent, and the brush as
Instrumental. This is quite different than in English, where either of the
first two can be the direct object, and seem to be the patient. I classify
the paint as the Patient here because it is affected most of all - it is
actually moved around and blurred with other colors. The object painted upon
is not itself changed (aside from some possible seepage into it, depending
on material), merely coated. And the image itself, of course, only exists as
a result of the action, so it must be Translative.


--
Josh Roth

http://fuscian.freespaces.com/

"Farewell, farewell to my beloved language,
Once English, now a vile orangutanguage."
-Ogden Nash

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