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

--- 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.

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
> :-)))))

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