Re: Miapimoquitch (was Re: Newbie says hi)

On Fri, 15 Nov 2002 12:40:53 -0700, Dirk Elzinga <Dirk_Elzinga@...>
wrote:

>At 12:15 PM -0500 11/15/02, Jeff Jones wrote:
>>
>>On Mon, 11 Nov 2002 10:53:13 -0700, Dirk Elzinga <Dirk_Elzinga@...>
>>had written:
[snipping most of the old >>>+ stuff]

>> I must have misunderstood the original post where it says "a prefix
>> indicating the object".
>
> Eek. Did I really say that? Yep, I did (I just looked). The earlier
> statement was wrong; there are in fact no object prefixes. But the
> question raises another problem. The problem is that the transitive
> marker _n-_ is only intended to mark a transitive predicate. So for
> transitive predicates, unless the person clitic is _le=_ (2>1; i.e.,
> both subject and object), the object is understood to be third person.
> But these are exactly the predicates which are marked with _n-_, so it
> ends up looking like a third person object marker. But it's really not.
>
>>> There are three proclitic person markers:
>>>
>>> wa= '1'
>>> ku= '2'
>>> le= '2>1' (i.e., second person acting on first person)
>>>
>>> When the transitivity marker _n-_ is present, the first and second
>>> person proclitics mark arguments which act upon a third person.
>>>
>>> wankipe a'ulese
>>> wa= n-  kipe a=  ulese
>>> 1=  TR- poke DS= bear
>>> 'I poked the bear.'
>>>
>>> lenkipe
>>> le=  n-  kipe
>>> 2>1= TR- poke
>>> 'You poked me.'
>>
>> I see. Defining just one extra person marker (2>1), you avoid having to
>> add 2 person markers (I wonder if I can steal it). I suppose you
>> probably mentioned it before ....
>
> I don't remember if I did. The original inspiration for this was hearing
> about the person hierarchy in Yuman languages, which I had understood to
> be 2>1>3 (I think Algonquian languages have the same hierarchy). In the
> earliest version of Miapimoquitch (then Tepa), I envisioned the argument
> prefixes as "vectors" indicating a direction of activity, rather than as
> portmanteaux encoding the  subject and object. Transitive verbs used the
> same set of prefixes as intransitive verbs. By assuming that third
> persons were marked with a zero, I only needed to add _le-_ for the
> transitive sentences when first and second persons interacted.
> Transitivity was a lexical property of the verb.
Now I remember -- it was the original system that you posted before.

> When I started revising the grammar, I did away with the distinction
> between verb and noun; however, this meant that all lexical items could
> be inflected alike for tense/aspect and argument structure. If there was
> still a divide between those items which were inherently transitive and
> those which were inherently intransitive, then I hadn't really done away
> with nouns and verbs. So the marking of transitivity became obligatory,
> and the lack of such marking would indicate only that the predicate was
> intransitive, not that it was a noun.
That seems to imply that you could use a word for "coyote" ("bear" would be
too confusing) as the main clause head and stick a transitivity marker on
it. If so, what would that mean?

> I kept the person hierarchy, but I reinterpreted it so that the external
> argument (subject) must be higher than the internal argument (object) on
> the hierarchy. The only holdover from the earlier "vector" system is
> _le=_, the 2>1 marker, which I like too much to get rid of. Besides, as
> you point out, it means that I never need two person markers for a
> predicate; at most, a person marker and a transitivity prefix.
>
>>> There are two other prefixes which compete for the transitivity slot:
>>> _l-_, which inverts the hierarchical order of the arguments, and
>>> _qa"-_, which is reflexive/middle. The inverse marker forces the
>>> interpretation of the person proclitics _wa=_ and _ku=_ as objects
>>> with a third person subject:
>>>
>>> walpike a'ulese
>>> wa= l-   kipe a=  ulese
>>> 1=  INV- poke DS= bear
>>> 'The bear poked me.'
>>>
>>> For the person proclitic _le=_ the inverse marker forces a reading of
>>> first person acting on second person:
>>
>>This too. Inversion markers are neat. I have one in my latest prospective
>>language and am still exploring the possibilities.
>
> Inversion was also "forced" on me because of my assumptions about the
> person hierarchy. If the external argument was lower on the hierarchy
> than the internal argument, there needed to be a way to encode that.
> After all, third persons act on first and second persons all the time.
> Using the prefix _l-_ does just this job; it indicates that the person
> clitic encodes the internal argument and not the external argument.
It's interesting to see how conlangs evolve, with one design decision
leading to others.

>>> lelpike
>>> le=  l-   pike
>>> 2>1= INV- poke
>>> 'I poked you.'
>>
>>Is {pike} a typo, or is there some kind of syllable reversal process also?
>
>It's a typo. The similarity with 'poke' was too much for me.
Too bad ;-), though I suppose Miapimoquitch already has enough goodies.

Jeff

>>BTW, are you still not getting copies of your posts?
>
>No. But I bcc myself whenever I send to the list, so I'm okay for now.
>
>Dirk
>--
>Dirk Elzinga                                     Dirk_Elzinga@byu.edu
>
> "It is important not to let one's aesthetics interfere with the
> appreciation of fact." - Stephen Anderson