There are 5 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: A traveller's report in Buruya Nzaysa
From: Jan Strasser
2a. Re: subject and object covered by a single case?
From: qiihoskeh
2b. Re: subject and object covered by a single case?
From: Alex Fink
3a. THEORY: Is Jespersen cycle a cycle?
From: Leonardo Castro
3b. Re: THEORY: Is Jespersen cycle a cycle?
From: Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
Messages
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1a. Re: A traveller's report in Buruya Nzaysa
Posted by: "Jan Strasser" cedh_audm...@yahoo.de
Date: Tue Aug 13, 2013 9:47 am ((PDT))
This is the second part of an annotated translation of a traveller's
report on a type of "great serpents" into Buruya Nzaysa, based on a
real-world account by the famous explorer Marco Polo ( ~1298,
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Travels_of_Marco_Polo/Book_2/Chapter_49 ).
I'm also cross-posting it to my blog ( http://audmanh.wordpress.com/ ).
Here's the relevant section of the text:
Tsonah rabɛ lu ɛte gɔla lu ɛnalu əno mpu lo rəlse, dal tah rabɛ lu tolbɔ
ada lu sade oskə ogu rɛ saxa ɔ tola dəsmoh, o saxa ɔra əña rɔmaxa mɛsɛ
alme nzugi. O pɔwah nzɔ ɛma ɔ ani ntsa, ni wəyaxa wɛtuldɔ lu nzəwo ayru
u tilɛ ga u əña sədə kunə o kili nimə́luyə o wəyaxa lu əñali ayru nzugi,
ntɛ ri maxa lo mɛwɛnomɔ xa esə ɛru. Pɔwaxa ñalta lu ñavo ŋkə same rapsə,
ni wəyaxa nzɔ waru skɛga əño o tul; o mah tsa ntɛvɔ́ve esə rɛvle.
By day they live underground because of the great heat, but in the
evening they go out in order to search for food, and they devour every
animal they can catch. And when these serpents are very hungry,
sometimes they will seek out the lairs of tigers or other large wild
beasts, and devour their cubs, without the parents being able to prevent
it. Indeed if they catch the big ones themselves they devour them too;
they can make no resistance.
And here's a detailed sentence-by-sentence analysis:
Tsonah rabɛ lu ɛte gɔla lu ɛnalu əno mpu lo
rəlse,
HAB.AUX-3PL during.3 DEF.ACC day under.3 DEF.ACC ground stay due_to.3
DEF.NOM hot_weather
During the day they stay under the ground because of the heat,
dal tah rabɛ lu tolbɔ ada lu sade oskə
but INCH.AUX-3PL during.3 DEF.ACC evening to.3 DEF.ACC outside.3 come
but in the evening they come out
ogu rɛ saxa ɔ tola dəsmoh,
so_as_to.3 SUB.ACC NULL.AUX-3PL>3 INDEF.ACC meal search_for
in order to search for food,
o saxa ɔra əña rɔmaxa mɛsɛ alme nzugi.
and NULL.AUX-3PL>3 all animal REL.AUX-3PL>3 meet without_exception devour
and they devour every single animal that they come across.
There are a few things to note in this sentence. The first of these is
that the word mpu 'because', normally a conjunction, is used as a
preposition here. It's the only one of Buruya Nzaysa's core conjunctions
that can be used in this way. As its argument it has the noun rəlse
here, which is interesting too because of its semantics: It's a
monolexemic word that refers to hot weather, not necessarily with
sunshine but always with a high temperature that makes people feel
slightly uncomfortable.
In the second line we find an instance of a nominalized preposition,
something that Buruya Nzaysa does quite frequently, especially with
temporal prepositions. Here, it's done with a locative preposition
though: ada lu sade 'to the outside', which is literally more like 'to
the out (of it)'.
In the last line we see the first relative clause in the text - a fairly
minimalistic one, rɔmaxa mɛsɛ 'which they meet'. In spoken Buruya
Nzaysa, relative clauses are formed like normal main clauses without an
overt subject, using the special auxiliary verb rɔma- without any other
indication of subordination. This construction derives from reanalysis
of a former relative pronoun due to syntactic and phonological
similarity with other auxiliaries. In the more conservative registers of
the language, the old construction is still in use; here it would have
the form rɔma wəru mɛsə; REL 3PL.ANIM.NOM meet.VN.
There are also lots of new words here:
gɔla (pp.) 'under, below'. Etymology: Ndak Ta ob nggolang 'at the foot
of' (parallel to Fáralo wægól and Ndok Aisô k'eulag).
ɛnalu (n.) 'ground, floor, bottom'. Etymology: Ndak Ta ainalau 'downward
place'.
ogu (pp.) 'in order to, for the purpose of, in preparation of'.
Etymology: Ndak Ta ob gau 'on the road to'.
alme (adv.) 'invariably, without exception'. Etymology: Ndak Ta al mi
'without none'.
nzugi (v.) 'devour, eat greedily (usually said of animals); use up'.
Borrowed from Miwan zugīr 'swallow'. The initial fricative ended up
prenasalized mostly because Buruya Nzaysa does not have non-prenasalized
voiced /z/. However, it seems very likely that a slightly older version
of Miwan did have word-initial prenasalized obstruents, at least as
clusters, and quite possibly there was something like that in the
ancestor of this word too. In any case, the name of the language itself
clearly derives from earlier *mbiw (from Proto-Eigə-Isthmus *ʔum-pew 'of
the people').
O pɔwah nzɔ ɛma ɔ ani ntsa,
and COND.COP-3PL TOP.NOM serpent INDEF.ACC hungry very
And if these serpents are very hungry,
ni wəyaxa wɛtuldɔ lu nzəwo ayru u tilɛ
if/then FUT.AUX-3PL>3 even DEF.ACC shelter of.3.ANIM INDEF.NOM tiger
they will even approach the shelter of a tiger
ga u əña sədə kunə o kili nimə́luyə
or INDEF.NOM animal other tough and wild approach
or of another strong and wild animal
o wəyaxa lu əñali ayru nzugi,
and FUT.AUX-3PL>3 DEF.ACC cub of.3.ANIM devour
and they will devour their cubs,
ntɛ ri maxa lo mɛwɛnomɔ xa esə ɛru.
with.3 SUB.NOM NEG.AUX-3PL>3 DEF.NOM parent this.ACC EMPH.AUX prevent
with the parents not being able to prevent it.
This sentence exhibits a typical if/then-construction. In English, we
use a pair of conjunctions to express a conditional event, with 'if' at
the beginning of the protasis and 'then' at the beginning of the
apodosis. In Buruya Nzaysa, there's only a single conjunction ni, which
is placed between the two clauses. In addition, one of the clauses must
carry the conditional auxiliary pɔ-. Usually, the conditional auxiliary
is placed in the protasis, as we see here, but that's not necessarily
so; it mostly depends on which clause has the stronger semantic need to
use a different auxiliary. It's very likely that things are more
complicated than this though; I think I'll have to write about
conditionals in more detail someday.
There are two other notable things in here, both of them in the last
line. One of these is the word mɛwɛnomɔ 'parents', which is a dvandva
compound ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvandva ) of mɛwɛ 'father' and
omɔ 'mother'; the linking /-n-/ is a residue of the conjunction in the
Ndak Ta phrase mebwe on omo. The second thing is that the sentence-final
complement clause contains two auxiliaries, in initial position the
inflected negative auxiliary maxa, and then in pre-final position the
uninflected emphatic potential auxiliary esə, which acts as an adverbial
modifier to the verb, highlighting the fact that the clause is not about
actual prevention, but more fundamentally about the ability to prevent.
Together, ma- and esə- provide the semantics of 'not able to'.
New words:
tilɛ (n.) 'tiger'. Borrowed from an unknown language of the Peninsular
family; ultimately from Proto-Peninsular *ktiçi-laha (cf. Kibülʌiṅ
ttīlʌ̄, Merneha cirilah, Vylessa ktīlḗ, Lotoka kila).
Pɔwaxa ñalta lu ñavo ŋkə same rapsə,
COND.AUX-3PL>3 indeed DEF.ACC adult same bring_down instead.3
Actually, if they catch the adults instead,
ni wəyaxa nzɔ waru skɛga əño o tul;
if/then FUT.AUX-3PL>3 TOP.NOM 3PL.ANIM.ACC likewise kill and eat
they will kill and eat them just the same;
o mah tsa ntɛvɔ́ve esə rɛvle.
and NEG.AUX-3PL that.NOM in_vain EMPH.AUX resist
and they can't resist at all.
We see another if/then construction here, but it's syntactically
parallel to the previous one so it's more interesting to talk about
other things, for instance the deictic use of the attributive noun ŋkə
'same, identical, -selfˈ (referring back to the same parents mentioned
in the previous clause), or the similar anaphoric use of the topic
marker nzɔ (referring back to the serpents, the main topic of the whole
story) to disambiguate the two different 3rd person plural participants.
Another detail I would like to draw attention to is that I changed the
part of speech of rapsə for this text. The word used to be a
conjunction, but it couldn't be used as a conjunction here because it
has no overt object clause, so I redefined it as a preposition.
Prepositions in Buruya Nzaysa are interpreted to have an implicit object
when none is present overtly, and both here and on the only occasion
that I've used the word before, a reading as 'instead of that' works out
quite well.
New words:
same (v.) 'bring down, hunt down, slay, prey upon (usually said of
animals)'. Etymology: Ndak Ta sapmi 'force'.
ntɛvɔ́ve (adv.) 'in vain; (in negated clauses) not at all'. This word is
the gerund of bɔve 'fail', itself borrowed from Delta Naidda båve. The
Ndak Ta etymon bambi survives natively in Buruya Nzaysa only in the verb
əbabe 'be lucky', derived from a futilitive mood form erbambi
'accidentally succeed' (lit. 'fail to fail').
Part Three coming up soon...
Jan
Messages in this topic (2)
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2a. Re: subject and object covered by a single case?
Posted by: "qiihoskeh" qiihos...@gmail.com
Date: Wed Aug 14, 2013 12:37 am ((PDT))
I'm sure I have a conlang sketch with one case for agent, patient, and
intransitive subject vs other cases such as genitive, dative, and instrumental,
but I have no idea which. It probably uses a noun hierarchy with obviation. I
think there must be natlangs which also qualify.
On Tue, 13 Aug 2013 00:02:48 -0500, Matthew Boutilier <bvticvlar...@gmail.com>
wrote:
>i've been thinking of some apparently ergative-absolutive usages in English
>where a verb is used in active form that has passive meaning. e.g.
>"the book reads quickly," "the car drives nicely," "the bourbon drinks
>smoothly."
>
>and i'm wondering how common it is, in natlangs or conlangs, for something
>like this to be not only possible but the *norm*. well, keep reading.
>
>i'm working on this much for a beloved conlang of mine:
>
>*qiʔkɑ-n*
>drank.INTRANS-1SG
>'I drank' ... with *no object* (or perhaps a partitive genitive, e.g. "*some
>* water")
>
>*lij-æn qiʔkɑ-ʔ*
>water-ABS drank.INTRANS-3
>'The water *was drunk*' (cf. the water drank [smoothly])
>
>*lij-æn qik<t>ɑ-n
>*
>water-ABS drank<TRANS>-1SG
>'I drank *the* water.' (as opposed to some water)
>
>thus, in my current version of things, i apparently have *two* possible
>"transitivities," *intransitive* and *transitive*, but they are divided
>differently from e.g. English. "I drank (some water)" is intransitive
>grammatically because it doesn't focus on a definite object, and of course
>"The water was drunk" is intransitive because the patient is the
>grammatical subject.
>
>but "i drank *the* *water*" must be transitive, and the patient is put in
>the absolutive.
>
>with me so far? this is kosher, right?
>
>i suppose this implies that non-pronominal agents of "transitive" sentences
>ought to be in an ergative case, e.g.
>*āχ-t lij-æn qik<t>ɑ-**ʔ*
>man-ERG water-ABS drank<TRANS>-3
>'The man drank *the *water' (where the verb agrees with....'man'??)
>
>i guess all i'm really doing is taking a regular ergative-absolutive system
>and labeling a certain kind of usage (with a non-definite object) as
>intransitive.
>
>but the more i think about it, the more i wonder if i could get away with *
>trashing* the ergative (which still would've existed historically, but no
>longer) which was subverted by a topicalizing construction:
>
>*āχ-æn -- lij-æn qik<t>ɑ-**ʔ* *>* *āχ-æn lij-æn qik<t>ɑ-**ʔ*
>'The man, he drank the water' > 'The man drank the water.'
>
>ONE case for subject and object, that is still a case (contrasting with GEN
>and VOC)? there have got to be natlang (or even conlang) precedents for
>something like this, yes?
>
>matt
Messages in this topic (4)
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2b. Re: subject and object covered by a single case?
Posted by: "Alex Fink" 000...@gmail.com
Date: Wed Aug 14, 2013 1:30 am ((PDT))
On Tue, 13 Aug 2013 00:02:48 -0500, Matthew Boutilier <bvticvlar...@gmail.com>
wrote:
>ONE case for subject and object, that is still a case (contrasting with GEN
>and VOC)? there have got to be natlang (or even conlang) precedents for
>something like this, yes?
Yeah, it can't be all that uncommon, can it? I was hoping WALS would have a
feature more to the point on this than it does, but http://wals.info/chapter/49
incidentally gives Mapudungun and Khanty as languages which seem to have this,
one case for direct arguments and one or two others.
Blake, in _Case_ from the Cambridge series, seems aware of the existence of
examples as well, having things to say like
| One might consider that a peripheral case like ablative is not likely to
| be found in an accusative language unless a core case like accusative is
| also found, but this will not hold in a language where the object is
| represented pronominally in the verb or only by position after the verb.
-- this from his discussion of case hierarchies in section 5.8. But it seems
that he takes word order to lie outside his remit, so I wasn't able to find him
giving actual examples.
Alex
Messages in this topic (4)
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3a. THEORY: Is Jespersen cycle a cycle?
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" leolucas1...@gmail.com
Date: Wed Aug 14, 2013 5:38 am ((PDT))
I know some examples of negation words before the verb becoming weaker
and being reinforced by other negation words after the verb, but I
don't remember an example of change in the opposite direction to close
the cycle.
Do you have any examples of it?
Até mais!
Leonardo
Messages in this topic (2)
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3b. Re: THEORY: Is Jespersen cycle a cycle?
Posted by: "Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets" tsela...@gmail.com
Date: Wed Aug 14, 2013 5:56 am ((PDT))
On 14 August 2013 14:37, Leonardo Castro <leolucas1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I know some examples of negation words before the verb becoming weaker
> and being reinforced by other negation words after the verb, but I
> don't remember an example of change in the opposite direction to close
> the cycle.
>
> Do you have any examples of it?
>
> Até mais!
>
> Leonardo
>
English did, after a fashion. The Old English _ic ne seah_: "I didn't see"
got strengthened with _nawiht_: "nothing", leading to Middle English _I ne
saugh nawiht_. The original negative particle _ne_ was lost, leading to
Early Modern English _I saw not_. Then suddenly do-support became
necessary, and In Modern English the negation once again precedes the
content verb (but follows the auxiliary): _I didn't see_. One could
envision a further evolution of English where the auxiliary+negation
combination gets weakened (it's started already, from _do not_ to don't,
_can not_ to cannot_ to _can't_, etc.), gets deemed insufficient to mark
negation, leading to something being added again to strengthen the negation
after the verb, which in turn could once again take over the negation
entirely.
--
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
Messages in this topic (2)
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