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There are 18 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Sailorspeak
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
1b. Re: Sailorspeak
From: Tim May
2a. Re: Integrating snippets from other languages into your L1
From: Dana Nutter
2b. Re: Integrating snippets from other languages into your L1
From: Keith Gaughan
2c. Re: Integrating snippets from other languages into your L1
From: Sai Emrys
3. Re: OT: THEORY Fusion Grammar
From: Henrik Theiling
4a. Re: Theta Role Question
From: Patrick Littell
4b. Re: Theta Role Question
From: David J. Peterson
5a. Implied prepositions
From: Gary Shannon
5b. Re: Implied prepositions
From: Larry Sulky
5c. Re: Implied prepositions
From: Damien Perrotin
5d. Re: Implied prepositions
From: Elliott Lash
5e. Re: Implied prepositions
From: Sally Caves
5f. Re: Implied prepositions
From: David J. Peterson
5g. Re: Implied prepositions
From: Larry Sulky
5h. Re: Implied prepositions
From: Chris Peters
6. Definiteness of verbs?
From: Harald S.
7. Re: free word-order conlangs (was: Re: OT: THEORY Fusion Grammar
From: Yahya Abdal-Aziz
Messages
________________________________________________________________________
1a. Re: Sailorspeak
Posted by: "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Jul 19, 2006 10:02 am (PDT)
on 18 July 2006 Keith Gaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> To be frank, it always sounded more West Country to me.
> Not an ounce of either Cockney or Scots in there.
Though I'm not that familiar with West Country, I concur on Piratespeak
not being Cockney (which is non-rhotic) or Scots (which has typically
tapped/trilled r's) - the stereotypical accent is heavily rhotic but
non-trilled, which leads me to think that it probably isn't Welsh either.
What it most reminds me of are those accents heard on BBC comedies to
indicate rural working-class (I gather it's the British equivalent of a
hick accent), which are also heavily rhotic and rather archaic in their
grammar. If that happens to be West Country, then I'd guess that's what
they're aiming for, but I'll have to check Wells when I get home to be
certain.
--Pfal
-------
"Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely
insane every night of our lives." -Charles Fisher
Messages in this topic (13)
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1b. Re: Sailorspeak
Posted by: "Tim May" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Jul 19, 2006 3:05 pm (PDT)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote at 2006-07-19 16:03:39 (GMT)
>
> What it most reminds me of are those accents heard on BBC comedies to
> indicate rural working-class (I gather it's the British equivalent of a
> hick accent), which are also heavily rhotic and rather archaic in their
> grammar.
Ah, yes. "Mummerset". Certainly a similar type of phenomenon,
whether or not there's any direct connection.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummerset
Messages in this topic (13)
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________________________________________________________________________
2a. Re: Integrating snippets from other languages into your L1
Posted by: "Dana Nutter" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Jul 19, 2006 10:10 am (PDT)
li [Ph.D.] mi tulis la
> > I've lived in Tennessee for over 6 years now and have
> > done pretty well in resisting the local speech habits. I
> > do tend to say things like "it's not" rather than "it isn't"
> > but have yet to say anything like "knowed", "blowed"
> > or "yunz".
>
>
> Which brings up a related usage. The negative of "let's"
> is "let's not" in all the dialects of English that I'm familiar
> with. But in _Atlas Shrugged_, the characters always
> use "don't let's," which makes sense, but sounds awkward
> to me.
>
> "Let's not fight about it." vs. "Don't let's fight about it."
The tendency here seems to be to stress "not." You'll hear "I've not
...", "he's not ..." rather than "I haven't ..." or "he hasn't ..." It
did sound a bit strange at first but now I'm somewhat adjusted to it.
Messages in this topic (18)
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2b. Re: Integrating snippets from other languages into your L1
Posted by: "Keith Gaughan" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Jul 19, 2006 10:15 am (PDT)
On Wed, Jul 19, 2006 at 12:38:58PM -0400, Ph.D. wrote:
> Dana Nutter wrote:
>
> > I've lived in Tennessee for over 6 years now and have
> > done pretty well in resisting the local speech habits. I
> > do tend to say things like "it's not" rather than "it isn't"
> > but have yet to say anything like "knowed", "blowed"
> > or "yunz".
>
> Which brings up a related usage. The negative of "let's"
> is "let's not" in all the dialects of English that I'm familiar
> with. But in _Atlas Shrugged_, the characters always
> use "don't let's," which makes sense, but sounds awkward
> to me.
The Columbia Guide to Standard American English states:
"There are three negative idioms: _Let's not stay_, _Don't let's
stay_, and _let's don't stay_, although _let's don't_ is more
typically American than _don't let's_, which is more typically
British."
But to be frank, I've only ever heard the ones using _don't_ in song
lyrics, and I've _never_ heard them (at least over here in Rightpondia)
used in speech, on TV or in Real Life.
I agree: they sound utterly awkward.
K.
--
Keith Gaughan - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://talideon.com/
An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.
Messages in this topic (18)
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2c. Re: Integrating snippets from other languages into your L1
Posted by: "Sai Emrys" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Jul 19, 2006 12:50 pm (PDT)
On 7/19/06, Ph.D. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> "Let's not fight about it." vs. "Don't let's fight about it."
They Might Be Giants:
"Don't, don't, don't let's start..." :-)
Also, "I totally don't X" is totally correct Californian, dude. :-)
- Sai
Messages in this topic (18)
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________________________________________________________________________
3. Re: OT: THEORY Fusion Grammar
Posted by: "Henrik Theiling" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Jul 19, 2006 10:12 am (PDT)
Hi!
Carsten Becker writes:
> From: "René Uittenbogaard" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Monday, July 17, 2006 7:13 PM
>
> > I'm leaving with John. - Ik vertrek met John.
> > I'm leaving with him. - Ik vertrek met hem.
> > I'm leaving with my suitcase. - Ik vertrek met mijn
> > koffer.
> > I'm leaving with it. - Ik vertrek ermee.
>
> In German you cannot say "Ich gehe mit meinem Koffer weg" to
> my knowledge, ...
Why not? I don't find it strange.
>...
> In German, "damit" and "darauf" (lit. "thereon") cannot be
> split like in Dutch, though.
Oh yes, they can, only the constraints are a bit different:
Damit rechnet man nicht.
there-with calculates one not.
'You wouldn't expect that.'
Da rechnet man nicht mit.
there calculates one not with.
'You wouldn't expect that.'
**Henrik
Messages in this topic (31)
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4a. Re: Theta Role Question
Posted by: "Patrick Littell" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Jul 19, 2006 10:57 am (PDT)
If you're looking for "what theta role do 'music' and 'his passion'"
have, the best answer is Theme. Actually, "music" would be a theme,
but I have to admit I don't know whether "his passion" receives a
theta role or not. (I think it may depend on one's theoretical
leanings.)
Usually theta-roles are assigned by verbs, but "is" does not, I
believe, assign any theta-roles. Consider the following:
Joe is tall.
Joe is cold. (Meaning that he feels cold, not that he is, say, a cold corpse.)
In the first, Joe is a Theme, but in the second he is an Experiencer.
This suggests that it isn't "is" that assigns theta roles, but "tall"
and "cold". The same would go for an NP predicate such as "Joe is a
tall man"; the Themeness of Joe would come from "a tall man" rather
than "is".
So what would the theta role of "a tall man" or "his passion"? I'm
not sure it has one. There's nothing to give is a role: "His passion"
isn't an argument of "is" in the same way that "Mary" is an argument
of "sees" in "Joe sees Mary". "Is his passion" IS the predicate, and
assigns theta roles, but does not itself have a theta role.
As for the question "should I mark these with 'A'-case or not?", it's
totally up to you. Cases and roles don't need to match up perfectly,
so long as you're consistent.
-- Pat
On 7/17/06, Carsten Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I've got a question regarding the roles in this
> construction:
>
> Music is his passion.
>
> How should this construction be analyzed? I would translate
> this sentence as
>
> Tingr¨¡ng dikunang iyaena.
> Music.A passion.A 3s.m.GEN
>
> Into Ayeri, although I do not feel well with marking both
> NPs as Agents. Actually, I think, there is no agent, and
> both nouns should be best left unmarked, but that seems odd
> as well.
>
> Thanks,
> Carsten
>
> --
> "Miranayam kepauar¨¤ naranoaris." (Kalvin nay Hobbes)
> Tingraena, Tyemuyang 6, 2315 ya 05:27:19 pd
>
Messages in this topic (13)
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4b. Re: Theta Role Question
Posted by: "David J. Peterson" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Jul 19, 2006 1:02 pm (PDT)
Yahya wrote:
<<
"Jimmy is a boy" - SVO, order unmarked
"Music is his passion" - OVS, order marked, O fronted for emphasis
< "His passion is music" - SVO, order unmarked
>>
Yahya: I beg to differ. ;-)
Here's a sentence with a fronted O:
"Now, HIM I don't like." (norm: "I don't like him.")
The only way we really have to tell if something is a syntactic
object in English is the case marking on the pronouns.
So, take our sentence "Music is his passion". This is still a regular
SVO sentence where "his passion" is the syntactic object. It's
difficult to tell with music, but if you'll accept "Boats are his
passion" as a reasonably similar sentence, we can ferret it out
with pronouns:
"They're his passion." (they = boats)
*"Them are his passion." (them = boats)
As for "his passion", that's a bit less clear, as it's hard to replace
with a pronoun... If we imagine his passion as a woman, we
might be able to say...
"Boats are her."
Though that's odd because you wouldn't expect a plural entity
to be a singular entity. However, I think it might be better than...
???"Boats are she."
Back to the original sentence...
Yahya continues:
<<
To verify this, let's consider adding to our corpus the 2 sentences:
"Jimmy is a 10-year-old" and
"Hot cars is his other passion"
Neither of these logically conflicts with the earlier two sentences;
each adds attributes for the original subjects.
>>
True enough. But consider these two sentences:
"Ken is also a boy."
"Music is a means of escape for him."
The latter would probably be best with "music" replaced by "it".
I don't think it's the case marking that's at issue (which is why I
was puzzled by the initial post, since I thought it was asking how
English case marked these guys), though, so much as the roles
each fulfill, and how they can possibly be realized by case. I think
it's fairly clear that "music" is the subject in "Music is his passion"
(just as "His passion" is the subject in "His passion is music"). I'm
still not sure what role it is. Is it the same as "Johnny Depp is
Jack Sparrow", or "Clark Kent is Superman"? Is that what you
were saying, Tim?
Pat wrote:
<<
As for the question "should I mark these with 'A'-case or not?", it's
totally up to you. Cases and roles don't need to match up perfectly,
so long as you're consistent.
>>
This I'd like to echo. But also, Carsten wrote...
<<
Another such dilemma. I don't know for sure how to deal
with it. Jimmy doesn't *do* boying, he *is* a boy.
>>
I have this funny example from English that just won't go away
related to this.
Imagine that John is a fireman. He's fighting fires, but, say, is
responsible for some structural damage, or something, and
starts feeling bad about himself. He goes to his dad, a retired
firefighter, and his dad gives him a pep talk. He tells him that
he's been doing a good job, and he's never been more proud
of him. John is enheartened (is that a word?), and so he gets
up and goes and _ the best firefighter he can be.
Fill in the blank with the appropriate conjugation of the verb
"to be". You CANNOT use the word "become".
The "correct" answer would seem to be "is", but, if you're like
me, it sounds *awful*. Why? Because in certain sentences, "to
be" seems to want an agentive subject, and I think professions
are one of them. In fact, if you're me, the word you really want
to stick in there is "bes" [biz]. This way it indicates that he's
*being* the firefighter--that is, actively playing the role of
firefighter.
So, if, instead, it was Jimmy's father saying, "So, come on, Jimmy!
Go out and be a boy!", maybe Jimmy would've gone out and
beed a boy, in which case he would have been doing a lot of
boying, one would assume.
-David
*******************************************************************
"sunly eleSkarez ygralleryf ydZZixelje je ox2mejze."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."
-Jim Morrison
http://dedalvs.free.fr/
Messages in this topic (13)
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5a. Implied prepositions
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Jul 19, 2006 1:02 pm (PDT)
It occured to me that a conlang could almost be made
preposition-free if the verbs absorbed the role
usually played by prepositions. For example, in
English we can say "go into" or we can say "enter"
which has a built-in, or implied prepositional
meaning. Likewise "go out of" can be "exit", or
"leave" and "go after" can be "pursue".
English has a few additional such verbs ("ascend",
"descend", "examine",...), but suppose a conlang had
the associated preposition built in to every verb. The
inventory of verbs would have to be much richer to
accomodate all the various possibilities like "go to",
"go into", "go out of", "go through", "go before (the
judge)", "go after (the thief)", "go around", "go up",
"go down", "go over", and so on.
Perhaps the preopsition could become a prefix to the
verb: "ingo", "outgo", "upgo", "downgo".
There would have to be more than one prefix for some
English preopsitions which can be ambiguous. "At", for
example: "He throws rocks at the park." could mean he
is at the park and throwing rocks (at nothing in
particular), or that he is outside the park throwing
rocks toward the park. But I wonder how much sense it
makes to attach a preposition giving the location of
the action to the verb. It seems like it belongs
attached to the sentence as a whole. "He is throwing
rocks (while at the park)." vs "Rocks, he is
throwing-at the park."
What would be a sensible word order if verbs all
contained implied prepositions? "He gave-to Mary the
book." "The book he gave-to Mary." "He book gave-to
Mary." "Gave-to he book Mary."
Just random ramblings.
--gary
Messages in this topic (8)
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5b. Re: Implied prepositions
Posted by: "Larry Sulky" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Jul 19, 2006 1:27 pm (PDT)
Gary, check out the Lume page that addresses linked subclauses
(http://lume.pbwiki.com/Conversation%20Lesson%205). Lume eschews
prepositions in favour of verbs, sometimes using the mechanism you
describe (e.g. "to go to" rather than just "to go") but other times in
a very different way as explained on that page. --larry
Messages in this topic (8)
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5c. Re: Implied prepositions
Posted by: "Damien Perrotin" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Jul 19, 2006 1:53 pm (PDT)
Skrivet en doa Gary Shannon:
In Lautopaei, I have only one preposition "lou" (a postposition
actually) which stands for virtualy everything. Ambiguities are resolved
through context and used of specific verbs.
Note that this is a common features among natlang. Thus in Mayan tongues
there is only one preposition (ta in Totzil, if I remember well). French
has also specific verbs of movement (descendre, monter, sortir, entrer)
but are still used with prepositions because they have a specific (and
often quite different meaning) when transitive
Messages in this topic (8)
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5d. Re: Implied prepositions
Posted by: "Elliott Lash" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Jul 19, 2006 1:55 pm (PDT)
This is like Old Irish:
con-imthet "to accompany"
con- "with"
imm- "around, among"
-teit "go" (with unstressed dependent form -tet,
with lenition after imm-: -thet)
as-lui "to escape"
as- "away, out, from"
-lui "to move"
do-cich "to advance"
do- "to"
-cichid (with stressed dependent form -cich)"to step"
fo-loing "to suffer"
fo- "under"
-loingid (with stressed dependent form -loing), this
means "eat" or "banish", not sure how this compound
got its meaning.
This sort of conjugation makes really weird forms:
foloing "he suffers"
ni fulaing "he doesn't suffer"
folil "he will suffer"
ni foel "he will not suffer"
folelacht "he suffered"
ni foelacht "he did not suffer"
focoemlacht "he has suffered"
ni focoemlacht "he has not suffer"
-elliot
--- Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> It occured to me that a conlang could almost be made
> preposition-free if the verbs absorbed the role
> usually played by prepositions. For example, in
> English we can say "go into" or we can say "enter"
> which has a built-in, or implied prepositional
> meaning. Likewise "go out of" can be "exit", or
> "leave" and "go after" can be "pursue".
>
> English has a few additional such verbs ("ascend",
> "descend", "examine",...), but suppose a conlang had
> the associated preposition built in to every verb.
> The
> inventory of verbs would have to be much richer to
> accomodate all the various possibilities like "go
> to",
> "go into", "go out of", "go through", "go before
> (the
> judge)", "go after (the thief)", "go around", "go
> up",
> "go down", "go over", and so on.
>
> Perhaps the preopsition could become a prefix to the
> verb: "ingo", "outgo", "upgo", "downgo".
>
> There would have to be more than one prefix for some
> English preopsitions which can be ambiguous. "At",
> for
> example: "He throws rocks at the park." could mean
> he
> is at the park and throwing rocks (at nothing in
> particular), or that he is outside the park throwing
> rocks toward the park. But I wonder how much sense
> it
> makes to attach a preposition giving the location of
> the action to the verb. It seems like it belongs
> attached to the sentence as a whole. "He is throwing
> rocks (while at the park)." vs "Rocks, he is
> throwing-at the park."
>
> What would be a sensible word order if verbs all
> contained implied prepositions? "He gave-to Mary the
> book." "The book he gave-to Mary." "He book gave-to
> Mary." "Gave-to he book Mary."
>
> Just random ramblings.
>
> --gary
>
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Messages in this topic (8)
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5e. Re: Implied prepositions
Posted by: "Sally Caves" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Jul 19, 2006 2:53 pm (PDT)
I like this idea, Gary. Teonaht has something of this plan with a few
verbs. But I rather like its baroque deictic verbs! It does get bogged
down, though, with give/send/go, etc., so I might adopt something like this.
For syntax, though, any of the suggestions you've made below might work.
Sally
----- Original Message -----
From: "Gary Shannon" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, July 19, 2006 3:46 PM
Subject: Implied prepositions
> It occured to me that a conlang could almost be made
> preposition-free if the verbs absorbed the role
> usually played by prepositions. For example, in
> English we can say "go into" or we can say "enter"
> which has a built-in, or implied prepositional
> meaning. Likewise "go out of" can be "exit", or
> "leave" and "go after" can be "pursue".
>
> English has a few additional such verbs ("ascend",
> "descend", "examine",...), but suppose a conlang had
> the associated preposition built in to every verb. The
> inventory of verbs would have to be much richer to
> accomodate all the various possibilities like "go to",
> "go into", "go out of", "go through", "go before (the
> judge)", "go after (the thief)", "go around", "go up",
> "go down", "go over", and so on.
>
> Perhaps the preopsition could become a prefix to the
> verb: "ingo", "outgo", "upgo", "downgo".
>
> There would have to be more than one prefix for some
> English preopsitions which can be ambiguous. "At", for
> example: "He throws rocks at the park." could mean he
> is at the park and throwing rocks (at nothing in
> particular), or that he is outside the park throwing
> rocks toward the park. But I wonder how much sense it
> makes to attach a preposition giving the location of
> the action to the verb. It seems like it belongs
> attached to the sentence as a whole. "He is throwing
> rocks (while at the park)." vs "Rocks, he is
> throwing-at the park."
>
> What would be a sensible word order if verbs all
> contained implied prepositions? "He gave-to Mary the
> book." "The book he gave-to Mary." "He book gave-to
> Mary." "Gave-to he book Mary."
>
> Just random ramblings.
>
> --gary
>
Messages in this topic (8)
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5f. Re: Implied prepositions
Posted by: "David J. Peterson" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Jul 19, 2006 2:56 pm (PDT)
Gary wrote:
<<
It occured to me that a conlang could almost be made
preposition-free if the verbs absorbed the role
usually played by prepositions. For example, in
English we can say "go into" or we can say "enter"
which has a built-in, or implied prepositional
meaning. Likewise "go out of" can be "exit", or
"leave" and "go after" can be "pursue".
>>
Zhyler's postposition free, thanks in large part to case, but it
also has lots of verbs that build in prepositions.
Really, though, this is not at all uncommon in natural languages.
I'm not familiar with the exact data, but I'm pretty sure this is
what's done with Hungarian preverbs. Also there are plenty
of, for lack of a better term, Amerind languages with directional
prefixes that attach to motion verbs. Epiq has a series of these.
Also, things like this:
<<
It seems like it belongs
attached to the sentence as a whole. "He is throwing
rocks (while at the park)." vs "Rocks, he is
throwing-at the park."
>>
Are achieved in many languages with applicatives:
Made-up Example:
Ma koma sotur na sima.
/I-NOM. eat fruit-ACC. at park/
"I eat fruit at the park."
Ma komas simar.
/I-Nom. eat-APPL. park-ACC./
"I eat at the park." or "I at-eat the park."
The only difference between natural languages and the
idea you presented is that no natlang does away entirely
with adpositions. Just about any natlang could very easily do so,
though, if it felt like it.
-David
*******************************************************************
"sunly eleSkarez ygralleryf ydZZixelje je ox2mejze."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."
-Jim Morrison
http://dedalvs.free.fr/
Messages in this topic (8)
________________________________________________________________________
5g. Re: Implied prepositions
Posted by: "Larry Sulky" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Jul 19, 2006 3:23 pm (PDT)
Here's how Lume has gone:
Assume three verbs: "to put", "to be inside of" and "to belong to".
Then we express "I put the apple in the basket" as:
"I put apple be-inside-of basket"
and "I give the apple to Anna" as:
"I put apple belong-to Anna"
The sense of causation is implicit in the constructions; in fact, they
might better be translated as
"I put apple such-that-it-be-inside-of basket"
and
"I put apple such-that-it-belong-to Anna"
as long as it's understood that the "such-that-it" aspect disappears
when these verbs are used as main verbs
--larry
.
Messages in this topic (8)
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5h. Re: Implied prepositions
Posted by: "Chris Peters" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Jul 19, 2006 5:22 pm (PDT)
>From: Gary Shannon
>
>
>Perhaps the preopsition could become a prefix to the
>verb: "ingo", "outgo", "upgo", "downgo".
>
My on-again, off-again "Ricadh" project has something not totally
dissimilar. I use noun-affixes to represent many prepositional meanings ...
actually, these affixes function more like Japanese particles than English
prepositions, but there is some ovelap. A single affix can actually
represent opposite meanings depending on whether it's used as a prefix or
suffix: "xevraca" would mean "inside of the box", while "vracaxe" would
mean "outside of the box".
I've put the project on hold, though -- I didn't much care for the
agglutinative nature of Ricadh and wanted to go in a different direction. I
may redefine my "Neo-Ricadh" as a descendant language of the one above,
complete with sound shifts, irregularities and such.
:Chris
Messages in this topic (8)
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6. Definiteness of verbs?
Posted by: "Harald S." [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Jul 19, 2006 4:54 pm (PDT)
Hi all,
Today I stumbled upon a handy mechanism one could use in a conlang to allow
scattered references to the same verbal action. I will elaborate on this
idea using the example "She ate because she was hungry. There was tiramisu
in the fridge. She ate it with great pleasure.".
>From the above, it is not clear whether the third sentence refers to the
same action of eating as the first one does. In English or German, one could
clarify this by actually saying "She ALSO ate it with great pleasure.". If
she did not eat with great pleasure the first time then that sentence would,
again, be augmented to say: "She ALSO ate it BUT with great pleasure (THIS
TIME).".
A different approach came to my mind today. Let us assume that we have a
definite article which denotes something that is supposed to be identifiable
and known to the audience and an indefinite article which marks that which
is mentioned for the first time and, thus, is NOT known or identifiable to
the audience. If this semantic is extended to include verbs then we could
easily communicate for the second instance of eating in our example whether
or not it refers to the same process of eating. The definite article would
make it refer to the same eating and, thus, just elaborate further on this
event. The indefinite article however would make clear that - although the
same verb is used - it is a completely different event of eating.
I wanted to share this neat trick (as it seems to me) with you. What do you
think? :-)))
Cheers,
Harald
Messages in this topic (1)
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7. Re: free word-order conlangs (was: Re: OT: THEORY Fusion Grammar
Posted by: "Yahya Abdal-Aziz" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Jul 19, 2006 6:27 pm (PDT)
Hi And,
On Sun, 16 Jul 2006, And Rosta wrote:
>
> The discussion of Warlpiri prompts me to solicit information
> about conlangs in which word-order is in some sense very free but
> without ambiguity resulting from the freedom.
>
> 1. How free is free? Is freedom limited to within some
> subsentential domain such as the clause? Within the domain of
> freedom are all orders permissible, or just very many/most?
I'd like to address these questions specifically as they relate to natlangs:
Australian languages in general, including Warlpiri, Aranda and so on. I think
doing so might shed some light on the bounds you seek in your "How free is
free?" question.
I've pulled out my trusty copy of Colin Yallop's "Australian Aboriginal
Languages" (Andre Deutsch, London 1982, ISBN 0 233 97309 5) to this end.
>From "Chapter 5: Aspects of Syntax" on p. 121:
"Word order is generally flexible. There is, for example, usually no rule that
the subject must precede the verb or that the verb must precede the object.
Hence we may find as equivalents:
I saw him
I him saw
Him I saw, etc.
"The morphology of many of the languages is such that subject and object can
often be indentified by their form, whatever their position in the sentence.
Word order is rarely truly random, however (1). One order is often preferred
(commonly subject-object-verb for a transitive sentence) and departures from
the preferred pattern may be governed by considerations of emphasis or thematic
structure. (Compare, on a much more limited scale, English 'I didn't meet Joan
- but John I did meet' or 'Spinach I can't stomach'.) Furthermore, there are
instances where word order *is* significant. Especially in the suffixing
languages (2), adjectives and demonstratives must generally follow the noun
which they qualify, e.g. Aranda _kngulya marra_ 'a good dog', _kngulya nhanha_
'this dog' (3). But Aranda, like most Australian languages, has no equational
verb 'to be' (4); hence 'this is a dog' is _nhanha kngulya_. Thus word order
is important in distinguishing among e.g.
_kngulya nhanha marra_ 'this dog is good'
_nhanha kngulya marra_ 'this is a good dog'
_kngulya marra nhanha_ 'this good dog (is ...)' (5)
My notes:
(1) Nor does Yallop name any language where it is. I doubt it's truly possible
...
(2) Which BTW includes the entire Pama-Ngungan family, which covers 70% of the
Australian languages and 75% of the speakers, according to Yallop's statistics,
op. cit.
(3) It occurs to me that the demonstrative adjective _nhanha_ 'this' might be
just another suffix, albeit one usually written as a separate word. However,
we'd also need to make the same analysis for all adjectives, so that, eg, we'd
really have _kngulya-marra-nhanha_, rather than _kngulya marra nhanha_ 'dog
good this', ie 'this good dog'. But would that be a problem?
(4) As I argued in an earlier post, 'to be' is more commonly attributive than
truly "equational".
(5) Eg _kngulya marra nhanha pmarala nima_ 'this good dog is staying in camp',
glossed as 'dog good this camp-in stay'.
I hope you find this information useful.
Regards,
Yahya
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Messages in this topic (31)
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