There are 9 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Genitive case > Topic marker?
From: Elliott Lash
1b. Re: Genitive case > Topic marker?
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
2a. Re: would like to have the PIE Lexicon
From: Daniel Nielsen
2b. Re: would like to have the PIE Lexicon
From: Vincent Pistelli
2c. Re: would like to have the PIE Lexicon
From: Kelvin Jackson
2d. Re: would like to have the PIE Lexicon
From: John Lategan
2e. Re: would like to have the PIE Lexicon
From: Aidan Grey
2f. Re: would like to have the PIE Lexicon
From: John Campbell
3. Interrogative Cases
From: Ben Scerri
Messages
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1a. Re: Genitive case > Topic marker?
Posted by: "Elliott Lash" [email protected]
Date: Wed Jul 28, 2010 9:10 am ((PDT))
Jörg,
I just noticed this email (I have a huge backlog). A natlang precedent is found
in Maori:
n-á te kaiako ténei pukapuka
n-POSSESSIVE the teacher this book
'This book is the teacher's'
n-á te kaiako ia i whaka-oho.
n-POSSESSIVE the teacher him/her PAST cause-wake
'As for the teacher, he woke him/her up.'
(This pattern is called the 'actor emphatic'. You can see some more examples in
this paper:
http://csli-publications.stanford.edu/LFG/9/lfg04bauer.pdf)
Elliott
Elliott
----- Original Message ----
From: Jörg Rhiemeier <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Sat, May 29, 2010 5:09:58 PM
Subject: Re: Genitive case > Topic marker?
Hallo!
On Sat, 29 May 2010 15:19 Wm Annis wrote:
> On Sat, May 29, 2010 at 7:29 AM, Jörg Rhiemeier <[email protected]>
wrote:
> > How realistic do you think is the development of a genitive case into
> > a topic marker?
>
> Ancient Greek could have gone that way. For the most part
> topicality in AG is a matter of word order (Topic - Focus - Verb -
> Everything Else, but see MatiÄ "Topic, focus, and discourse
> structure Ancient Greek Word Order," Studies in Language 27:3
> (2003), 573â633 for elaborations). However, from time to time
> in Homer I find genitive phrases in the topic slot that set up
> what to me look for all the world like the classic topic-comment
> structure I learned in Mandarin.
>
> Achilles is speaking rudely to Agamemnon. He's just had his
> prize, the girl Briseis, taken from him.
>
> Ïῶν δâ á¼Î»Î»Ïν, á¼
μοι á¼ÏÏι θοῠÏαÏá½° νηὶ
> μελαίνá¿
> Ïῶν οá½Îº á¼Î½ Ïι ÏÎÏÎ¿Î¹Ï á¼Î½ÎµÎ»á½¼Î½ á¼ÎκονÏοÏ
> á¼Î¼Îµá¿Î¿ (Iliad 1.301)
>
> Of these other things, which I have beside my swift, dark ship
> not one of them would you carry off while I'm unwilling.
>
> Here he mentions everything else he's gotten in the war, with
> "these other things" in the genitive at the start of the phrase.
> The other things are then located with his ship by a relative
> clause, and we pick up again in the next line with yet another
> partitive genitive phrase, "Ïῶν ... Ïι" "(not) one bit of them"
> referring back to the "these other things" in the previous line.
>
> This duplication of the genitive parallels a prose structure
> where you get an extraclausal topic in the nominative,
> followed up with comment phrases with more explicit
> nominatives. (By "extraclausal" here is meant that the topic
> phrase is floating alone syntactically â it doesn't fit neatly
> into the following clauses by the normal syntax of Greek.
> See Odyssey 12.73 for an example.)
>
> In any case, a partitive genitive does seem like a good
> starting place for over topic marking to develop.
Thank you! This is more or less what I have been thinking of.
The use of the genitive as topic marker could have emerged from
constructions where the genitive is used in the meaning 'about',
as in 'About that house, my father built it'.
--
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/index.html
Messages in this topic (6)
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1b. Re: Genitive case > Topic marker?
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" [email protected]
Date: Wed Jul 28, 2010 1:01 pm ((PDT))
Hallo!
On Wed, 28 Jul 2010 08:56:52 -0700, Elliott Lash wrote:
> Jörg,
>
> I just noticed this email (I have a huge backlog). A natlang precedent is
> found
> in Maori:
>
> n-á te kaiako ténei pukapuka
> n-POSSESSIVE the teacher this book
> 'This book is the teacher's'
>
> n-á te kaiako ia i whaka-oho.
> n-POSSESSIVE the teacher him/her PAST cause-wake
> 'As for the teacher, he woke him/her up.'
>
> (This pattern is called the 'actor emphatic'. You can see some more examples
> in
> this paper:
> http://csli-publications.stanford.edu/LFG/9/lfg04bauer.pdf)
> <http://csli-publications.stanford.edu/LFG/9/lfg04bauer.pdf%29>
>
> Elliott
Thank you for this reply after two months! I see that if Maori
can do that, why not South Hesperic?
My idea is that the southern branch of Hesperic (a family of
fictional pre-IE European languages to which Albic belongs, and
which is, in my conhistorical setting, responsible for the "Old
European hydronymy") evolved a topic marker from the genitive
suffix *-s.
This is reflected in the fact that in the Mediterranean region,
the river names were adopted by the Indo-European speakers as
o-stem masculines (the topical forms ended in *-as, which was
equated with IE *-os), while in the north, they were adopted as
ah2-stem feminines (the agentive/vocative forms ended in *-a3,
which was equated with IE *-ah2). Does this make sense?
(Before some people cry "crackpot!", let me point out that I am
only playing with this in my *conlangs*; I'd *never* claim that
I had "discovered" that it actually happened! It *could* have
happened that way, I think; but we will probably never know.)
--
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/index.html
Messages in this topic (6)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
2a. Re: would like to have the PIE Lexicon
Posted by: "Daniel Nielsen" [email protected]
Date: Wed Jul 28, 2010 2:02 pm ((PDT))
~ ! Please & thx ! ~
Dan2
[email protected]
(I don't see your address in the message, or I'd follow the instructions)
On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 2:49 AM, Daniel Prohaska
<[email protected]>wrote:
> Hi! Thanks for the offer. I'd be very grateful if you could forward a
> version of the PIE Lexicon to: [email protected]
> Ta,
> Dan
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: vii iiix
> Sent: Monday, July 26, 2010 2:59 AM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: Proto/Modern Language Documentation
>
> I happen to have a excel doc of the PIE lexicon which some of its forms in
> the daughter languages (like Germanic and Romance) The server won;t let me
> attach the file so if you would like the doc give me your email address and
> i will happily send it you or anyone. (Just put that you want th PIE Lexicon
> in the Title bar thing) I got this through a friend of mine so I am not sure
> where you could downlod it sorry.
> Cheers, vii
>
Messages in this topic (23)
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2b. Re: would like to have the PIE Lexicon
Posted by: "Vincent Pistelli" [email protected]
Date: Wed Jul 28, 2010 9:16 pm ((PDT))
Me too, if it isn't a problem. Thanks!
[email protected]
--
Vincent Pistelli
Messages in this topic (23)
________________________________________________________________________
2c. Re: would like to have the PIE Lexicon
Posted by: "Kelvin Jackson" [email protected]
Date: Wed Jul 28, 2010 9:25 pm ((PDT))
Could I have one as well?
[email protected]
Thanks!
On Jul 29, 2010, at 12:12 AM, Vincent Pistelli wrote:
> Me too, if it isn't a problem. Thanks!
> [email protected]
>
>
> --
> Vincent Pistelli
Messages in this topic (23)
________________________________________________________________________
2d. Re: would like to have the PIE Lexicon
Posted by: "John Lategan" [email protected]
Date: Thu Jul 29, 2010 12:32 am ((PDT))
Me too, Please.
Thank you!
[email protected]
Messages in this topic (23)
________________________________________________________________________
2e. Re: would like to have the PIE Lexicon
Posted by: "Aidan Grey" [email protected]
Date: Thu Jul 29, 2010 7:46 am ((PDT))
Yeah, what he said... me too please.
Aidan
[email protected]
----- Original Message ----
> From: Daniel Nielsen <[email protected]>
> To: [email protected]
> Sent: Wed, July 28, 2010 2:56:23 PM
> Subject: Re: would like to have the PIE Lexicon
>
> ~ ! Please & thx ! ~
>
> Dan2
> [email protected]
>
> (I don't see your address in the message, or I'd follow the instructions)
>
> On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 2:49 AM, Daniel Prohaska
> <[email protected]>wrote:
>
> > Hi! Thanks for the offer. I'd be very grateful if you could forward a
> > version of the PIE Lexicon to: [email protected]
> > Ta,
> > Dan
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: vii iiix
> > Sent: Monday, July 26, 2010 2:59 AM
> > To: [email protected]
> > Subject: Re: Proto/Modern Language Documentation
> >
> > I happen to have a excel doc of the PIE lexicon which some of its forms in
> > the daughter languages (like Germanic and Romance) The server won;t let me
> > attach the file so if you would like the doc give me your email address
and
> > i will happily send it you or anyone. (Just put that you want th PIE
Lexicon
> > in the Title bar thing) I got this through a friend of mine so I am not
sure
> > where you could downlod it sorry.
> > Cheers, vii
> >
>
Messages in this topic (23)
________________________________________________________________________
2f. Re: would like to have the PIE Lexicon
Posted by: "John Campbell" [email protected]
Date: Thu Jul 29, 2010 7:56 am ((PDT))
I as well.
[email protected]
On 29-Jul-10, at 11:36 AM, Aidan Grey wrote:
> Yeah, what he said... me too please.
>
> Aidan
> [email protected]
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
>> From: Daniel Nielsen <[email protected]>
>> To: [email protected]
>> Sent: Wed, July 28, 2010 2:56:23 PM
>> Subject: Re: would like to have the PIE Lexicon
>>
>> ~ ! Please & thx ! ~
>>
>> Dan2
>> [email protected]
>>
>> (I don't see your address in the message, or I'd follow the
>> instructions)
>>
>> On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 2:49 AM, Daniel Prohaska
>> <[email protected]>wrote:
>>
>>> Hi! Thanks for the offer. I'd be very grateful if you could
>>> forward a
>>> version of the PIE Lexicon to: [email protected]
>>> Ta,
>>> Dan
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: vii iiix
>>> Sent: Monday, July 26, 2010 2:59 AM
>>> To: [email protected]
>>> Subject: Re: Proto/Modern Language Documentation
>>>
>>> I happen to have a excel doc of the PIE lexicon which some of
>>> its forms in
>>> the daughter languages (like Germanic and Romance) The server
>>> won;t let me
>>> attach the file so if you would like the doc give me your email
>>> address
> and
>>> i will happily send it you or anyone. (Just put that you want th PIE
> Lexicon
>>> in the Title bar thing) I got this through a friend of mine so I
>>> am not
> sure
>>> where you could downlod it sorry.
>>> Cheers, vii
>>>
>>
>
>
>
Messages in this topic (23)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
3. Interrogative Cases
Posted by: "Ben Scerri" [email protected]
Date: Thu Jul 29, 2010 12:09 am ((PDT))
Greetings,
I was thinking of an interrigation system for my conlang, and I came up with
the following, but I know not what to name the three types of particles. I
will show you what each does.
1. In which the Subject is unknown but expected:
Did STEVE run to the car?
In this we know someone ran to the car, but we do not know if it was Steve.
2. In which the Verb is unknown but expected:
Did Steve RUN to the car?
In this we know Steve went to the car, but we do not know if he was running,
walking, or strolling etc.
3. In which the Object is unknown but expected:
Did Steve run to the CAR?
In this we know Steve ran somewhere, but we do not know if it was the car,
the shop etc.
Furthermore, I am intending to introduce a system that has different
interrogative markers per the expected answer to the question, in four
forms. These four are as follows:
1. In which the expected answer is 'Yes':
I.e. Steve ran to the car right?
2. In which the expected answer is 'No':
I.e. Steve didn't run to the car did he?
3. In which there is no expected answer but it is still a Yes/No question:
I.e. Did Steve run to the car?
4. A non-Yes/No question:
I.e. What is the thing Steve ran to?
What would I call said case?
Thank you in advance.
Messages in this topic (1)
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