Omnipredicativity and Other Issues

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Kvan
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Omnipredicativity and Other Issues

Post by Kvan »

I read (on Wikipedia which probably doesn't really count) that Nahuatl has an interesting property called "omnipredicativity" which means that not only do nouns mean for instance "knife" but also "is a knife".

This picqued my curiosity because I was interested in not having any copulas in Lethwîn. It seems to me though that if nouns are predicates, and there is no real distinction between subjects and predicates than there would be no true distinction in morphology between the two. Does anyone know if that's the case?

If so, it ruins the complex verb - simpler noun distinction I was making in my language. So if omnipredicativity would indeed mean that subjects and predicates are alike even morphologically then I will abandon that.

Secondly, in Native American languages or polysynthetic languages there seems to be a lack of verbal nouns, and even though I intend for Lethwîn to be verb-centric I would like to allow for verbal nouns to occur. But the only problem I see is perhaps some sort of issue with redundancy. For instance to make a verbal noun in Lethwîn I was thinking of taking the root uninflected and incorporating an affix making it a noun. And once this noun is officially a noun, I wonder if it should be incorporated into a verb (because verbs do incorporate nouns ikn Lethwîn). But if I do incorporate a verbal noun into a verb I feel it would be sloppy, for lack of a better word. Or perhaps verbal nouns will constitute their own closed category?
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Re: Omnipredicativity and Other Issues

Post by Bob Johnson »

"Omnipredicativity" just sounds like the zero copula, as in e.g. Russian (see link):

Moskva gorod
Moscow city
‘Moscow is a city.’

I'm not sure how this is related to the Lakota phenomenon of not distinguishing verbs and nouns. The giant Lakota conspiracy here will jump in about that soon. (And probably jump on me for spelling Lakhota/Dakota/whatever wrong too.)

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Re: Omnipredicativity and Other Issues

Post by Kvan »

Zero copula I thought was sort of different. Where a zero copula is understood as a copula without one there, a language without a verb/noun distinction or rather a language where nouns are predicates means that a copula functionally doesn't exist. But perhaps this means that all nouns and verbs are built in with some sort of copulatic understanding?
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Re: Omnipredicativity and Other Issues

Post by Trailsend »

It could be distinct from zero copula if the nouns-acting-as-verbs exhibit verbal morphology, yes?
Kvan wrote:I read (on Wikipedia which probably doesn't really count) that Nahuatl has an interesting property called "omnipredicativity" which means that not only do nouns mean for instance "knife" but also "is a knife".

This picqued my curiosity because I was interested in not having any copulas in Lethwîn. It seems to me though that if nouns are predicates, and there is no real distinction between subjects and predicates than there would be no true distinction in morphology between the two. Does anyone know if that's the case?
Not necessarily--that is, not if I understand you right. I have basically what you're describing in Feayran, but subjects and predicates can definitely be distinct:

Muthálkuvuke oláuku.
he_is_my_brother male
He is my brother.

The subject, "oláuku," exhibits nominal morphology and (via marking on the verb) is shown to be the subject. The predicate shows much different morphology, so the two are definitely distinct. Since "oláuku" can be inflected as a verb ("to be male") and "muthálkuvuke" can be inflected as a noun ("my brother"), is this the sort of phenomenon you're describing?

Secondly, in Native American languages or polysynthetic languages there seems to be a lack of verbal nouns, and even though I intend for Lethwîn to be verb-centric I would like to allow for verbal nouns to occur. But the only problem I see is perhaps some sort of issue with redundancy. For instance to make a verbal noun in Lethwîn I was thinking of taking the root uninflected and incorporating an affix making it a noun. And once this noun is officially a noun, I wonder if it should be incorporated into a verb (because verbs do incorporate nouns ikn Lethwîn). But if I do incorporate a verbal noun into a verb I feel it would be sloppy, for lack of a better word. Or perhaps verbal nouns will constitute their own closed category?
I had a derivational system for verbal nouns in Feayran for a while, but I ended up realizing that I was only doing so to appease my English-syntax reflexes; with the way the rest of the language worked, I didn't need it. I imagine that you could still make them work in theory, though, although the recursive incorporation might get crazy :P

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Re: Omnipredicativity and Other Issues

Post by Kvan »

Trailsend wrote:It could be distinct from zero copula if the nouns-acting-as-verbs exhibit verbal morphology, yes?
Kvan wrote:I read (on Wikipedia which probably doesn't really count) that Nahuatl has an interesting property called "omnipredicativity" which means that not only do nouns mean for instance "knife" but also "is a knife".

This picqued my curiosity because I was interested in not having any copulas in Lethwîn. It seems to me though that if nouns are predicates, and there is no real distinction between subjects and predicates than there would be no true distinction in morphology between the two. Does anyone know if that's the case?
Not necessarily--that is, not if I understand you right. I have basically what you're describing in Feayran, but subjects and predicates can definitely be distinct:

Muthálkuvuke oláuku.
he_is_my_brother male
He is my brother.

The subject, "oláuku," exhibits nominal morphology and (via marking on the verb) is shown to be the subject. The predicate shows much different morphology, so the two are definitely distinct. Since "oláuku" can be inflected as a verb ("to be male") and "muthálkuvuke" can be inflected as a noun ("my brother"), is this the sort of phenomenon you're describing?

Secondly, in Native American languages or polysynthetic languages there seems to be a lack of verbal nouns, and even though I intend for Lethwîn to be verb-centric I would like to allow for verbal nouns to occur. But the only problem I see is perhaps some sort of issue with redundancy. For instance to make a verbal noun in Lethwîn I was thinking of taking the root uninflected and incorporating an affix making it a noun. And once this noun is officially a noun, I wonder if it should be incorporated into a verb (because verbs do incorporate nouns ikn Lethwîn). But if I do incorporate a verbal noun into a verb I feel it would be sloppy, for lack of a better word. Or perhaps verbal nouns will constitute their own closed category?
I had a derivational system for verbal nouns in Feayran for a while, but I ended up realizing that I was only doing so to appease my English-syntax reflexes; with the way the rest of the language worked, I didn't need it. I imagine that you could still make them work in theory, though, although the recursive incorporation might get crazy :P
In regards to the omnipredicativity, I never really thought of words as being truly verb/noun neutral. But I think that would be best. I was looking at it from a convoluted perspective I think. But I could have distinct nouns and verbs if and when I chose to conjugate them as one or the other. If that's not implausible than that's ideal.

Also, do you have a page for your language Trailsend? I would love to see what you have for it.

And lastly in regards to the verbal noun, if I can do what you espoused I could do, then I would have no need for verbal nouns either. I guess linguistically speaking they just happen to be a favorite of mine.
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Re: Omnipredicativity and Other Issues

Post by Trailsend »

Kvan wrote:In regards to the omnipredicativity, I never really thought of words as being truly verb/noun neutral. But I think that would be best. I was looking at it from a convoluted perspective I think. But I could have distinct nouns and verbs if and when I chose to conjugate them as one or the other. If that's not implausible than that's ideal.
I think it's certainly plausible. It works fine for me, and I think Lakota (to name one off the top of my head) has a similar system.
Kvan wrote:Also, do you have a page for your language Trailsend? I would love to see what you have for it.
Umm...well...that is, you see...yes, but it's pretty out of date. The sections of the reference grammar on morphology etc. are more or less stable, but pretty much the entire section on syntax is flat out wrong, and other parts may have sketchy/inaccurate details. I haven't been able to update the site with most of my recent work, which has mostly involved syntax, interjections, and discourse structure.

For particularly shiny recent developments, there are a couple of threads drifting around this board which may prove more interesting than the main site.

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Re: Omnipredicativity and Other Issues

Post by Kvan »

Hey that's cool, I have creaky vowels in Lethwîn too, however there isn't a necessary preceding consonant. It doesn't have much to do with the thread, but I needed to point that out.

Lethwîn has creaky, breathy and modal vowels distinguished by two lengths.

But anyway, your language that I have seen thus far is unique. Especially the notion of stance. Its quite good.
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