Valence in Trevecian (Ideologies of Class and Valence)

[Cathbad]

UPDATE: Part 3 now available! See below:

Part 1/3: http://jonafras.conlang.org/?p=415
Part 2/3: http://jonafras.conlang.org/?p=418
Part 3/3: http://jonafras.conlang.org/?p=435

On my blog... can't really be bothered to reformat here. As always, feedback welcome, etc.

There will be two more posts in the coming weeks: the next one will focus on more complex valence operations (reflexives, causatives, etc.), and the last one will deal with pragmatic / ideological uses of the valence/class agreement particles (as honorifics, insults, evidentials, etc.)

[Nannalu]

I like these, do you mind if I use some parts of it?
I have also just noticed; how would you deal with tetravalents, etc.?

[Cathbad]

I have also just noticed; how would you deal with tetravalents, etc.?

They just aren't marked. There can be any number of obliques, or whatever, present; the valence marker just has to agree with the core arguments, and any Class 2 Oblique (of course, if it is relevant to the specific class alignment).

[Cathbad]

UPDATE: Part 2 is now available: http://jonafras.conlang.org/?p=418

This deals with valence adjusting operations, including a number of causative constructions, and even applicatives and antipassives! (Passives are in there too - they just aren't all that interesting.) Comments and suggestions, again, welcome.

[WeepingElf]

Nice, very interesting! Rock on!

[Cathbad]

Nice, very interesting! Rock on!

Thank you. The last post will probably be the most interesting one - I don't remember seeing a lot of linguistic anthropology on this board.

[Cathbad]

Part 3 now available! See here:

http://jonafras.conlang.org/?p=435

[TomHChappell]

Part 3 now available! See here:

http://jonafras.conlang.org/?p=435

I (maybe only I) don't understand it. I have no other criticism to make of it; it appears well-written, I just don't get it.

[Cathbad]

Part 3 now available! See here:

http://jonafras.conlang.org/?p=435

I (maybe only I) don't understand it. I have no other criticism to make of it; it appears well-written, I just don't get it.

Basically you use "wrong" valence particles in order to convey non-standard contextual meanings (relative social status, etc.).

[TomHChappell]

Basically you use "wrong" valence particles in order to convey non-standard contextual meanings (relative social status, etc.).

OK, then.
Letting relative social status control valence seems incomprehensible to me; and having an ideology about it even more incomprehensible.
It's not that you didn't explain it well (or, at least, ANAICT, it might not be); it's that the subject-matter is incompatible with my brain.
I'll give up trying to understand it.

[Kereb]

naw man don't give up
surely there's got to be some way to understand it ... I mean, it's a kind of animacy hierarchy controlling the valence here, and bumping people up or down the language's animacy scale based on social class is pretty easy to imagine a culture doing

EDIT: I think I remember one of Rosenfelder's languages has a feature where you can't have a lower-class nominative acting on a higher-class accusative ...
EDITT: it was Axunašin and I wasn't really remembering it accurately. whatevs.

[Cathbad]

naw man don't give up
surely there's got to be some way to understand it ... I mean, it's a kind of animacy hierarchy controlling the valence here, and bumping people up or down the language's animacy scale based on social class is pretty easy to imagine a culture doing

Yeah... I mean to me, it doesn't seem such a big deal really. Perhaps I've been reading too much linguistic anthropology

[TomHChappell]

I think I remember one of Rosenfelder's languages has a feature where you can't have a lower-class nominative acting on a higher-class accusative ...

There's a natlang, I think in SouthEast Asia (possibly Continental rather than Insular) (edit: -- maybe Javanese?), in which one of the chief uses of the passive voice is to keep the higher-status participant in the subject position, even when they happens to be the patient instead of the agent.
So maybe that's ANADEW.

But I don't like the natlangs that do that either.

Feynman had a lot of trouble learning the honorific and humilific parts of Japanese. Maybe I wouldn't have as much trouble as he had, if I ever tried to learn it; but I think I might have even more.

The Spanish distinction between "tú" and "usted", the Tamil distinction between நீ and நீங்கள், the Hindi distinction between तू and आप, the French distinction between "tu" and "vous", the German between "du" and "Sie", and the Russian between ты and Вы, and things like that, are pretty much the limit of what I can handle, I think.

[Kereb]

Yeah but you're doing that to yourself
If you can learn noun systems with gender, or bantu style noun classes, or animacy hierarchies, and all the ways that these things interact with other bits in the language to create concords or syntactic fuckery or whatever, then you can learn the same idea when it concerns people
You've set up a Valve in your mind -- that's open to a chair being feminine or a verb being marked differently when its subject is a tree vs when it's an elephant -- but snaps shut when talking to the boss requires a different conjugation
Because it's not "that's a lot to remember"; it's "no I can't (won't) even process that".
Though perhaps it might help if you elaborated a little on the nature of the problem rather than simply making a Broccoli Face at the whole concept

[TomHChappell]

Yeah but you're doing that to yourself
If you can learn noun systems with gender, or bantu style noun classes, or animacy hierarchies, and all the ways that these things interact with other bits in the language to create concords or syntactic fuckery or whatever, then you can learn the same idea when it concerns people
You've set up a Valve in your mind -- that's open to a chair being feminine or a verb being marked differently when its subject is a tree vs when it's an elephant -- but snaps shut when talking to the boss requires a different conjugation
Because it's not "that's a lot to remember"; it's "no I can't (won't) even process that".
Though perhaps it might help if you elaborated a little on the nature of the problem rather than simply making a Broccoli Face at the whole concept

You've pretty much described my problem to a T. (I happen to like broccoli and asparagus; maybe "canteloupe face" would do better for me.)
I can resolve to learn these things, and begin to try to learn these things, and just can't finish.
I had the same type of problem trying to read Marx's Das Kapital. I wanted to read it but it was just too boring to finish. (Rather like Jane Eyre that way).

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[EDIT]:
I also have no problem with "social distance", for instance familiar vs stranger and various others.
Nor with register, for instance formal vs informal and others.
It's only having humilifics and honorifics affect valence (or some other grammatical category not naturally related to social status) that throws me off.
[/EDIT]