Old Skourene Erg/Abs paradigm: pragmatic subjects/objects

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joey
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Old Skourene Erg/Abs paradigm: pragmatic subjects/objects

Post by joey »

In Old Skourene, in the Ergative-Absolutive paradigm of verbs, how does it work when the subject is in the same person as the object, but they have different numbers? In particular, the second person:

*Thou did something to you.
*You did something to thee.

In English this is pragmatically impossible (I think). These slots are not left blank on the subject/object matrix, so they must mean something. (They couldn't have both been errors and survived onto the final copy of OS grammar, could they?)
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Post by zompist »

Such forms are possible. You just have to think up a context for them. E.g.:

Ŋemilag ŋa-ŋmilum ṭreta.
benefit.2s.2p but-benefit-NEG-2s city.state
You-s have benefitted yourselves, but not the country.

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Post by joey »

Hmm... I'm not entirely sure I'm understanding the example. (Wouldn't "you-s have benefitted yourself and (e.g.) your people, but not the country" be more appropriate?)

BUT I am convinced that I should not leave those slots on my subject-object grid blank, and will presently fill them in.
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Post by joey »

The only problem I'm seeing is that it seems like the listener has to change in order for the sentence to be grammatical.
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Post by zompist »

Entwistle54 wrote:Hmm... I'm not entirely sure I'm understanding the example. (Wouldn't "you-s have benefitted yourself and (e.g.) your people, but not the country" be more appropriate?)
Well, "you-pl" does mean "you and your people". That is, one meaning of "you-pl" is "you-s and some other folks" where those folks are pragmatically obvious. (Another meaning is when an entire group is addressed.)
BUT I am convinced that I should not leave those slots on my subject-object grid blank, and will presently fill them in.
Note that the ergative and absolutive are really formed separately in Old Skourene, so it was a no-brainer to fill them in. If you have (say) suppletive forms, as Klingon does, you can leave out slots. (Quechua's table is entirely illogical— many slots are missing and others are re-used in a baffling way.)

You probably want to allow 3rd person forms though, as it's much easier to find examples where you need them ("He saw him").

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Post by joey »

zompist wrote:You probably want to allow 3rd person forms though, as it's much easier to find examples where you need them ("He saw him").
Oh, I have no intention of leaving those blank.
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