The language is intended to be as close to "all noun" as possible. I have 2 classes of words right now, which I call "events" and "states", that could be considered as verbal nouns, gerunds, masdars, attributes, etc. Part of the issues I'm facing is trying to pin down precise definitions for these. States incorporate concepts from stative verbs, adverbs, and adjectives, such as "death", "redness", or "quickness". Events are generally dynamic verbs, but also include actions/activities such as "running", where the subject could be considered as actively maintaining a state. As such, volition plays a part. Events also currently have a few sub-classes, which are non-volitional, volitional, and causative.
The basic mechanic for using events and states in a predicate, such as "The man is running" or "The man is dead", is to use a locative construction. Examples:
Code: Select all
man.ABS he-3.SG running-LOC
man he running-in
"The man is at/in (the act of) running."
"The man is running."Code: Select all
man.ABS he-3.SG death-LOC
man he death-in
"The man is at/in (a state of) death."
"The man is dead."In order to form transitive phrases, I am relying on an affix to the pronoun copula that will inflect it for voice. Or, at least, that's the way I've thought of it. It may actually mark transitivity, valency, or voice, or maybe even a combination of the those. Are there natlangs that mark specifically for transitivity or valency as opposed to voice?
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OK, here's where it starts to get hairy.
The 1st main issue is whether my "transitive affix" will require an additional argument (the ergative) or just make it optional. I think I like the idea of making it optional, and I think this makes the standard, locative construction I showed above into a middle voice. Example:
Code: Select all
stew.ABS it-3.SG cooking-LOC
stew it cooking-in
"The stew is at/in (the process of) cooking."
"The stew is cooking."Code: Select all
stew.ABS it-3.SG-TR cooking-LOC
stew it cooking-in
"The stew is at/in (the process of) being cooked."
"The stew is being cooked."Code: Select all
stew.ABS it-3.SG-TR cooking-LOC chef.ERG
stew it cooking-in chef
"The stew is at/in (the process of) being cooked by the chef."
"The stew is being cooked by the chef."Originally, I was thinking that the "transitive affix" would require the ergative argument. As such, the intranstive would actually translate as the active/passive voice with no agent, as per the 2nd example, and therefore there would be no middle voice.
Does the above paradigm make sense? If so, what should I call them? Are these voices? Should I call them the middle voice, intransitve voice, and transitive voice? There will be no distinction between active & passive, so intransitive & transitive seem to work better. Or, is the affix really just a transitive marker, or a valency marker?
I don't have actual vocabulary yet for the examples. However, would it make it easier to see what I'm thinking if I made up temporary vocabulary?
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Because English is my only language, I'm not sure to what extent the middle voice is used in other languages. Are there languages where the majority or even all verbs can be in the middle voice? How common is this? Are there only certain types of verbs that can be in the middle voice? It seems like some verbs inherently have an agent and/or patient, even if they aren't specifically stated. For instance, "to beat or hit" points to someone striking someone/something else, so I have a hard time seeing this verb in a middle voice. Is this just because of my limited, English-speaking brain?
For some stative verbs, I also have a hard time thinking of what the translation of a middle voice would be. This I'm sure is because I only speak English. I assume that English would have to handle many middle voice statives idiomatically. Would this be an example?
middle - The island is in sight.
passive - The island is seen (by someone).
antipassive - The sailor sees (something).
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As I mentioned above, my event class has sub-classes of non-volitional, volitional, and causative. Because I've been looking at how to handle states, I've started to think that maybe those sub-classes aren't handled correctly. States weren't going to have those sub-classes, but now I'm realizing that maybe they can. Part of it is that some words might work better as states than events, which isn't something I understood before. That realization has come about because of trying to define the difference between states and events better.
An example state w/ the sub-classes might be:
non-volitional - to see
volitional - to look, view, observe
causative - to show
My current definition of events includes "changes of state" (dynamic verbs) and actions/activities, where the subject "actively maintains itself in a current state". To me, that sounds an awful lot like volition. So perhaps volition shouldn't be a sub-class of either events or states, but rather a derivation of a state into an event.
I'm now having a hard time thinking of any dynamic verbs that are non-volitional. This also shows that maybe the non-volitional, volitional, and causative sub-classification of events was misplaced.
Causatives are a similar case. Are there any causative verbs that don't involve a change of state? I can't think of any, and so they also seem like they should be a derivation of a state into an event.
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Where do resultatives fit into all of this? Are they states that are derived from dynamic verbs, being their end result, or are dynamic verbs derived from a state & show the change to that state, or could it be either one, depending on the verbs in question?
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I think I'll stop here. I'm not sure I've gone into all of the issues on this topic, but this is more than enough to get the ball rolling.
Sorry for the long post, but I would very much appreciate any thoughts & input.
)
There are days when I really hate being a native English speaker.
C
J
