Conlang Random Thread

[Xwtek]

I mean /*ɰ/ turns to current /w/, so it appears that /w/ turns into /ŋ/ while diachronically, it's actually /*ɰ/ turns into /ŋ/ when nasalized, but /w/ elsewhere.

Okay, I can see how that would work, but I actually like [w̃] and would prefer to keep it, my worry is about [ʋ̃].

One possibility is that [ʋ̃] either turns into [m] or, well [ʋ], as it's originally a fricative.

[bradrn]

What would happen with copulae with adjectival predicates in a language with polypersonal agreement? For instance, if I were to say something like 'My house is big', how would 'is' be inflected? 'Big' isn't even a noun, so it could be difficult to apply personal agreement.

[Salmoneus]

What would happen with copulae with adjectival predicates in a language with polypersonal agreement? For instance, if I were to say something like 'My house is big', how would 'is' be inflected? 'Big' isn't even a noun, so it could be difficult to apply personal agreement.

So don't. "Polypersonal agreement" doesn't mean you can't have intransitive verbs!

Nor need there be a copula in any case.

[bradrn]

What would happen with copulae with adjectival predicates in a language with polypersonal agreement? For instance, if I were to say something like 'My house is big', how would 'is' be inflected? 'Big' isn't even a noun, so it could be difficult to apply personal agreement.

So don't. "Polypersonal agreement" doesn't mean you can't have intransitive verbs!

I know. But in this case, 'is' is intransitive (EDIT: I meant transitive)! Besides, how would you have an intransitive copula?

Nor need there be a copula in any case.

I know this as well. I was asking in the specific case of a transitive copula with adjectival predicate in a polypersonal language.

[Znex]

I know this as well. I was asking in the specific case of a transitive copula with adjectival predicate in a polypersonal language.

If you really want to force it, adjectives are often treated as substantives themselves anyway, so they can be declined either to agree with their noun or otherwise.

[Xwtek]

If my language has two cases, Direct and Oblique, what case is more likely to mark an attributive noun? An oblique case, direct case, or the same case as the head noun? How about possession if I decided to use his genitive?

[bradrn]

I know this as well. I was asking in the specific case of a transitive copula with adjectival predicate in a polypersonal language.

If you really want to force it, adjectives are often treated as substantives themselves anyway, so they can be declined either to agree with their noun or otherwise.

I'm not entirely sure how adjectival declension relates to polypersonal agreement on verbs. Anyway, this is the one case where an adjective is not directly applied to a noun!

In general, it seems there's been quite a bit of confusion as to exactly what I've been asking. So let me elaborate: Assume that we have an agglutinative language with polypersonal agreement and a transitive copula. Translating something like, for instance, 'I am an apple' (however odd this sentence may be) is straightforward: you do something like I am-1s>3s apple. However, it's trickier translating something like 'I am happy': it's clearly going to be something along the lines of I am-1s>(something) happy, but what do you do for the (something)?

[Xwtek]

In a proximate-obviative language, is it possible that interrogative pronoun must be word initial? And how to resolve conflict if there is SAP pronoun in the same sentence?

[Xwtek]

I know this as well. I was asking in the specific case of a transitive copula with adjectival predicate in a polypersonal language.

If you really want to force it, adjectives are often treated as substantives themselves anyway, so they can be declined either to agree with their noun or otherwise.

I'm not entirely sure how adjectival declension relates to polypersonal agreement on verbs. Anyway, this is the one case where an adjective is not directly applied to a noun!

In general, it seems there's been quite a bit of confusion as to exactly what I've been asking. So let me elaborate: Assume that we have an agglutinative language with polypersonal agreement and a transitive copula. Translating something like, for instance, 'I am an apple' (however odd this sentence may be) is straightforward: you do something like I am-1s>3s apple. However, it's trickier translating something like 'I am happy': it's clearly going to be something along the lines of I am-1s>(something) happy, but what do you do for the (something)?

No one requires you to make the adjectival copula the same as noun copula. You can make a copula in "I am apple" and "Ï am happy" different. So the former copula is transitive and the latter is intransitive. (Usually adjectival copula comes from "exist Adj-ly" construction. Like japanese: "kore wa oishii da" < "kore wa oishii de aru", so it will never receive pronomial affix)

[bradrn]

If you really want to force it, adjectives are often treated as substantives themselves anyway, so they can be declined either to agree with their noun or otherwise.

I'm not entirely sure how adjectival declension relates to polypersonal agreement on verbs. Anyway, this is the one case where an adjective is not directly applied to a noun!

In general, it seems there's been quite a bit of confusion as to exactly what I've been asking. So let me elaborate: Assume that we have an agglutinative language with polypersonal agreement and a transitive copula. Translating something like, for instance, 'I am an apple' (however odd this sentence may be) is straightforward: you do something like I am-1s>3s apple. However, it's trickier translating something like 'I am happy': it's clearly going to be something along the lines of I am-1s>(something) happy, but what do you do for the (something)?

No one requires you to make the adjectival copula the same as noun copula. You can make a copula in "I am apple" and "Ï am happy" different. So the former copula is transitive and the latter is intransitive.

I already have multiple copulae, so this would be the best solution for me. However, I still don't really understand how an intransitive copula could work.

(Usually adjectival copula comes from "exist Adj-ly" construction. Like japanese: "kore wa oishii da" < "kore wa oishii de aru", so it will never receive pronomial affix)

Unfortunately, I don't speak Japanese. Could you provide a gloss?

[akam chinjir]

Assume that we have an agglutinative language with polypersonal agreement and a transitive copula.

Do you know of any languages that do that? You could look into what they do, if there are any.

(My amateur brain thinks about this sort of thing in quite a different way. Like, in "I am happy," the predicate is just "happy," but the copula gets inserted because "happy" can't take subject agreement and tense, a bit as if be+happy ends up used as a two-part verb; obviously it has no separate object that it could agree with.)

[bradrn]

Assume that we have an agglutinative language with polypersonal agreement and a transitive copula.

Do you know of any languages that do that? You could look into what they do, if there are any.

I believe Swahili does this in non-present tenses - in the present tense, there's no personal agreement. However, it's proved to be a bit hard to find examples: it can't be in the past or future tense, and have an adjectival predicate. It doesn't help that most of the Swahili 'grammars' in the Grammar Pile aren't actually reference grammars but rather unhelpful books along the lines of 'How to Learn Swahili'.

(My amateur brain thinks about this sort of thing in quite a different way. Like, in "I am happy," the predicate is just "happy," but the copula gets inserted because "happy" can't take subject agreement and tense, a bit as if be+happy ends up used as a two-part verb; obviously it has no separate object that it could agree with.)

I believe that many North American languages do this - instead of adjectives, they use verbs such as be.happy etc. I'm not an expert on the topic though.
Edit: Somehow managed to completely miss most of your sentence. Of course this concept is completely different to what you're describing. Rereading it properly this time: Your argument does make a lot of sense. However, I'm not entirely sure how it helps in my case. It would be cool to work it into another conlang somehow though!

[Znex]

I know this as well. I was asking in the specific case of a transitive copula with adjectival predicate in a polypersonal language.

If you really want to force it, adjectives are often treated as substantives themselves anyway, so they can be declined either to agree with their noun or otherwise.

I'm not entirely sure how adjectival declension relates to polypersonal agreement on verbs. Anyway, this is the one case where an adjective is not directly applied to a noun!

What I mean is adjectives can be treated as nouns (and hence can be inflected as if they are nouns):
eg. I am red -> I am a red one

If you're doing polypersonal, then it's obvious what you can do:
be-1>3 red vs. be-1>3 apple

[Salmoneus]

I think it's important to point out that you're actually asking about an intransitive copula, not a transitive one. In "I am happy", the copula is intransitive, as it has (neither semantically nor syntactically) an object/patient. If you're treating it as transitive, by definition you're treating what follows as nominal, so it follows the same rules as 'apple' or 'blancmange'.

Of course, semantically all copulae are intransitive - they do not refer to events in which an agent acts upon a patient (if I say 'dogs are mammals', I'm not saying the dogs are doing something to the mammals, or that the mammals are changed as a result). However, the copulae used in nominal equatives are naturally syntactically bivalent, and in some languages do pattern syntactically like transitive verbs (although they're not transitive, and they're not verbs). Or they can be like transitive verbs but different - the 'object' is often in the nominative, as it was until recently in English (c.f. the telephone-answering idiom "this is she", and the melodrammatic idiom "it is I!") If you want, you can treat adjectival predicates like nomative equatives - "I am a red one" for "I am red". But you don't have to.

So I think the question is confused. If you're treating adjectival copulae as though they were transitives with nominal objects... well, then you treat them the same way you treat transitives with nominal objects.

Incidentally, I think it's really weird to mark the subject and object of an equative copula with different persons. "me-I am the he-apple"? If you are the apple, then the apple is 1st person, so it's weird to mark it as 3rd person for no apparent reason, unless I guess it's really strongly established as a third-person in the conversation until this moment of revelation ("for I am she!"). Do you do this with, for example, job titles? "I am a third-person-doctor?"

But, to be sure, copulae do do weird things, so...

[Whimemsz]

.

[bradrn]

I think it's important to point out that you're actually asking about an intransitive copula, not a transitive one. In "I am happy", the copula is intransitive, as it has (neither semantically nor syntactically) an object/patient. If you're treating it as transitive, by definition you're treating what follows as nominal, so it follows the same rules as 'apple' or 'blancmange'.

Of course, semantically all copulae are intransitive - they do not refer to events in which an agent acts upon a patient (if I say 'dogs are mammals', I'm not saying the dogs are doing something to the mammals, or that the mammals are changed as a result). However, the copulae used in nominal equatives are naturally syntactically bivalent, and in some languages do pattern syntactically like transitive verbs (although they're not transitive, and they're not verbs). Or they can be like transitive verbs but different - the 'object' is often in the nominative, as it was until recently in English (c.f. the telephone-answering idiom "this is she", and the melodrammatic idiom "it is I!") If you want, you can treat adjectival predicates like nomative equatives - "I am a red one" for "I am red". But you don't have to.

So what you're saying here is that copulae are semantically intransitive (since they only act on one argument), but syntactically transitive (since they require two arguments anyway). This is certainly a useful way of looking at things, but I'm not entirely sure how it helps in my case.

(Also, you have the same problem with other words with copulative meanings, such as 'become' - or even words such as 'see' - so this problem is hardly exclusive to the copula.)

So I think the question is confused. If you're treating adjectival copulae as though they were transitives with nominal objects... well, then you treat them the same way you treat transitives with nominal objects.

I think that we're going around in circles now - this is exactly what I want to do in the first place! The question is though: how does one treat these situations in the same way? As I've already said, I use personal agreement, and adjectives don't have a person.

Incidentally, I think it's really weird to mark the subject and object of an equative copula with different persons. "me-I am the he-apple"? If you are the apple, then the apple is 1st person, so it's weird to mark it as 3rd person for no apparent reason, unless I guess it's really strongly established as a third-person in the conversation until this moment of revelation ("for I am she!"). Do you do this with, for example, job titles? "I am a third-person-doctor?"

This is probably the most helpful insight in my case, but I'm still quite confused. Does this mean that I have to do something like 'I am-1s apple'? That would be really weird, since the verb is conjugated as if it were intransitive, but it still takes two objects.

[Salmoneus]

So what you're saying here is that copulae are semantically intransitive (since they only act on one argument), but syntactically transitive (since they require two arguments anyway). This is certainly a useful way of looking at things, but I'm not entirely sure how it helps in my case.

No, what I'm saying is that copulae are semantically intransitive, but in some cases may be treated like transitive verbs syntactically.

"In some cases" has two meanings here. First, different languages treat copulae differently - some don't even have verbs for the purpose, and it's very common for copulae to have quite different syntax from true verbs in a language. Second, different uses of the copula can have very different syntax in a given language. There's no reason why nominal and adjectival predication need to be treated the same way. After all, nominal predication is semantically dyadic, which makes it like a transitive, wheres adjectival predication is semantically monadic, so nothing like a transitive.

And then there's "treated like". "Like" doesn't have to mean "the same". It's common for copulae to have different syntax even when they may look superficially different. Traditional English was an example - copulae took two subjects, whereas transitive verbs took subject and object. Hence, "I am she", but "I guided her". [I don't know whether this has changed, or whether the spread of the 'accusative' to the second argument of copulae is simply part of its adoption as the default form of the pronoun in non-marked situations]

So, there's no reason why a language with polypersonal verbs needs to have polypersonal copulae of any sort.

(Also, you have the same problem with other words with copulative meanings, such as 'become' - or even words such as 'see' - so this problem is hardly exclusive to the copula.)

Well, many languages treat 'become' as a copula, or an inflected form of a copula (it's just a copula with inchoative aspect). "See" is a little different. It is indeed intransitive semantically, and as a result many languages do treat it differently from an ordinary transitive verb - some use an intransitive verb, others use a transitive with special case marking on either the subject or the 'object', and I think some even reverse the subject/object assignment relative to English. However, "see" is much more transitive, on the transitivity hierarchy, than a copula, so more likely to be treated more like a transitive. For a start, "see" takes arguments referring to (other than in a reflexive voice) two things, whereas the copula takes two arguments referring to the same thing (it's in a way semantically inherently reflexive and can never be truly active).

So I think the question is confused. If you're treating adjectival copulae as though they were transitives with nominal objects... well, then you treat them the same way you treat transitives with nominal objects.

I think that we're going around in circles now - this is exactly what I want to do in the first place! The question is though: how does one treat these situations in the same way? As I've already said, I use personal agreement, and adjectives don't have a person.

Well, no words have person, other than pronouns. Personhood is indexical - it's a property not of the categorical reference of the word (I don't know the linguistic name for this - the quiddity of the reference, is what I mean), but of the haecceity of the referent relative to the perspective of the speech act. You can't take two nouns, like "the doctor" and "the footballer", and tell from the noun what 'person' they are - is a doctor inherently third-person, or is a footballer inherently second-person? Of course not - the noun doesn't have person, the referent has person, relative to a speech act. That guy is third person, regardless of what word I use to refer to him, and you are second person, relative to this speech act, regardless of what word I use to refer to you.

An apple is not inherently third person. "You, the apple of your mother's eye, eat cabbages" - 2nd person. "I am an apple" - 1st person.

Adjectives have no more or less person than nouns do. Which is inevitable, since in some languages 'adjectives' are actually nouns.

Incidentally, I think it's really weird to mark the subject and object of an equative copula with different persons. "me-I am the he-apple"? If you are the apple, then the apple is 1st person, so it's weird to mark it as 3rd person for no apparent reason, unless I guess it's really strongly established as a third-person in the conversation until this moment of revelation ("for I am she!"). Do you do this with, for example, job titles? "I am a third-person-doctor?"

This is probably the most helpful insight in my case, but I'm still quite confused. Does this mean that I have to do something like 'I am-1s apple'? That would be really weird, since the verb is conjugated as if it were intransitive, but it still takes two objects.

I don't know what you "have" to do. Do what you like.

I don't even know, to be honest, how many languages do what. There's a clear conflict here, semantically. On the one hand, in ordinary nominal-referential sense - in the sense that nouns refer directly to objects in reality - the apple in "I am the apple" is clearly first-person. It's me, and I'm 1st person, in my own speech. However, an equative like that is often pragmatically used to signal the identity of two different items already present in the discourse - once you have something like a definite article attached to a noun, or a marker of topicality of some sort, however implicit, then the reference of the noun becomes at least slightly textual; and given that, before the equative, the apple would have been treated as a third-person participant, there's a clear reason to retain that assignment in the equative. If that makes sense?

So although it makes sense logically for the "object" to be treated as 1st person, I wouldn't be astounded to learn that some languages instead treated it as 3rd person.

However, I know nothing about how languages with polypersonal agreement and copulas that pattern identically to transitive verbs deal with nominal predication where the subject is a 1st person participant. So you'd have to ask someone else what actually happens.

[bradrn]

In general, I seem to be very confused about this subject: your reasoning makes a lot more sense than mine. Thanks for clearing this up!

However, "see" is much more transitive, on the transitivity hierarchy, than a copula, so more likely to be treated more like a transitive.

This transitivity hierarchy sounds interesting. Do you know of any resources where I can learn about it?

However, I know nothing about how languages with polypersonal agreement and copulas that pattern identically to transitive verbs deal with nominal predication where the subject is a 1st person participant. So you'd have to ask someone else what actually happens.

That would indeed be ideal. I've tried to look it up myself, but unfortunately information seems to be scarce: so far I've only managed to find out about the Swahili copula, which seems to be marked only for the subject.

[zompist]

Well, no words have person, other than pronouns. Personhood is indexical - it's a property not of the categorical reference of the word (I don't know the linguistic name for this - the quiddity of the reference, is what I mean), but of the haecceity of the referent relative to the perspective of the speech act. You can't take two nouns, like "the doctor" and "the footballer", and tell from the noun what 'person' they are - is a doctor inherently third-person, or is a footballer inherently second-person? Of course not - the noun doesn't have person, the referent has person, relative to a speech act. That guy is third person, regardless of what word I use to refer to him, and you are second person, relative to this speech act, regardless of what word I use to refer to you.

I think the linguistic way of saying this is that personhood is pragmatic, not semantic. It relates to the context of the utterance, not to the meaning of any of the words.

As for polypersonal languages and copulas... I just have one data point, from Quechua: the predicate is not treated as an accusative. Cf:

Mansana kani.
apple be-1s
I am an apple

Mansanata mikuchkani.
apple-acc eat-past-1s
I ate an apple.

However, the polypersonal suffixes in Quechua basically don't include 3rd person objects. I guess you could address the apple directly:

Mansana, mikuyki.
apple / eat-1>2
Apple, I eat you!

I have no idea if you can say

Mansana, kayki.
apple / be-1>2
Apple, I am you!

I suspect not, because the accusative -ta generally corresponds to the use of the polypersonal suffixes. If I can get hold of an informant, I'll ask...

(warning if anyone cares: I didn't include evidential and topic suffixes because I'm not sure they colloquially apply here.)

[bradrn]

Well, no words have person, other than pronouns. Personhood is indexical - it's a property not of the categorical reference of the word (I don't know the linguistic name for this - the quiddity of the reference, is what I mean), but of the haecceity of the referent relative to the perspective of the speech act. You can't take two nouns, like "the doctor" and "the footballer", and tell from the noun what 'person' they are - is a doctor inherently third-person, or is a footballer inherently second-person? Of course not - the noun doesn't have person, the referent has person, relative to a speech act. That guy is third person, regardless of what word I use to refer to him, and you are second person, relative to this speech act, regardless of what word I use to refer to you.

I think the linguistic way of saying this is that personhood is pragmatic, not semantic. It relates to the context of the utterance, not to the meaning of any of the words.

As for polypersonal languages and copulas... I just have one data point, from Quechua: the predicate is not treated as an accusative. Cf:

Mansana kani.
apple be-1s
I am an apple

Mansanata mikuchkani.
apple-acc eat-past-1s
I ate an apple.

However, the polypersonal suffixes in Quechua basically don't include 3rd person objects. I guess you could address the apple directly:

Mansana, mikuyki.
apple / eat-1>2
Apple, I eat you!

I have no idea if you can say

Mansana, kayki.
apple / be-1>2
Apple, I am you!

I suspect not, because the accusative -ta generally corresponds to the use of the polypersonal suffixes. If I can get hold of an informant, I'll ask...

(warning if anyone cares: I didn't include evidential and topic suffixes because I'm not sure they colloquially apply here.)

Thanks for mentioning Quechua! For some reason I completely forgot it when I tried to look up examples of copulae in polypersonal languages. Once I looked up the language, I finally did manage to find an example with adjectival predicates:

jatun-mi

big-VAL

ka-nki

COP-2p

You are big
—Equadorian Quichua (Carpenter)

So it would seem that Quechua just dispenses with the object agreement altogether and treats the copula as syntactically transitive but morphologically intransitive; I think I'm going to use this approach.