Grammaticalization Quickie Thread

[bradrn]

I thought you were excluding most of Asia in the not shifting to SVO, but Sinitic seems to be there

Sorry, but I’m really confused as to what you’re trying to say here.

I could, incidentally, see Sinitic developing into an inflected language; it would be interesting to see what sort of Sinitic we have in 2500.

I believe Mandarin is already evolving in this direction.

[linguistcat]

I'm no expert but it seems that Mandarin, Middle Chinese and Old Chinese all have been SVO or tending toward it; so they did not start as SOV. Maybe that is where the confusion is? A language does not shift to a sentence structure it already has, and the conversation was talking about "languages that are SOV shifting to SVO" so that would rule OC, MC and Mandarin out.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I suppose I was assuming Sinitic must have shifted to that structure at some point.

[Ahzoh]

If a language were to make a stative versus dynamic morphological distinction in only one valence category (transitive versus intransitive), would it be more likely for the language make the distinction in intransitive verbs or in transitive verbs?

possibility a):
i) dynamic intransitive
ii) stative intransitive
iii) transitive

possibility b):
i) intransitive
ii) dynamic transitive
iii) stative transitive

[Creyeditor]

I would guess, it's a) but I don't have any examples from natlangs to back that up.

[bradrn]

If a language were to make a stative versus dynamic morphological distinction in only one valence category (transitive versus intransitive), would it be more likely for the language make the distinction in intransitive verbs or in transitive verbs?

possibility a):
i) dynamic intransitive
ii) stative intransitive
iii) transitive

possibility b):
i) intransitive
ii) dynamic transitive
iii) stative transitive

(a) is extremely common — it’s the basis of an active-stative alignment system, for one thing. Given this fact, I’d assume that (b) is less common than (a).

[Ahzoh]

I would guess, it's a) but I don't have any examples from natlangs to back that up.

Apparently Semitic verbs might have "theme vowels" that reflect a distinction like type a, but it's not clear cut anymore.

[Ahzoh]

If a language were to make a stative versus dynamic morphological distinction in only one valence category (transitive versus intransitive), would it be more likely for the language make the distinction in intransitive verbs or in transitive verbs?

possibility a):
i) dynamic intransitive
ii) stative intransitive
iii) transitive

possibility b):
i) intransitive
ii) dynamic transitive
iii) stative transitive

(a) is extremely common — it’s the basis of an active-stative alignment system, for one thing. Given this fact, I’d assume that (b) is less common than (a).

Would a language being predominantly transitive or predominantly intransitive affect the likelihood? I just wished B was a possibility because I mark the passive voice with i-mutation and it would align so well if the theme vowel for intransitives was just /i/. If possibility A is the path then that either means having a "dynamic passive voice" and "stative passive voice" or basically /i/-theme means dynamic or stative versus /u/-theme means dynamic intransitive only.

[bradrn]

Reflecting on this some more from ‘first principles’, semantically the transitive subject is distinguished by being agentive, while the transitive object is distinguished by being patientive. By contrast the intransitive subject may be either agentive or patientive. So for a transitive verb to be ‘stative’ or ‘active’ (the term I prefer to ‘dynamic’) is somewhat undefined. In fact I’d go further — a transitive verb must always be ‘active’ in some sense, since by definition it contains an actor.

[Ahzoh]

Reflecting on this some more from ‘first principles’, semantically the transitive subject is distinguished by being agentive, while the transitive object is distinguished by being patientive. By contrast the intransitive subject may be either agentive or patientive. So for a transitive verb to be ‘stative’ or ‘active’ (the term I prefer to ‘dynamic’) is somewhat undefined. In fact I’d go further — a transitive verb must always be ‘active’ in some sense, since by definition it contains an actor.

There is some overlap between active/agentive vs. passive/patientive and dynamic vs. stative, but there are distinctions. There are numerous transitive verbs that are stative, such as know, see, own, and hear. All of them involve a static and unchanging situation. There are also syntactic and morphological considerations, such as inability to take a progressive aspect.

[bradrn]

There are numerous transitive verbs that are stative, such as know, see, own, and hear. All of them involve a static and unchanging situation.

You’re quite right about this, thanks for the counterexamples. Though I should note that many languages don’t code these as ‘true’ transitive verbs — e.g. their object might be in the dative.

[Ahzoh]

I guess Dynamic and Stative passive voices do exist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_v ... ic_passive
Though I don't really like the implications of their use which seem more like a perfective/completed versus imperfective/ongoing distinction.

[StrangerCoug]

So I'm devising the pronoun system for one of my conlangs. This one makes a T–V distinction in both the first and second persons, the third person pronouns have an animacy distinction instead. For the nominative singular, they're as follows:

Person	Familiar	Polite
1st	ze /t͡se/	zidce /ˈt͡sit.t͡sʰe/
2nd	re /re/	ridce /ˈrit.t͡sʰe/
Person	Animate	Inanimate
3rd	ne /ne/	na /na/

(If the way I did the table seems weird, it's because I couldn't figure out whether colspan is supported or how to do it—it's odd to me, too.)

Immediately you should see the beginnings of the pattern I want to work with, which suggests a plausible nidce /ˈnit.t͡sʰe/ for third person polite animate and nidca /ˈnit.t͡sʰa/ for third person polite inanimate. The thing is I don't really have many ideas of what to do with them. A possibility I came up with is to have a daughter branch use them for the regular third person pronouns and have ne and na develop into definite articles—how plausible is this? What are some other interesting things I could do with them should I elect to use them?

(Edited to add: Added where the stress goes in the polysyllabic words.)
(Edit #2: The two hypothetical pronouns shouldn't both be animate; corrected.)

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Immediately you should see the beginnings of the pattern I want to work with, which suggests a plausible nidce /ˈnit.t͡sʰe/ for third person polite animate and nidca /ˈnit.t͡sʰa/ for third person polite inanimate. The thing is I don't really have many ideas of what to do with them. A possibility I came up with is to have a daughter branch use them for the regular third person pronouns and have ne and na develop into definite articles—how plausible is this?

The element "ce"~"ca" developing into a generic pronominaliser is quite thoroughly possible. If ne and na are also demonstratives, their development into articles is very plausible, to (and their development into demonstratives if they aren't isn't particularly far-fetched, especially if the older demonstratives erode a great deal, or sound similar already).

What are some other interesting things I could do with them should I elect to use them?

If you develop "ce"~"ca" into a pronominaliser, attach it to other morphemes, Japanese-style, and proliferate polite forms from polite forms of address, and so on?

[StrangerCoug]

Immediately you should see the beginnings of the pattern I want to work with, which suggests a plausible nidce /ˈnit.t͡sʰe/ for third person polite animate and nidca /ˈnit.t͡sʰa/ for third person polite inanimate. The thing is I don't really have many ideas of what to do with them. A possibility I came up with is to have a daughter branch use them for the regular third person pronouns and have ne and na develop into definite articles—how plausible is this?

The element "ce"~"ca" developing into a generic pronominaliser is quite thoroughly possible. If ne and na are also demonstratives, their development into articles is very plausible, to (and their development into demonstratives if they aren't isn't particularly far-fetched, especially if the older demonstratives erode a great deal, or sound similar already).

What are some other interesting things I could do with them should I elect to use them?

If you develop "ce"~"ca" into a pronominaliser, attach it to other morphemes, Japanese-style, and proliferate polite forms from polite forms of address, and so on?

I like this idea, especially since Japanese is one of the two primary languages that I'm grabbing grammar and syntax ideas from (the other is German) and I want something that's quite a bit different from SAE.

[hwhatting]

What does politeness mean in your conculture? In many real cultures, politeness means showing respect to the person talked to / talked about by elevating the other person and effacing the speaker - compare polite 2nd person references meaning "my lord / master", "your worship", "your excellency" vs. 1st person references meaning "your servant" etc. So I normally wouldn't expect the same suffix to be used for 1st person as for 2nd and 3rd; one might even expect the opposite - if ce/ca is a suffix expressing respect, using it on the 1st person would actually mean self-elevation, which would be impolite and only done in situations when speakers can fearlessly rub in their superiority over others.
One way I see your system could come about if ce/ca was originally a collective or plural marker; politeness by pluralising in the 2nd Person is well known, and it can work also for the 1st person - speakers talking about themselves as "we" can be takien as self-elevating (the "royal we"), but also as stepping back behind a collective (the "academic we").

[Rounin Ryuuji]

That's another good idea; I was actually imagining (but didn't actually type it), that the ce/ca form of the first-person pronoun in Coug's language might at first come off as arrogant or rude, but then go through amelioration when ce/ca became a generic pronominaliser.

[StrangerCoug]

I actually derived the polite pronouns using -idc- as the politeness infix, but since infixing isn't supposed to be a productive process, I saw Rounin Ryuuji's reanalysis of -ce/-ca as a generic pronomializer as justified.

As for hwhatting's idea, I do want to have a collective marker but hadn't come up with one, so -ce/-ca it is. Now to back-derive what zid and nid (ETA: and rid) could have originally meant and whether I want to keep them as separate morphemes in daughter languages...

More when I'm not phoneposting at work.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Perhaps a reanalysis in which the -e/-a forms are plain, the -id- forms are plural, and the -ce/-ca forms are aggrandising?

[StrangerCoug]

Perhaps a reanalysis in which the -e/-a forms are plain, the -id- forms are plural, and the -ce/-ca forms are aggrandising?

I like