Basic Valence Orientation and Sint

[Salmoneus]

There's something mentioned in Dixon and Aikhenvald's The Amazonian Languages that might be what Sal's thinking of? In Aryon Rodrigues' chapter on Macro-Jê he writes:

I've got that book and I completely forgot about the Macro-Jê stuff. I remember reading elsewhere an argument that is has a similar origin to Celtic initial mutations, as an originally phonological change which was grammaticalised as a marker of continuity.

Yes, I think that's what I was thinking of. Sorry, read that years ago and remembered little of it.

It seems like in Salish, when lexical suffixes (noun-like suffixes from a closed class) are added to a verb root, in many languages marking (in)transitivity becomes optional where it would have been obligatory with the bare verb root. I guess this makes sense since the lexical suffixes are derivational in nature, and to the extent that speakers can unambiguously interpret the derived stem as having the correct transitivity class, the overt voice markers become redundant.

IIRC, in some Oceanic languages, any fully general object (i.e. more indefinite that you'd use an indefinite article for) to an otherwise transitive verb leads to the loss of any transitivity marking on either object or verb. In effect, while the two words remain phonologically distinct, they form a compound lexical item that operates as an intransitive verb.

Me too! The terms don't even make sense. To me "unaccusative" implies nominative, and the nominative is the typically controlling argument. And "unergative" implies absolutive, which is the typically affected argument. Every single time I want to use them the wrong way round and have to triple check I've got it right. It's a shame they're the established terminology.

Yes, it's silly.

I can see why it makes sense, though. The guy who talked about them originally was comparing them not to each other, but to transitives. An unaccusative verb is an accusative verb that's gone wrong (by losing its subject), while an unergative verb is an ergative verb unaccountably lacking its object. But yes, on the typological front, where we tend to be comparing them directly to one another, the terminology seems backward.

[chris_notts]

I would just say, however, that I think people tend to overestimate the problems caused by potential ambiguity. Many ambiguities can be resolved by context, either through common sense or through codified rules. For example...

Of course, some natlangs do just tolerate a lot of theoretical ambiguity. There's a small number which lack fixed word order, case marking, and any verb marking of which argument is which or how many there should be. But I don't really want to go in that direction.

3A-have pig and goat, pig 3A-want 3A-eat-PURP(-0)
= He has a pig and a goat, and the pig is hungry / wants to eat
= He has a pig and a goat, and he wants to eat the pig

Likewise, this is a situation that will rarely cause confusion because of the clear inherent semantics - if you have a wolf and a pig, it's the pig that wants to eat the wolf, not vice versa. Confusion arises when you have two things equally likely to want to eat the other, which is inherently a rare scenario, and you can always just have a rule about restating the subject (or the object) when necessary. [or automatically take the more fronted argument as the subject - here, the pig must want to eat the goat].

By the examples above I meant something more along the lines of:

3A-have man pig and goat, pig 3A-want 3A-eat-PURP(-0)
= The man has a pig and a goat, and the pig is hungry / wants to eat
= The man has a pig and a goat, and he wants to eat the pig

I.e. if you don't know if eat is transitive, then you could either be saying that one of his animals is hungry, or that he wants to eat one of them.

And again, actual confusion here will be very rare, because the classes of things-we-try-to-benefit and things-we-try-to-give-to-people, and the classes of things-we-break and things-we-use-to-break-things don't have a lot of overlap. So "I met a man and I broke it" can mean "I broke (sth) with the man", whereas "I met a vase and I broke it" means "I broke the vase". When both can be the case - "I met a man with a vase and I broke it", it can be resolved by importing the semantically or syntactically prefered item (in this case the man, because it's "man with a vase" instead of "vase with a man"), or just left 'ambiguous', because either way the man's vase ends up broken, and whether he helped break it or not, if it's unimportant enough to be left to pivots and non-overt arguments, is probably unimportant enough to leave to the imagination anyway.

I guess it's a matter of feel. I want Sint to not to be too ambiguous and have a high verb to noun ratio, which means I need some way of restricting the possibilities that's marked on the verb itself.

[chris_notts]

IIRC, in some Oceanic languages, any fully general object (i.e. more indefinite that you'd use an indefinite article for) to an otherwise transitive verb leads to the loss of any transitivity marking on either object or verb. In effect, while the two words remain phonologically distinct, they form a compound lexical item that operates as an intransitive verb.

If I recall correctly, doesn't the unmarked object have to directly follow the verb as well?

Basque has a hybrid situation along similar lines. Certain common verbs like "egin" do/make are especially likely to form a close association with nouns where (i) the noun can't be modified and (ii) the combination seems to be lexicalised. But for many of these, the transitive auxiliary verb is retained:

hitz egiten dut
word making 3abs-TRANS-1sg
"I'm talking"

But the auxiliary thing doesn't necessarily mean the compound is transitive since in Basque some unergatives take the transitive auxiliaries with default 3rd person abs agreement. In some dialects this has been spreading, and some people have argued that at least those dialects are split-S, not ergative.

Similarly, even languages labelled polysynthetic show mismatches between grammatical and phonological words. Yimas, I understand, has V-V and N-V compounding within the verbal word, which takes a lot of agreement prefixes and various inflectional suffixes. But even though these "compounded" stems are sandwiched in the middle of a load of verbal prefixes and suffixes, stress and vowel epenthesis evidence suggests that the stems remain independent phonological words.

Yes, it's silly.

I can see why it makes sense, though. The guy who talked about them originally was comparing them not to each other, but to transitives. An unaccusative verb is an accusative verb that's gone wrong (by losing its subject), while an unergative verb is an ergative verb unaccountably lacking its object. But yes, on the typological front, where we tend to be comparing them directly to one another, the terminology seems backward.

I didn't think of it that way. But even so it doesn't make sense, because most ergative languages are not syntactically ergative, they're only morphologically ergative. The ergative verb "going wrong" seems to presuppose that the most crucial argument in a ergative language is the absolutive, but that's confusing surface case marking with syntactic behaviour.

[akam chinjir]

IIRC, in some Oceanic languages, any fully general object (i.e. more indefinite that you'd use an indefinite article for) to an otherwise transitive verb leads to the loss of any transitivity marking on either object or verb. In effect, while the two words remain phonologically distinct, they form a compound lexical item that operates as an intransitive verb.

If I recall correctly, doesn't the unmarked object have to directly follow the verb as well?

People talk about noun incorporation in Tongan, at least, which maybe is what you're thinking of.

[Whimemsz]

.

[Xwtek]

I was making a language, but it has a large number of case. What can be a motivation for applicative voice? In Indonesian language, it is for topicalization and relativization, like:

Kucing=nya sudah di-beri-kan.
Cat=3 PRF UV-give-APL
The cat has been given.

However, for a language with case marking, moving the constituent to the front suffices. Is there another motivation?

[chris_notts]

I was making a language, but it has a large number of case. What can be a motivation for applicative voice? In Indonesian language, it is for topicalization and relativization, like:

Kucing=nya sudah di-beri-kan.
Cat=3 PRF UV-give-APL
The cat has been given.

However, for a language with case marking, moving the constituent to the front suffices. Is there another motivation?

The book "Applicative Constructions" by David Peterson has some statistics about applicatives. His survey suggests that there is no significant correlation with head-marking vs dependent-marking in general. Head-marking languages are slightly more likely to have applicatives than dependent marking languages, but not much.

But if you look solely at verbal agreement, which can occur in combination with dependent marking, he does suggest that languages with applicatives are more likely to have agreement with two participants than languages without:

Average number of arguments agreed with in sample languages with applicatives = 1.72
Average number of arguments agreed with in sample languages without applicatives = 1.32

Peterson says:

Thus, one of the the things which appeared to be a primary discourse motivation for applicative constructions - giving participants access to (verbal) pronominal coding - turns out to be one of the things which possibly sets languages of the sample with applicative constructions apart from those without them.

He also finds that if you look at case marking specifically, compared to other kinds of dependency marking, then languages with case are probably less likely to have applicatives, and conversely languages with applicatives are more likely to have adpositions and locative nouns instead of case. Nevertheless, 15/39 case languages in his sample have some form of applicative.

Note that "moving the topical constituent to the front", as you suggest above, requires that it's actually present in the clause. Since in many languages the preferred encoding for a topical constituent is zero and/or agreement only, applicatives are still potentially useful in languages with flexible word order. They allow the promoted object to be realised only by the applicative suffix + verbal agreement.

Peterson does not find any statistically significant correlation between applicative constructions and restrictions on relativisation based on his sample.

[akam chinjir]

But if you look solely at verbal agreement, which can occur in combination with dependent marking, he does suggest that languages with applicatives are more likely to have agreement with two participants than languages without:

Average number of arguments agreed with in sample languages with applicatives = 1.72
Average number of arguments agreed with in sample languages with applicatives = 1.32

I assume the second "with" should be "without."

[chris_notts]

But if you look solely at verbal agreement, which can occur in combination with dependent marking, he does suggest that languages with applicatives are more likely to have agreement with two participants than languages without:

Average number of arguments agreed with in sample languages with applicatives = 1.72
Average number of arguments agreed with in sample languages with applicatives = 1.32

I assume the second "with" should be "without."

Oops.

[Xwtek]

I was making a language, but it has a large number of case. What can be a motivation for applicative voice? In Indonesian language, it is for topicalization and relativization, like:

Kucing=nya sudah di-beri-kan.
Cat=3 PRF UV-give-APL
The cat has been given.

However, for a language with case marking, moving the constituent to the front suffices. Is there another motivation?

The book "Applicative Constructions" by David Peterson has some statistics about applicatives. His survey suggests that there is no significant correlation with head-marking vs dependent-marking in general. Head-marking languages are slightly more likely to have applicatives than dependent marking languages, but not much.

But if you look solely at verbal agreement, which can occur in combination with dependent marking, he does suggest that languages with applicatives are more likely to have agreement with two participants than languages without:

Average number of arguments agreed with in sample languages with applicatives = 1.72
Average number of arguments agreed with in sample languages without applicatives = 1.32

Peterson says:

Thus, one of the the things which appeared to be a primary discourse motivation for applicative constructions - giving participants access to (verbal) pronominal coding - turns out to be one of the things which possibly sets languages of the sample with applicative constructions apart from those without them.

He also finds that if you look at case marking specifically, compared to other kinds of dependency marking, then languages with case are probably less likely to have applicatives, and conversely languages with applicatives are more likely to have adpositions and locative nouns instead of case. Nevertheless, 15/39 case languages in his sample have some form of applicative.

Note that "moving the topical constituent to the front", as you suggest above, requires that it's actually present in the clause. Since in many languages the preferred encoding for a topical constituent is zero and/or agreement only, applicatives are still potentially useful in languages with flexible word order. They allow the promoted object to be realised only by the applicative suffix + verbal agreement.

Peterson does not find any statistically significant correlation between applicative constructions and restrictions on relativisation based on his sample.

My language has following typology:

1. Case is present, as preposition. For example the nominative marker is

   Code: Select all

   ko

2. There is three pronomial agreement in the verb: Nominative, Accussative, and Benefactive.
3. SVO word order, but underlyingly verb initial with fronting for topic.
4. There is no passive construction. (When English use passive, this language uses 4th person)

[chris_notts]

I haven't posted anything here in a while because I've been researching and mulling things over. In particular, I've been reading more about Salish transitivity and control morphology. This has been a bit of a struggle since there don't seem to be that many freely available papers that give a good description of how this distinction actually works in practice.

Here's an example of a good paper:

Control in Skwxwu7mesh
https://open.library.ubc.ca/cIRcle/coll ... /1.0071786

An important point the paper makes is that the distinction between "control" and "out of control" may not actually be directly about control at all. Instead, the control is an implicature arising from the aspectual semantics of the suffixes. The starting point is that the +control and -control suffixes differ in whether successful termination is implied or asserted. -control is focused on the termination of the event, whereas +control only really asserts that it started. There is a difference in Skwxwu7mesh between the following two sentences, the first being allowed but the second being contradictory:

He built_+control a house, but he didn't finish <-- "normal" start and course of event, but termination a cancellable implicature

*He built_-control a house, but he didn't finish <-- termination asserted by first clause makes the second clause contradictory, focus on ending not start of event. Common interpretations of -control are "managed to", "finally", "accidentally", "able to" in future/negative contexts

The paper argues that the +control suffix is favoured when the event resembles a normal transitive event, e.g. volitionally instigated, with an agent in control. Because the -control suffix is focused on the end point and is more marked, its use often, but not always, implies that the initiation and execution was in some way defective.

However, because of their different aspectual focus, +control and -control transitivisers may also change the meaning of the verb. For example, the same root means "chase" with a +control transitive suffix, but "catch" with a -control suffix. "Chase" is an activity without a natural/successful end point, but because the -control suffix is end-point focused and inherently telic, it adds a natural end point when used to give the chase -> catch shift.

A comparison is also drawn by the authors between this intra-language distinction and a inter-language distinction. Other papers cited divide natural languages into "I-languages" and "D-languages" depending on whether accomplishment verbs normally assert they end point or merely imply it. If they assert it, then the language is a "D-language" and accomplishments pattern more like achievements. If they imply it, then the language is an "I-language" and accomplishments pattern more like activities. The following are given as examples:

D-languages: Chinese, English, Finnish and Haitian Creole
I-languages: Icelandic, Irish and Japanese

I've struggled to find much in the way of proof or examples for this distinction, and I don't speak Icelandic, Irish or Japanese so I can't test it directly either...

The issue for me, if I do borrow this concept of overt control marking, is (a) whether I retain the aspectual differences or not, (b) if so, how this interacts without other morphology that can effect telicity, e.g. the telic uses of the spatial preverbs, and (c) whether the resulting system feels too kitchen-sinky or not.

[akam chinjir]

I recently came across the sentence 我殺了John兩次，他都沒死 I killed John two times, he's still not dead---which was claimed to be good Mandarin, shā 殺 not implying culmination, unlike English "kill." (I don't have my own instincts on this one, and only remembered to ask one friend about it, and that discussion was pretty inconclusive.)

iirc, it was in a discussion of resultative constructions in Mandarin and Japanese (another area where people group English with Chinese and contrast both with Japanese).

[Kuchigakatai]

I recently came across the sentence 我殺了John兩次，他都沒死 I killed John two times, he's still not dead---which was claimed to be good Mandarin, shā 殺 not implying culmination, unlike English "kill." (I don't have my own instincts on this one, and only remembered to ask one friend about it, and that discussion was pretty inconclusive.)

iirc, it was in a discussion of resultative constructions in Mandarin and Japanese (another area where people group English with Chinese and contrast both with Japanese).

I asked a native speaker of Mandarin (from Taiwan) about that sentence, and he confirmed it's correct. He said that the easiest contexts he'd imagine that sentence being used in would be either videogames or mosquitoes.

[akam chinjir]

Okay, I think I get it. (Another friend came up with cockroaches and zombies, and other horror movie monsters, and agreed it made sense in video games and also wrt the Terminator.)

...and I found my source, here. The claim there is that Mandarin accomplishment verbs don't imply culmination---which would actually make Mandarin an I(nitiation) language in the Ritter/Rosen typology.

It's a bit complicated: generally you'll force a culminating meaning with a resultative complement---like in shā sǐ 殺死 kill dead---but not without a resultative, even when you've got perfective le 了.

...which is all fascinating to me, and I wish I had a better grasp of it. Only just starting to think seriously about telicity in Akiatu, myself.

The issue for me, if I do borrow this concept of overt control marking, is (a) whether I retain the aspectual differences or not, (b) if so, how this interacts without other morphology that can effect telicity, e.g. the telic uses of the spatial preverbs, and (c) whether the resulting system feels too kitchen-sinky or not.

If the dissertation you linked is correct, though, your model isn't really a case of overt control marking, it's aspect marking that can implicate (lack of) control. (Are there languages in other families that seem to mark control overtly?---Might they be subject to the same sort of analysis?)

[chris_notts]

Okay, I think I get it. (Another friend came up with cockroaches and zombies, and other horror movie monsters, and agreed it made sense in video games and also wrt the Terminator.)

I'm confused now. Can you elaborate on the metaphors involved?

...which is all fascinating to me, and I wish I had a better grasp of it. Only just starting to think seriously about telicity in Akiatu, myself.

This is the thing that's hardest about conlanging, the unknown unknowns. Until I read the Salish papers, I didn't even conceive that languages might differ in this way.

If the dissertation you linked is correct, though, your model isn't really a case of overt control marking, it's aspect marking that can implicate (lack of) control. (Are there languages in other families that seem to mark control overtly?---Might they be subject to the same sort of analysis?)

My understanding is that the exact semantics vary across the family. Others have non-control markers with modal functions, or maybe require non-control with certain non-animate / sentient subjects, etc. I haven't seen a thorough summary/typology, and one may not even exist.

I think the options are:

1. Copy the Squamish system
2. Remove / modify the aspectual linkages and add other stuff, i.e. make up what I want and forget about having a well documented natlang precedent
3. Forget about the +/- control distinction completely

I've been considering (2). Sint verb agreement is already sensitive to topicality, so I quite like the idea of a -control suffix which is obligatory for many transitives when the actor is inanimate, e.g.:

Animate actor:

I cut_+control the dress

Inanimate actor cannot be _+control if patient is significantly affected:

*The knife cut_+control the dress

Possible alternatives:

The knife cut_-control the dress
Someone cut_+control the dress with the knife <-- Sint has an impersonal agreement prefix

[akam chinjir]

Okay, I think I get it. (Another friend came up with cockroaches and zombies, and other horror movie monsters, and agreed it made sense in video games and also wrt the Terminator.)

I'm confused now. Can you elaborate on the metaphors involved?

The idea is (I think) that these are all cases where it's relatively normal to have an experience as of killing something, but have the thing turn out not actually dead. (Like, the Terminator keeps coming back.)

It's not quite the same as the Skwxwu7mesh examples, because you couldn't use shāle 殺了 merely if the person had started a killing (is kill an achievement verb?).

I think the options are:

1. Copy the Squamish system
2. Remove / modify the aspectual linkages and add other stuff, i.e. make up what I want and forget about having a well documented natlang precedent
3. Forget about the +/- control distinction completely

I've been considering (2). Sint verb agreement is already sensitive to topicality, so I quite like the idea of a -control suffix which is obligatory for many transitives when the actor is inanimate, e.g.:

Animate actor:

I cut_+control the dress

Inanimate actor cannot be _+control if patient is significantly affected:

*The knife cut_+control the dress

Possible alternatives:

The knife cut_-control the dress
Someone cut_+control the dress with the knife <-- Sint has an impersonal agreement prefix

It seems like it should make sense.

Are they both marked, or just -control?

[chris_notts]

The idea is (I think) that these are all cases where it's relatively normal to have an experience as of killing something, but have the thing turn out not actually dead. (Like, the Terminator keeps coming back.)

It's not quite the same as the Skwxwu7mesh examples, because you couldn't use shāle 殺了 merely if the person had started a killing (is kill an achievement verb?).

I think kill must be an achievement. Certainly it sounds a bit off with a durative adverbial and a singular object:

??I've been killing that cockroach all day

Of course, if you have a plural object then this is acceptable with an iterative reading:

I've been killing cockroaches all day

It seems like it should make sense.

Are they both marked, or just -control?

Complicated, I guess? In the Salish case, it seems like normally both are marked since almost any transitive clause has one or more overt transitive markers, depending on how you analyse them morphologically. In Sint, I was originally thinking of having a small class of root transitives for events which it's difficult to conceive of as "just happening" without an external causer, so you'd have two cases:

root transitives: unmarked = control, marked = -control
root intransitives: both overtly marked by different transitivisers

[alynnidalar]

I think kill must be an achievement. Certainly it sounds a bit off with a durative adverbial and a singular object:

??I've been killing that cockroach all day

I think that can work with something that legitimately doesn't stay dead--e.g. in a videogame with a respawning enemy, I think you could validly say "I've been killing that boss all afternoon". If it's simply something that you think you've killed but haven't, I think you have to say "I've been trying to kill that cockroach all day".

[kodé]

I think kill must be an achievement. Certainly it sounds a bit off with a durative adverbial and a singular object:

??I've been killing that cockroach all day

I think that can work with something that legitimately doesn't stay dead--e.g. in a videogame with a respawning enemy, I think you could validly say "I've been killing that boss all afternoon". If it's simply something that you think you've killed but haven't, I think you have to say "I've been trying to kill that cockroach all day".

In the videogame example, there will still be separate instances of killing, though, right? And after each instance, the boss comes back to life (I'm feeling boss-fight frustrations thinking about it!). This is similar to the plural object thing, then: the achievement verb + durative adverbial gives repetition of individual instances of the achievement (iterative, as chris_notts said), rather than extending it into an accomplishment.

chris_notts, I think the strategy for using a -control verb with an inanimate actor makes sense.