Conlang Random Thread

[bradrn]

Don't mean to be snarky, but I'm frustrated by talking about things that don't need to be said. I've been conlanging for 10+ years, I know very well the ambiguity and flexibility of terminology. And I think we all agree that pluractionality is about an action itself being plural, and that results in all sorts of different semantic (aspectual) manifestations.

If the basic meaning of a marker is completeness, I wouldn’t call it a pluractional.

Well no, it's not the basic meaning, the basic meaning is a plurality of action. Completeness is just one manifestation of that.

didn't Creyeditor just explain this to you and I? its the number of events, not about number of the arguments.

Those two often go together, though. That’s one of the things which make this such an interesting area.

(Of course, there are many languages where pluractionality and object number are marked independently, e.g. Georgian.)

[Ahzoh]

Don't mean to be snarky, but I'm frustrated by talking about things that don't need to be said. I've been conlanging for 10+ years, I know very well the ambiguity and flexibility of terminology. And I think we all agree that pluractionality is about an action itself being plural, and that results in all sorts of different semantic (aspectual) manifestations.

If the basic meaning of a marker is completeness, I wouldn’t call it a pluractional.

Well no, it's not the basic meaning, the basic meaning is a plurality of action. Completeness is just one manifestation of that.

didn't Creyeditor just explain this to you and I? its the number of events, not about number of the arguments.

I said plurality of action (i.e. events or states) not plurality of participants (though they often go together).

It was only you who had confused grammatical number (quantity of participants) with pluractionality (and which Creyeditor clarified for you), but I was not confused on that.

[Ahzoh]

There is a concept map of pluractionality, which is pretty complex

semanticmapofpluractionality.png (43.41 KiB) Viewed 71 times

Hittite for example:

More: show

hittitepluractional.png (128.5 KiB) Viewed 71 times

And Beja:

More: show

bejapluractional.png (76.65 KiB) Viewed 71 times

I only want one pluractional marker (PM), so I want to decide on an optimal semantic range that can be used for most verbs. For example, I can't think of a pluractional meaning to stative verbs like "be good" or "be old" other than "participant plurality". Maybe they can't be pluractional.

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The more I try to understand it the less appealing the idea becomes, especially when I don't understand it enough to know when such a form should be used.

[bradrn]

There is a concept map of pluractionality, which is pretty complex

Reference(s) please? I always like semantic maps.

The more I try to understand it the less appealing the idea becomes, especially when I don't understand it enough to know when such a form should be used.

I’m going to suggest another reference here: Wood 2007 (open-access). Chapters 4 and 5 are in-depth studies of pluractionality in Yurok and Chechen, respectively.

[Richard W]

I only want one pluractional marker (PM), so I want to decide on an optimal semantic range that can be used for most verbs. For example, I can't think of a pluractional meaning to stative verbs like "be good" or "be old" other than "participant plurality". Maybe they can't be pluractional.

How about multiple manifestations of the quality? So for "be old" we might have a pluractional meaning "to act senile". I may be being misled by the non-stative English "to be good", whose meaning can include "to behave oneself", as in "I was being good while the visitors were here".

[Ahzoh]

There is a concept map of pluractionality, which is pretty complex

Reference(s) please? I always like semantic maps.

A November 2016 presentation by Simone Mattiola that this article on Hittite Pluractionality also references. And I can't seem to post the PDF I have. Since they also go over the semantic maps of PMs in Maa and Akawaio

[Ahzoh]

I only want one pluractional marker (PM), so I want to decide on an optimal semantic range that can be used for most verbs. For example, I can't think of a pluractional meaning to stative verbs like "be good" or "be old" other than "participant plurality". Maybe they can't be pluractional.

How about multiple manifestations of the quality? So for "be old" we might have a pluractional meaning "to act senile". I may be being misled by the non-stative English "to be good", whose meaning can include "to behave oneself", as in "I was being good while the visitors were here".

The statives I mentioned in particular are attributive. Like verbal equivalents to adjectives. Though at least in Semitic languages, attributive verbs end up becoming inchoative or inceptive (e.g. to be old > to become old; to be good > to become good) while their adjective counterparts remain attributive.

[bradrn]

There is a concept map of pluractionality, which is pretty complex

Reference(s) please? I always like semantic maps.

A November 2016 presentation by Simone Mattiola that this article on Hittite Pluractionality also references. And I can't seem to post the PDF I have. Since they also go over the semantic maps of PMs in Maa and Akawaio

Thanks!