Mei

[bradrn]

I just noticed the Mei grammar. Is this new? I can’t recall seeing it before, but the date is May 2023…

(Making this a new thread in case I or anyone else want to say comment further about Mei.)

(Also, hah, it’s an interesting coincidence that the Mei grammar should be dated to May, isn’t it?)

[zompist]

Yeah, I'm not great at publicizing new things.

It was posted on the Patreon, and now it's public (and html-ized).

[BGMan]

The excerpt from Koi Ɣanai... was that a stand-up comedy routine that he or a friend wrote down?

[zompist]

The excerpt from Koi Ɣanai... was that a stand-up comedy routine that he or a friend wrote down?

It is rather written like stand-up comedy, yes. No bio yet for the man, though.

[evmdbm]

Transitive bodily actions on another person are nominative-accusative; but if they’re done on oneself (i.e. they’re reflexive), they’re ergative.

Koi tezaɣu. Tezaño.
Koi shave-past.1>3s / shave-past.ø>1s
I shaved Koi. I shaved (myself).

This looks like it might be described in terms of a middle voice from what I know of middle voices. Is that fair? There is a patient but no known/specified agent.

[bradrn]

This looks like it might be described in terms of a middle voice from what I know of middle voices. Is that fair?

Originally I was going to say ‘no’, on the basis that there would be no verbs where the putative ‘middle voice’ alternates with a non-middle form. But in fact there are: it has the effect of a passive on transitive verbs. So I guess you could call it a ‘mediopassive’, as in IE. It’s a weird one, though, because for transitive verbs it’s only passive, with no more prototypically middle meanings like reflexivity.

Another analysis is that this is a split-S system: there are some intransitive verbs where S aligns with A, and others where it aligns with O. (In Mei the latter class is small and closed; this is similar to natlangs like Arikawa.) Although there is again weirdness: usually stative verbs are prototypically S=O, but in Mei that category includes no stative verbs at all.

A third possible analysis is that these verbs really are underlyingly transitive, with a dummy subject. Such things are widely attested, as ‘involuntary state constructions’ (if you’re a Papuanist) or ‘transimpersonals’ (if you’re an Americanist). Typically these have weird subjecthood properties; I don’t know enough on subjecthood properties in Mei to comment.