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Free-Word-Order Serial-Verbs & Concordial Verb-Classes
Posted: Fri Jul 26, 2019 6:45 am
by TomHChappell
Does anyone know of any natlang(s) that have or had both free word-order and serial verb constructions?
If so, what were these FWO SVC languages?
And what strategies do or did they use to say which participant-nouns go with which verbs?
Or do all real-life SVC natlangs use word-order a lot?
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Relatedly;
Does anyone know of any natural language that has concordial verb-classes?
If so, what are they and where can someone find out how they work?
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ObConLang:
There seem to be three or four conlangs, like Chris Bates’s ngwaalq’ and Lao Kou’s Gearthnuns and Jesse Bangs’s Yivrian and something by John Vertical, with concordial verb-classes.
Are there more?
And, which and whose conlangs are FWO SVC?
Re: Free-Word-Order Serial-Verbs & Concordial Verb-Classes
Posted: Fri Jul 26, 2019 7:34 am
by Xwtek
What is concordial verb-classes?
Re: Free-Word-Order Serial-Verbs & Concordial Verb-Classes
Posted: Fri Jul 26, 2019 11:51 am
by Kuchigakatai
Another person (I don't think it was TomHChappell?) asked this question in another forum, and an explanation of that term was given:
eldin raigmore wrote:See
https://listserv.brown.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A ... 06&P=11582
Also see
https://listserv.brown.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A ... 88&P=26520
And
https://listserv.brown.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A ... E06&P=5396
And look at
https://wals.info/chapter/30,
https://wals.info/chapter/31,
https://wals.info/chapter/32, and
https://wals.info/chapter/44.
A concordial verb-class would be a lexically-inherent obligatory (ie every verb has one) feature of the verb, not necessarily marked on the verb itself, with which some other words would be required sometimes to agree, or concord.
The words which would have to be marked to agree with the verb’s class, might include its auxiliaries, and/or its adverbs, and/or pro-verbs that co-refer with it, and/or some or all of its arguments.
The verb-class might be semantically based, like ingestive verbs or venitive verbs or andative verbs.
Class might be morphologically based, like first conjugation or third conjugation or whatever.
Class might be phonologically based, like first or last consonant or vowel of the verb-root.
It might be syntactically based, like intransitive vs monotransitive vs ditransitive, or, can’t have a clause as an argument vs must have a clause as an argument vs may or may not have a clause as an argument.
Or some classes might be pretty arbitrary. Like normal verbs vs differential-object-marked “quirky-cased object” verbs vs “quirky-cased subject” verbs.
I replied that Arabic "verbal nouns" (akin to infinitives in European languages) take a gender (masculine or feminine), and the gender is unpredictable in basic verbs but much more predictable in derived verbs. Then they can be modified by an adjective which agrees for the gender of the verb and semantically takes adverbial force. A verb can have more than one verbal noun though, and the verbal nouns can differ in gender.
Re: Free-Word-Order Serial-Verbs & Concordial Verb-Classes
Posted: Fri Jul 26, 2019 4:20 pm
by Xwtek
About Concordial Verb-Classes, Kayardild comes close. In Kayardild, noun declined in some cases (the thematic case ones) agree with the verb in TAM. Example:
ngada waanangku wangarru ngijinmarunangku thabujumarunangku
- ŋat̪-ta waː-c-naŋ-kuu-Ø waŋar-kuu ŋicu-iɲ-maɻu-t̪-naŋ-kuu-Ø t̪apucu-maɻu-t̪-naŋ-kuu-Ø
- 1SG-T sing-TH-NEG-POT song-FUT 1SG-POSS-DAT-TH-NEG-POT e.brother-DAT-TH-NEG-POT
I won't sing a song for my brother.
Notice how -NEG-POT is copied to the dative noun. Ironically in Kayardild, adverb doesn't agree with verb, but it can be fixed by saying adverb being basically verbs. Or it's is noun with -INS/LOC, which then agree with the verb. So something like Gearthnuns should be realistic.
Thanks Ser for telling what is Concordial Verb Classes.
Re: Free-Word-Order Serial-Verbs & Concordial Verb-Classes
Posted: Fri Jul 26, 2019 9:59 pm
by Vardelm
I think I'm correct in saying TomHChappell = Eldin Raigmore.
Also, Hi Tom! Good to see a post from you on this board.
Re: Free-Word-Order Serial-Verbs & Concordial Verb-Classes
Posted: Fri Jul 26, 2019 10:15 pm
by akam chinjir
Googling nonconfigurational serial verb gets some hits, for example some involving an Australian language named Wambaya. It's an interesting case, because (from just glancing at the abstract to one paper) it's serial verbs aren't in iconic order, though it's supposed to be a very robust generalisation that they are in iconic order, regardless of the word order typology of the language.
(That means that if V₁ precedes V₂ temporally or causally or however, the serial verb will be V₁ V₂, not the other way around.)
Re: Free-Word-Order Serial-Verbs & Concordial Verb-Classes
Posted: Fri Jul 26, 2019 11:42 pm
by TomHChappell
akam chinjir wrote: ↑Fri Jul 26, 2019 10:15 pm
Googling
nonconfigurational serial verb gets some hits, for example some involving an Australian language named Wambaya. It's an interesting case, because (from just glancing at the abstract to one paper) it's serial verbs aren't in iconic order, though it's supposed to be a very robust generalisation that they
are in iconic order, regardless of the word order typology of the language.
(That means that if
V₁ precedes
V₂ temporally or causally or however, the serial verb will be
V₁ V₂, not the other way around.)
Thank you!
This is uniquely helpful.
I’ll look into that today!
(And BTW eldin raigmore is the screenname I use for most conlanging activity. Here and on Facebook I use my real name instead. For conworlding and SF I have yet a third preferred screenname. )
Thank you!