Verb Complex Sketch (Requesting Feedback)
Posted: Sun Nov 03, 2019 1:30 pm
I'm working on a new language that has a larger and more involved verb complex that I've experimented with before, and would like some feedback and advice as I start moving into the details of how it all works and start up with the forms that the affixes actually take. I'm going to put up a brief sketch, then lay out the questions on my mind – though any input is welcome!
Evidentiality=Agreement(1)=Aspect(1)=ROOT=Aspect(3)=Aspect(2)=Tense=Direction=Voice=Causative=Applicative=Agreement(2)=Incorporation=Plural=Modal=Nonfinite
My starting questions:
How does this system look as a template? Typologically, are there any elements that play poorly together, or any large implications for how the language functions?
Which of these aspects are likely to lean into each other and develop forms that are fused or exhibit high sandhi?
What are some examples of how real life languages handle internal slots that can have null expression? Wide use of allomorphs, use of brief markers incidcating 'nothing here', or just leaving it up to context and trusting the brain to puzzle it out?
How strictly do different languages assign canonical shapes to stems and affixes vs letting the shapes of words and syllables just play out? What kinds of strategies are common or reasonable to deal with roots that start or end with forms identical to common steam-adjacent prefixes or suffixes?
Evidentiality=Agreement(1)=Aspect(1)=ROOT=Aspect(3)=Aspect(2)=Tense=Direction=Voice=Causative=Applicative=Agreement(2)=Incorporation=Plural=Modal=Nonfinite
- Evidentiality is a binary direct/indirect system, with only indirects marked.
- Agreement is polypersonal – my original sketch has subject prefixes and object suffixes, but I'm learning towards making it a bit more complicated, with the subject prefixes changing shape for some objects / otherwise making object more of a transfix. In any rate, agreement is going to be 1/2/3 person only (with inclusive/exclusive) – no gender marking, and number marking comes later in the verb.
- Aspect is broken into 3 slots here, because I have several (mostly?) non-interacting aspect systems. The prefix is a simple perfective/imperfective (possibly with one unmarked). The suffix slot is broken up into aspects expressed with reduplication (full vs partial, expressing iterative and habitual) and those with suffix (a wider variety that, at the moment, includes continuative, inceptive, terminative, prospective, and durative). Both of the following types may be null.
- Tense includes future, present, and past with three levels of remoteness. Present (or perhaps recent past) may be unmarked.
- Direction indicates whether an action is moving towards, away from, or stationary relative to the object. This may change or expand in category (my inspiration languages also indicate things ”towards or from the sea” / ”towards or from shelter”).
- Voice can be unmarked for a typical active reading, or indicate a reflexive~reciprocal meaning and at least one passive – I'm playing around with including a separate voice with more of a middle meaning, an accidental separate from the passive, or a kind of resultative stative.
- I originally had causative and applicative included under voice, but I think they make more set as separate slots, to allow for things like a causative passive, or reflexive with an applicative. This may change back, or experience some sort of collapse or fusion.
- Incorporation is based on a (closed) system of object shape classifiers, which will be common with certain set expressions and ditransitive verbs, but otherwise mostly used to clarify an argument which isn't explicit in the clause.
- Plural marking indicates one (or more) of the arguments the verb agrees with is plural (or dual).
- Modal arguments (can, want, must) are most commonly indicates via suffixes here.
- The final nonfinite category includes an array of possible suffixes that transform the verb into a non-main clause, including a subjunctive morpheme, relativization, and several nominalizers.
My starting questions:
How does this system look as a template? Typologically, are there any elements that play poorly together, or any large implications for how the language functions?
Which of these aspects are likely to lean into each other and develop forms that are fused or exhibit high sandhi?
What are some examples of how real life languages handle internal slots that can have null expression? Wide use of allomorphs, use of brief markers incidcating 'nothing here', or just leaving it up to context and trusting the brain to puzzle it out?
How strictly do different languages assign canonical shapes to stems and affixes vs letting the shapes of words and syllables just play out? What kinds of strategies are common or reasonable to deal with roots that start or end with forms identical to common steam-adjacent prefixes or suffixes?