Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Challenge: Do "Fluid-Inverse" Languages Exist? What Could We Do With Such a Typological Thing?

Inverse alignment is of course interesting by itself. We have verbs that are marked for whether the subject is higher or lower on some hierarchy (usually something like 1 > 2 > 3 ( 3 prox > 3 obv) > animates of various types > inanimates of various types).

Now, this mentions nothing of the situation with intransitive verbs! One could imagine a bunch of things going on there. (But at the moment, I have not had any good ideas, and hope to post a few tomorrow, maybe.)

[+Inverse, +Intransitive] could indicate non-volitionality - much like absolutive indicates non-volitionality in Fluid-S languages.

However, could we have it to indicate something else? If so, what'd be a reasonable thing for it to indicate?

Also, anyone who knows of such a language is welcome to inform me of it.

No comments:

Post a Comment