The Sargaĺk alignment situation has one further quirk. The negative is a lightly 'extended' fluid-s. The negative particle is ort(a)-, which is prefixed to some noun or verb. The distribution of the prefix matters with regards to parsing the information structure.
The lightly extended fluid-s signifies that for intentionally negative verbs, the subject will be in the pegative no matter the transitivity of the verb, but for verbs that are negative by omission or failure to act,intransitive and transitive subjects are absolutive. The exceptional verb forms for 1st and 2nd person singular subjects of ditransitive verbs are also used whenever the subject is pegative in the negative.
If ort(a)- is prefixed to the subject, it signifies that the subject's not carrying out the action is of interest, whereas if ort(a)- is prefixed on another NP, it signifies that the action not being carried out on that NP is of interest. On the verb, ort(a)- just generally negates the whole thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment