Wednesday, June 23, 2021

Detail #411: Some Nouns are Auxiliaries

Consider a system where a few nouns when they are subjects or objects instead inflect like auxiliaries. When the noun has the role of a subject, it is inflected in third person. As objects, they require the infinitive to be in some kind of antipassive-like form.

Sometimes, these auxiliaries can convey information about a subject that is a noun.

Consider, for instance, if "team" was one such noun-verb monstrosity. Now, one could for instance construct a thing like

Erin and Pekka team.3pl.pres fight monsters / E & P, as a team, fight monsters.

However, "team.3pl.pres fight.inf monsters" would simply mean "the team fights monsters". 

I team.1sg.pres fight-antipassive dummy-acc-plur would simply mean "I fight (the/a) teams" 

 

I will in a later post consider some quite different nouns that could have quite different side-effects in a system like this. 

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