Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Detail #76: Lack of first person polar question verb marking

Imagine a language with subject congruence on the verb, as well as a somewhat fused polar question marker, here presented in tabular form:

Morphology (only singulars given)
1p2p3p
indicative-al-ta-nu
polar q---tes-nes

Now, the lack of a polar question marker for the first person is kind of reasonable (although this would possibly make even more sense for, say, ergative subject congruence, as it seems more likely that a speaker would be aware of what transitive actions he is performing, and less certain regarding intransitive actions - 'am I going to die?', 'do I look unkempt?').

However, sometimes you may want to ask a rhetorical question in the first person or a question about your future and so on, and that is where the fun begins. Possible approaches:


  • Some kind of case marking (or adposition) marking: me-gen, lead-3pQ the army? 
  • Some kind of additional verb phrase: Is-3pQ me, lead-3pQ the strike? (in a language where the complement of 'to be' is marked as an object)
  • Some other kind of additional verb phrase: lead-3pQ the strike, I am? Some devoted verb?

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