Bryatesle: Adpositions vs. Location and some thoughts on Subjecthood and Adpositions

I will be talking about a technical notion of subject for a lot of this post, but at times, I will need to also refer to a less technical notion of subject. Not quite topic, since it's clearly not a role that can be filled by any old NP, nor necessary is it the topical NP. It rather is some vague notion of the quality that distinguishes the NP which in some way is active, whose state or change thereof the verb describes or whose active part in the interaction with some other NP or itself is expressed by the verb. Subjects are defined by certain subjecthood tests, but would almost all exhibit that vague notion (except maybe the subjects of passive verbs), but not all nouns that exhibit these vague notions are strict subjects, nor would pass subjecthood tests.

I will call any NP that carries these vague notions - including proper subjects - subjectids, and any subjectid that is not a subject is a subjectoid.

Proto-BDS did not strictly speaking have grammatical subjects, and their evolution in all the daughter languages showcases traces of the pre-subject state of the language. This statement requires a rather technical notion of what a subject even is, but for now, let's look at what NPs in Bryatesle with any kind of certainty are proper subjects, starting at the most certain:

1st and 2nd person pronouns that trigger verb congruence
proper nouns pertaining to humans that trigger verb congruence

These are, in all analyses, beyond doubt  as far as subjecthood goes.

Third person pronouns with human referents that trigger verb congruence are almost certain to be subjects as well

Here, congruence only really helps determine those cases where explicit congruence is present, e.g. plurals or non-neuters. (The neuter congruence is in fact a kind of zero congruence, as can be seen with the many instances where a verb gets neuter congruence despite no neuter argument being present).

A verb lacking a subject does not necessarily signify that no one or nothing is doing that, or even that who- or whatever is doing is not present in the clause. It simply means there is no noun phrase present with certain syntactical properties - it cannot control reflexives, it cannot undergo certain syntactical operations, it cannot be relativized, etc.

Now, this lax subjectness can be seen with inanimate masculine or feminine subjects:

aryk	tëk	-u	të-	-tyrn	-ai
winter	you	acc	RESLT	kill	3sg neuter
winter	you		(will)	kill

winter will kill you

The non-subjectness of aryk, winter, is not obvious from the example above, but  if we change the structure of the clause a bit we find for instance, the following permissible construction:

ark-ity tëk-u të-tyrn-ai

ark	-ity	tëk	-u	të	-tyrn	-ai
winter	ABL	you	ACC	RSLT	kill	3sg neuter
winter	-from	you		(will)	kill

winter will kill you

It turns out most inanimate nouns can be somewhat subject-like even in the ablative and dative cases.

A similar lack of subjecthood even occurs with intransitive verbs, and we find, for instance, that verbs like 'cease, end', 'begin' or 'last' basically can take an inanimate subjectoid in any case, but is more picky with the case marking on animate subjects. Plural animates may also behave as subjectoids at times, and this seems to correlate with the extent to which the plural animates act as a group or as a bunch of independent agents. Funnily enough, the 'independent agents' end of the spectrum behaves more like inanimate subjectoids than like animate subjects; it seems there is, among Bryatesle speakers a sense that the less internally organized a plural NP is, the less it is like an animate NP.

Neuter nouns fall even lower, however, on the rank of animacy, than inanimate feminine and masculine nouns, and it seems this is the reason why a separate ergative construction has emerged specifically for them. The assumption has been so strong when parsing that a neuter noun is an object if the verb is not intransitive. We shall divert our attention for a while to the formation of the ergative case:

Neuter nouns, when subjects of transitive verbs, take a masculine nominative pronoun as a particle. This pronoun is somewhat phonologically reduced, and comes immediately before the noun. Adjectives preceding the noun mark masculine congruence.

A piece of evidence that quirky case subjectoids are proper subjects in Bryatesle emerge in some dialects: quirky case neuter noun subjects of ~transitive verbs in fact also take the masculine pronoun – in some dialects in the appropriate quirky case, in some only the noun (and adjectives!) are marked for the appropriate quirky case. This could arguably be called 'quirky ergative case'.

Now that we have looked at the notions of subjectids and subjectoids, let's delve further into a different relation that oftentimes is one between two nouns; that encoded by adpositions. An adposition can relate not just a verb to a noun, e.g. telling the location of a verb's occurrence, but also of nouns related to that verb, or even more specifically, telling us about the location or direction of a noun. Like with subjectids, we sometimes get nouns displaced from their adposition, either due to them being fronted as topics, or due to some other noun being more strongly attracted to the adposition. Maybe we could name this relation anchors in lack of any better term. We get a similar set of anchors, anchoroids, anchorids. 

The oblique/obliquid/obliquoid generally sort of is analogous to the object of a verb phrase, but sometimes, an adposition also has something similar to a subject as well - e.g. in simple statements of where something is - "John is in Western Papua". In English - and mostly in Bryatesle - such NPs are not just similar to subjects, they are subjects. However, we do get situations where the notional subject of the adpositional phrase is not the subject of the VP:

I put the bottles in the refrigerator
The children found berries in the forest

Bryatesle has a tendency of not wanting to have the topic be the object of an adposition, but it also has a tendency of not wanting to have adpositions without NPs. Thus, if we were to topicalize 'refrigerator', we would get the following transformations:

I put [bottle.acc.] [[refrigerator.dat.def] in]
→ refrigerator.dat.def I [put bottle.acc] [[_____(.dat.def)] in]
→ refrigerator.dat.def I [Ø →] [[put bottle.dat] in] 

Secondary case is not as closely tied to morphosyntax as primary case is, and so does not carry over, whereas the primary case is morphosyntactical in nature, and therefore the erstwhile 'subject' of the postposition now does adopt the case the object previously had, but usually remains on the left-hand side of the adposition.

In some sense, verbs and objects behave in a similar manner here: verbs push certain types of subjectids away from being actual subjects, but rather some kind of oblique argument with subject-like properties. Somethings, postpositions push anchorids away from being anchors and into being oblique objects with anchor-like properties.

However, looking at it from a different direction they seem very different:

Verbs permit non-subject subjectoid nouns to be parsed as agents, and do not require syntactic gaps to be filled. Postpositions do not permit gaps, but permit anchors to become objects in order to fill them.

This treatment is probably a bit too technical, but this should be read as a policy statement rather than an actual grammatical treatment. This is a post clearing up some of my thoughts on this issue, attempting to form a coherent idea of the Bryatesle subjects

Ćwarmin: Sometimes Mandatorily Passive Verbs

Ćwarmin has a set of verbs which require passive forms whenever some requirements for the subject is violated. These requirements come in three main types, two of which relate to the animacy hierarchy. This requirement seems to be related to the inverse alignment of Ŋʒädär, but not an inherited cognate - rather, it may be due to convergence with Ŋʒädär.

1. Absolute Animacy Hierarchy Restrictions

The verb 'kill' only permits animate subjects, but can take non-animate agents, and thus has an absolute restriction on the hierarchy restriction - basically, there is a line drawn across the hierarchy which limits it. With inanimate agents, the passive is required, and the agent is in the general ablative case.

A typical example of this would be the verb 'kill', which cannot take a proper inanimate subject, so e.g.

*ilmis arbaŋ-utus kerb-i-ś
*winter killed the herd

arbaŋ ilm-erəś kerb-eśp
the herd was killed by the winter

*nəlve iś kerb-i-ś
an arrow killed him

i nəlv-erəś kerb-eśp
(s)he was killed by an arrow

Another would be 'utter/express/signal/...', which basically is the same verb as 'exhale', hifnəs.

*ədnist marćost-uc hifn-i-ś
silence expresses agreement

marćost ədnist-erəś hifn-e-kn-eśp
agreement is expressed through silence (note: -e-kn- is really the applicative morpheme -ken-, and the reason the applicative is used here has to do with the argument structure of hifn-, which really means something like 'breathe'; consider the -ken- similar to a prefixed preposition or adverb, only, it does not appear in the active forms of the verb all that often).

All  of these need to be rendered in the passive (or applicative) to be grammatical in Ćwarmin.

2. Relative Animacy Hierarchy Restrictions

With many verbs, a less animate noun cannot be subject with a verb whose object is more animate. These include any verb indicating fights (ampac, nenŋel, ćasćar - all signifying fighting), causing movement sideways or upwards (hegec - push, hegtəm - pull, salkum - lift, raise, kunkun - to shake to-and-fro, vabžum - pull in by rope, liŋbəl - to move a significant distance by pulling, žal - to carry),...

The main difference here from the previous class is that low-ranked nouns can be subjects, provided the object has lower or equal rank. Thus,

ćiriŋ kosdan-uc salkum-i-ś
the tripod lifts the tent fabric

onkup estnet-uc hegədm-i-ś
the weight pulls the rope

are permitted, but not

*onkup vond-uc hegədm-i-ś
the weight pulls the horse

which would require

vond onkup-araś hegt-eśp

3. Lexically Specified

This is an odd, but limited bunch.

mamnan -  to put a child to sleep

Only the mother of the child can be the proper subject, any other agent must be oblique.

ŋačćur  - to wear a piece of clothing

The restriction here is related to tense rather than to subject or object - non-present and non-imperative must be passive.

biəkin - to endure

Passive whenever the object is not indefinite.

luzǯar -  to praise

passive whenever the object is inanimate.

The Finnish Partitive Case

The Finnish partitive case is a good example of just how versatile a case can be in a language. I'll start out with a bunch of terminology, but I'll break down what the terms mean down the line - this article isn't just meant for hobbyists, it's also meant for Finnish learners or even somewhat proficient non-native speakers for whom the partitive still is a bit of a mystery. Among its uses we find:

• most direct objects (something like 80%)
  

  direct objects are nouns that are acted on, e.g.
  I bought a cup of coffee
  she saw a movie

• a bunch of complements

  complements in this context are adjectives or nouns that are analogous to objects, but with verbs of being or becoming, e.g.
  she is strong
  he is a scout
  Russia is the largest country by area
  

• with numbers and certain quantifiers ('monta' - many , 'paljon' - a lot, etc)
• existential subjects, even more so when the subject is a mass noun
• closely related to the existential subjects: subjects of statements of amounts
• lots of times "mikä" ('what'), which is nominative, is replaced for no clear reason at all by "mitä" ('what'), which is partitive. In the region of Finland Proper (Varsinaissuomi) this extends to "kuka" ('who'), which is regularly replaced by "ketä" ('who(m)'), even when the nominative is called for
  
• for the standard of comparison in comparative constructions
• some frozen expressions where it basically sort of is a catch-all case
• sometimes exceptional forms of nouns look a lot like a partitive, and may have some odd uses (e.g. the word home, "koti" has "kotoa", dialectally "kotoota", which differ from the regular partitive "kotia"; for the record, "koti" has a slightly odd locative series going. However, koti is an odd noun in itself, with several pairs of different forms where one refers to one's home, the other to housing situations in general of some sort)
• 'among' or 'one of' in the plural partitive.  This is especially common with the superlative, in construction such as 'hän on maan parhaita lastenlääkäreitä' - '(s)he is one of the best pediatricians in the land'.'
• as an adverbializer (kauheeta vauhtia, etc)
• in a bunch of weird fixed expressions, where the adjective is in some other case and the noun is partitive. Similar expressions also exist with adjectives in various cases and the noun in the instructive case.
• with a bunch of adpositions ("adposition" is a term that covers both pre- and postpositions, words akin to English 'to, with' etc. In Finnish, some of these are prepositions, some postpositions, and some can be both.) Apparently, for some adpositions, the partitive is exceptional, but signifies 'unboundedness', e.g. pihan ympäri (yard-gen around) vs. ympäri pihaa (around yard-part) (surrounding the yard vs. around the yard)

The direct object case system is maybe the most important part of this case's usage. So, on to the above headings one at a time. First, a little convention: in some sense, the partitive corresponds to some. I will sometimes use (some) to get smoother "bad" translations that reflect the underlying structure.

For the record, I am not a native speaker of Finnish. I have been in contact with the Finnish language ever since I was a child, but due to a variety of reasons, I am only seminative. I am a native speaker of Swedish, instead. However, this has made me think about Finnish in a more analytical fashion than most native speakers. I do lack some occasional native intuitions.

Historically, the partitive originates with a case that marked location. This has not entirely ceased to be the case.

Direct Objects

Finnish direct objects encode an aspectual distinction called telicity. Telicity refers to whether we consider the action to be successful and complete or not. Compare

mies ampui karhun
man shot bear-GENITIVE

mies ampui karhua
man shot bear-PARTITIVE

In the first instance, the desired result was obtained – a dead bear (or whatever intention there was). In the latter example, the bear was merely shot at.

Some verbs have quirks with regards to this, but generally this will hold. Whenever the verb is negative, the object is always partitive, so in effect telicity is not marked on negative verb phrases. A friend of mine once pointed out that for 'naughty' verbs, the object is almost always partitive. Since the negative removes the distinction, you can't distinguish, e.g. when ei panna means 'not put' and 'not fuck' based on the form of the object. As I pointed out, the partitive originates as a location marker. Here, we find a similar development of a locative marker in English:

I shot the bear
vs.
I shot at the bear

The former implies a hit, the latter a miss or a failure to subdue the bear by the shot. In weirdly colloquial English, using 'some' operates entirely differently from the partitive, e.g.

I shot me some bear

this phrase would imply telicity, so "some" sometimes gives the wrong idea here.

Complements

The complement is whatever something is said to be. (Also whatever something is said to become, but Finnish deals with that in a special manner.) There are certain circumstances where the complement will be in the partitive in Finnish.

It is quite common for the complement to be partitive if there is no subject at all or if the subject is a subclause or an infinitival phrase, but a few adjectives such as 'hyvä' seem to resist this. 'Ikävä', 'paha', 'hauska' seem to appear rather frequently in the nominative there.

Complements that encode materials out of which something is made tend to be partitive:

tämä kolikko on kulta-a
this coin is gold-part
this coin is (made of) gold

Whenever the subject is abstract or 'general', e.g. "drugs are bad", the complement will be partitive:

kulta on kallis-ta
gold is expensive
huume-et ovat haitalli-s-ia
drugs are harmful.plural.part

With plurals, the partitive is probably more common for the complement than the nominative, but both occur. The difference has to do with whether the subjects are seen as being a 'unit' of some kind (e.g. a pair of shoes vs. just a bunch of shoes or shoes generally) or not. A unit gets a nominative plural complement, a "non-unit bunch" gets the partitive. With complements that are nouns, the nominative plural might also appear in some situations where the complement is thought of as definite, but this often requires some additional attributes, e.g.

miehet tuossa ovat just ne konsultit jotka vei firman konkurssiin
men there are exactly those consults who brought the company to bankruptcy

Even in that case, the subject probably are seen as a group, and as such as some form of unit.
Some "google corpus linguistics" gave this example:

Raha ja nälkä ovat ne konsultit, jotka ohjaavat maailmaa ja se joka hallitsee rahan hallinnoi nälän ja siten tanssittaa koko orkesterin

money and hunger is-PLUR that.PLUR consult-PLUR.NOM, which-PLUR-REL steer-III.plur world.part and it which-REL control-III money-GEN manage-III hunger-GEN and that-INSTR dance-CAUSE whole orchestra-GEN

money and hunger are the consultants that steer the world, and whoever controls the money manages the hunger and thus makes the whole orchestra dance. 

 

In this case it's of course possible that consult is the subject and 'raha and nälkä' are the complements, but I find it more likely to parse this as a statement about the identity of raha and nälkä rather than a statement about ne konsultit, jotka ...

This bit, the case of the complement, is the hardest part of this to express for me, since the exact shades of meaning expressed by selecting one case or another are not something I am well versed in describing.

Existential Subjects

In English, it's often possible to add a 'there' before certain verbs to express the existence of something:

there are pixies in the garden
there are stars in the sky
there sat gnomes on the lawn

In Finnish, a similar effect can be achieved by having the subject in the partitive. Fun thing: plural marking on the verb is generally omitted then, so not

*koir-ia juokse-vat piha-lla
dog-plur.part run-3plural yard-on
(some) dogs run on the yard
≈ there are dogs running in the yard

but

koir-ia juoksee piha-lla
dog-plur.part run(-s) yard-on
(some) dogs run(s) on the yard
there is (some) dogs running on the yard
≈ there are dogs running in the yard

The wrongly formed English there is intentional in order to illustrate how it is constructed in Finnish.

Negative existential statements always take the partitive:

maito-a ei ole
milk no-3sg be*
there's no milk

* this verb form, "ole", is called the conegative form. It is usually identical to the singular imperative, for almost all verbs.

Statements of Amounts

Subjects whenever the number of things is the important piece of information will be in the partitive:

meitä oli kolme
we-part was three
there were three of us

autoja on kaksitoista
car-plur.part is twelve

Notice, again, how the verb ignores the grammatical number of the subject - it's not ovat (are)/olivat (were), it's on (is)/oli (was) . Unlike with nominal phrases, e.g.

viisitoista auto-a
fifteen car-part

the noun is now in the plural partitive, not the singular

auto-ja on viisitoista
car-plur.part is fifteen

With numbers before nouns, e.g. 'fifteen cars', for the most basic cases the number requires the partitive. This happens for subjects and objects:

neljä miestä lähti retkelle
four man-part went trip-onto
four men went on a trip

ostin kolme kirjaa
buy-past-1sg three book-part
I bought three books

en ostanut kolmea kirjaa
no-1sg bought three-part book-part
I didn't buy three books

Subjects and objects with numbers also take the partitive, and the number is in the nominative for (most) subjects and for telic objects (ones that otherwise are in the nominative or genitive). For the other cases, though, the number and the noun will be in the same case (and for most nouns, they'll be in singular forms). NB: an exception exists - nouns without singular forms will have the singular and the noun in the plural, for all numbers. Yes, even for one - so you get 'yhdet häät', 'yksiä häitä', etc, i.e. "one.plur wedding.plur", "one.plur.part wedding.plur.part".

Paljon (much) takes the partitive singular with uncountable nouns, but the partitive plural with countables. Whenever paljon is in other cases, it takes case and number congruence - paljo.lla vaiva.lla = with great effort, paljo.i.lla synne.i.llä.si = with your many sins.

Standard of Comparisons
With the comparative of adjectives, the partitive is often used a bit like the English 'than':

kynä on miekkaa mahtavampi
pen is sword-part mighty-er
the pen is mightier than the sword

This is, afaict, restricted to comparing subjects or objects. Comparing other types of constituents requires some type of restructuring and using 'kuin' as a direct correspondence to 'than':

minulla on enemmän kuin sinulla
me.with is more than you.with
I have more than you

Mikä/Mitä

Not really much to say about this, but a bit of a side note can be sort of relevant here . Mikä is the nominative of 'what', mitä the partitive, and it seems the partitive is gaining on the nominative, especially in the southwest. In the southwest, even kuka/ke- is having the nominative 'kuka' randomly replaced by 'ketä' in many positions. 

 

 

Default case

In many languages with cases - even English, to the extent that it has cases (in the personal pronouns), usually one case will take on a role as a 'default' case. When a native or proficient speaker is unsure of what case a certain situation calls for, he'll default to that case. 

We find this in how native English speakers use the accusative forms (me, him, her, whom, us, them) in places where other native speakers frown on it. ('you and me', which of course is 'classically' valid in some places such as 'they saw you and me'. Teachers who are incompetent then teach students to say 'you and I', and you get things like 'they saw you and I', which of course is wrong by standard English rules as well.) 

To some extent, it seems like the partitive might be partially taking this default role in Finnish, but since the Finnish case system is pretty rich, I actually think one could posit the existence of a hierarchical tree of default cases – however, I don't think this is established enough among speakers, and you'll find different structures, so some person might prefer -ltA over -stA if he's unsure which of those two to use, some speaker might prefer the other way around, and if the question of which is preferrable include even more options, the partitive wins out.

Discongruent Expressions

[Update: I have written a separate post about these types of expressions, with a bit about their historical background and some more information]

Ok, so there's a few different things under this heading. We have the discongruent expressions, where the adjective is in some case, and the noun is partitive. A similar thing exists with the instructive (which is basically an almost extinct case with regards to nouns), and for some of these examples you can substitute the partitive and the instructive for one another. This is a pretty 'advanced' topic in Finnish, and mastery of it really gives off a slightly refined image.  

This includes examples like

pitkä-ksi aika-a
long-translative time-partitive
for a long time

tä-llä tapa-a
this-on manner-part
in this way

With the instructive instead:

palja-i-lla jalo-i-n
bare-PLUR-on foot-plur-with
with bare feet

nä-i-llä keino-i-n
these-plur-on trick-plur-with
by these tricks

These are "almost" a closed set - there's about two dozen expressions (which I don't recall at the moment!) - with the partitive or the instructive on the noun and some other case on the adjective. However, this is not an entirely closed set - it's semiproductive. It's possible to come up with new ones that sound acceptable to many speakers of Finnish. In part, using the same nouns with some similar adjectives helps to produce somewhat acceptable phrases, e.g.

noilla keinoin
those-... methods...

method is maybe not quite the right translation here, something between method and trick in style would be the best option.

tuolla tapaa
that... manner...

However,  sometimes one can go a bit further and get other adjectives to work:

uudella tapaa
in a new manner

Adverb-like Usages
Sometimes, and this is a bit analogous to the main nouns in the previous point, nouns in  the partitive may signify some sort of adverbial meaning:

hän juoksi kauheeta vauhtia
(s)he ran terrible.part speed.part
(s)he ran with terrible speed

In trying to come up with examples of this, I find that oftentimes, this requires the noun to be preceded by some adjective, and often it will be a slightly dramatical one. However, one could possibly interpret this as some kind of direct object, maybe analogous to some weirdo construction in English such as

he ran (up) great speed

This is basically not good English, but conveys the sort of sense that one could imagine goes through the head of some speakers when using the above construction, i.e. somehow, the speed is the grammatical object of the verb, c.f. to sleep a deep sleep or something like that.

http://scripta.kotus.fi/visk/sisallys.php?p=1234 provides a few examples of other partitive forms that have become adverbs: lujaa (fast, hard), hiljaa (silent, slow), kovaa (hard).

Greetings
Often when greeting someone something, the case of the thing wished for will be in the partitive, e.g.

hyvää iltaa - good evening
hyvää joulua - good christmas
hyvää juhannusta - good midsummer
hyvää päivää - good day

However, sometimes the plural nominative appears instead:

hyvät viikonloput - good(s) weekend(s)
hyvät pikkujoulut - good christmas party
hyvät juhannukset - good midsummer(s)

With nouns that lack singular forms - synttärit, häät, etc, the nominative plural is the usual form, but the nominative plural seems to be creeping onto nouns that do have singulars, esp. named holidays such as christmas, easter, etc.

 A Note about the Direct Object Case System and the Existential Subject System
Since existential subjects almost always are intransitive and often are partitive, and direct objects significantly more often than not are partitive, we get a system that is somewhere close to the edges of what could be called an 'ergative' system if you squint a bit. Despite not being a proper ergative system, it is tempting to consider Finnish as falling into some kind of split-ergative-like thing.

Imperatives and Exceptional Imperatives in Dairwueh

I decided to include imperatives in Dairwueh for a variety of reasons. Here's a few features:

A number of verbs have slight suppletions, c.f.

ak! (sg), aksu! (pl)
go!
kadu - go (inf)

ral! (sg) rallu! (pl)
sasalu - hurry

ten! tessu!
vedeu - help (inf)

vir! virru!
vesu - to listen

sim! smu!
gesem - tell, say

Some verbs drop part of the root:

bar! (sg), barru! (pl)
barinə - to be careful, to get out of the way, to be careful with something

dig! dixu!
endixu - stand

rud! ruxu!
berugu - leave a place

knu! knuvu!
aknuvu - keep, hold

Most roots lose any final vowel, and apply some morpheme out of the set {-u|-su, -ak|-su, -ar|-sur, -g|-xu}, where the left element is the singular and the right element the plural. The morpheme is lexically determined but tends to follow this schematic:

verbs of states: {-ar, -sur}
verbs of movement: {-ak, -su}
verbs of increase, and of stature: {-g, -xu}
other intransitive verbs: {-u, -su}
transitive verbs of applying a state to something: {-g, -xu}
transitive verbs of movement: {-u, -su}
other transitive verbs {-g, -xu}

Usually, the imperative is fronted, but this is not fully mandatory. There are also some syntactical complications. The main syntactical complication are 'imperatives with overt subjects', where some subject other than the addressee is syntactically in some sense the subject of the imperative. One of these is 'san|sannu', signifying 'look'. It can take a third person "subject".

kreruš san vorge
timberman look! strong
look how strong the timberman is

This might seem as an object, but it turns out that these quirky imperative-subjects can be coordinated as subjects of other verbs:

kreruš san vorge ke darav xogebars doŋbat-ta
timberman look! strong and works harder than smith

It also passes some other subjecthood tests, and therefore, peculiarly enough, qualifies as a subject despite the actual subject of the imperativey part of the verb is the second person.

Detail #246: A Subtle Spot for Sneaking Ergative Alignment In

Let's consider nouns with verbal complements, i.e.

a bit to eat
some way to go

Now, let's imagine that the language has intransitive subjects and objects of the embedded verb marked the same way:

a bit to eat
a man to sing

whether these mean 'singing man/eaten bit' or 'a man with the potential of singing' etc is neither here nor there - heck, these need not even really be part of the noun phrase, they could be part of a structure such as:

we need a man to sing
we need a bit to eat

even with a verb where 'to sing|eat' more clearly is an argument of the main verb rather than a part of the noun phrase than in this case. However, let's construct the transitive subject (even with implicit object) differently:

we need a man so he can hunt?
we need a man that hunts?
we need a man for his hunting?
we need a man he to hunt?

This would be a rather restricted place for ergativity to pop up, but it seems fairly realistic to me at least.

Ćwarmin: Complements

Although Ćwarmin does have a verb that can serve as a copula, it is not used very often.

The copula is invariant with regards to subject person. In the present, it is au. In the immediate past, it is amca, in the far past its aun. There is also a negative version, ainik, amśik, aunik.

The following circumstances call for a copula:

• an adjectival complement that is not in the nominative-complement case

Ćwarmin adjectives can have their meanings altered by case suffixes. The particular changes in meaning are described here. Nominative complements signal prevailing or constant qualities of something. Even nominative complements require a copula.

• a complement phrase that is headed by a postposition
• a complement that is a heavy phrase, a phrase that has an embedded verb or consists of lots of words with some structure
• Confirming or affirming a statement about something. Pəćitiś dostur au - spirit-plur.acc.def pay.homage-past-1sg is - I do pay homage to the spirits.
• often, the negative copula is used as a negation particle even in transitive utterances.
• when the tense is relevant and not easily inferred from context
  
• with an implicit quality, or a coordinated or contrasted quality (Ešpək suŕurŋaca l Tuśu au. Eshpək is a widower, as is Tusyu.

Normally, the complement goes sentence-finally if no copula is present. If a copula is present, though, the complement precedes it.

Other verbs that take complements are

dəšip - to be named. The name is generally in the complement case, although the verb also can signify membership in a group. In the latter case, the complement is in the general ablative. The negative case can signify both not being a member or not being called something.

xuvop - to become. Complement case signifies becoming, instrumental signifies intensification for some already present quality. Negative signifies cessation of some quality.

daval - to considered oneself something

Object complements generally only are in the object complement case or the accusative case. Therefore, transitive verbs with complements often have more related forms that code for things that cases would code for with the intransitive verb, i.e.

davlap - to consider someone something (complement goes closer to the verb than the object does)

davlakol - not to consider someone something 

Reflexivity in Tatediem

Tatediem has a complication with regards to its reflexives. Transitive verbs come in two varieties, and for want of a better term I will describe these as endoreflexive verbs and exoreflexive verbs.

Endoreflexive verbs mark reflexivity by the usual object congruence system - when the subject and object markers code for the same gender-number combination, the verb is understood as reflexive.

For exoreflexive verbs, the same construction would be parsed as referring to another entity.

endoreflexive:

Lìwkàmíl sar-ra-m-pìx 

Liwkamil fem.sg-fem.sg-present-wash 

Liwkamil washes her(self)

exoreflexive:

Tíkunam né-é-m-pág 

Tikunam masc.sg-masc.sg-present-see

Tikunam sees him

To obtain a separate object for endoreflexives, an external object is needed:

Kewmokin sar-rá-n-dàket ra-pék

Kewmokin fem.sg-fem.sg-present-"argue-in-favor-of-object" fem.sg-object.particle

Kewmokin argued in her (someone else's) favour

Kewmokin sarrándàket = Kewmokin argued in her (own) favour. 

For exoreflexives, the external object instead codes for reflexiveness, and is prefixed to the object marker -tèb. Further complications exist with regards to things such as congruence when reciprocals appear; there also are some verbs where reflexiveness is assumed for intransitive constructions.

Detail #19: Instrumentals and Possessives

Many languages express X has Y somewhat along the lines of With X is Y. What case or adposition appears with X is language-specific, and can be locative or comitative or anything. Both Finnish and Russian use (mainly) locative expressions.

Some languages mark the object as some kind of oblique, though. English has a phrase that is somewhat similar to it:

She is with child.

Now, that is a rather special case, but illustrates the kind of marking I am discussing here. wals.info informs that this type of construction actually appears. Personally, I find some kind of instrumental marking to be very suitable for this (except maybe in certain specific types of phrases or under some circumstances - restricting this to non-human objects seems rather reasonable, for one, or some similar cultural restriction).

is.1sg  cup.instr - "I have a/the cup"

is.3pl dogs.instr = "they have dogs"

Furthermore, I find it reasonable that the instrumental case could be the case marking for any possessed noun -  the instrumental case doubling as head marking in possessive constructions. Why instrumental? Well, there seems to be a vague correlation between using a thing as a tool and owning it.

The idea by which it becomes evident that I am a one-trick pony is this: reflexive possession of objects marked by the noun object being marked by the instrumental case.

He drive.past.3sg car.instr = he drove his own car

He drive.past.3sg car.acc = he drove a/the car 

Alternatively, the distinction could work like this:

He drive.past.3sg his car.instr = he drove his own car

EDIT: reading through the earlier posts, seems this is fairly close to another post in content. Meh. It is an ok rephrasing that may be easier to understand for people not that familiar with ergativity and such. Well, I will leave it behind and try to avoid similar embarrassment in the future.

He drive.past.3sg his car.acc = he drove his (someone else's) car

Detail #15: Non-trivial Verbal Discongruence

Discongruence is a thing that really interests me. Congruence, of course, is a rather obvious way of increasing redundancy in a language. Marking gender on verbs or adjectives, case on adjectives as well as nouns, gender on both adjectives and nouns [...] are all ways of having some information appear twice or having some extra information appear that may help in case noise appears along the line (which it will).

Some languages have weird discongruences though, such as the Semitic inverse gender marking with some numbers. Some languages have a bunch of set phrases (or half-set, as the construction type may be somewhat productive): Finnish has a bunch of adjective + noun phrases where the adjective is in nearly any of the spatial + role-related cases and the noun is in either the partitive or the instructive (= instrumental) case. Pitkäksi aikaa = long.translative time.part = for a long time, tällä tavoin = this.allative manner.instrument = by this manner, in this manner, like this (adverbial).

Further, some languages permit some discongruence in the verb phrase, like having the verb sometimes be third-person singular rather than the proper, expected person marking (even when not counting things like quirky-case subjects not triggering congruence for their person, or whatever along those lines). I find it likely most languages that do stuff like that tend to permit third person verb marking for non-third person subjects, but how about a language where this is not the case - where any person can get any person's verb marking under some circumstances, like, some lexically determined verbs that just *permit that kind of thing* or with certain phrases or whatnot? (Note: English dialects where the congruence system doesn't line up with standard English verb morphology are not an example.) Preferrably, the exceptional markings should occur seldom enough that they don't affect the default interpretation of the suffixes, but often enough that they are learned and could be part of the language for a wide speech community.

Detail #8: A gender-like thing but with verbs instead

A language where there are three or so classes of verbs. These classes differ in

• what affixes they take to mark different things
• what they mark (e.g. class I marks tense-aspect but no mood, class II marks tense, aspect and mood, but has a less fine-grained tense-aspect system, and class III marks tense, and every verb in it has inherent aspect that cannot be changed morphologically)
• details in the congruence system (class I has gender, person, number agreement for the subject; class II has no agreement, class III has person, number and gender agreement for subject, as well as a really minimal object-related agreement detail, as well as volition marking by means of reduced agreement)

They do not differ by 

• meaning - there's no set of meanings that unite all verbs in one of the class or exclude verbs from some class; auxiliaries can be found in all three. With these exceptions: all verbs of movement are class I verbs, all verbs of possession, exchange of possession and agreements and contracts are in class III.
• intensity, whether they are kinetic or not, transitivity, number of arguments in general, etc.

However, the classes also differ in some other ways:

• subject and object case; class II is somewhat ergative in behavior. Coordinations using nominative and/or accusative is permissible, though, for all classes.
• certain derivative affixes assign a derived verb to a specific class
• infinitives are marked for case according to what the auxiliary's class calls for

Several verbs can be finite in a clause, and which subjects and objects belong to which verb can be distinguished by case (as well as proximity to verbs, if ambiguity has to be counteracted by phrasing). The case distinctions are fewer in the plural than the singular, so this works best with singular subjects.

Detail #3: some analytical tense constructions

In some language where the normal indicative present (progressive) is the simplest tense, morphologically, the active participle is used with copula and whatever verb construction is used in place of to have, to obtain  various TAMs by various constructions. To be is used with intransitive verbs, to have with transitive ones.

subj: nom, (obj: acc),  participle.acc = inchoative
subj: comitative, (obj: acc),  participle.nom = habitual [exceptional in using to be even when an object is present]
subj: dat, obj: instr, participle.nom = indicates that the subject would like to do something. Intransitives require a dummy object, which normally is the numeral "one" or an indefinite pronoun.
subj. dat, (obj: nom or acc), is + participle(comitative) = obligation

The piece of paper on which I wrote this idea down years ago was tiny, and therefore there's a lot of really short ad hoc abbreviations in it. Hence, exactly what I meant is a bit unclear to me.

Still, I think a language with something like this would be best with, say, 4-5 different constructions along these lines, maybe one or two of which only appear with objects present. Finally, they shouldn't completely cover a certain type of thing - like each construction encoding a particular tense or a particular aspect or a particular mood; they should each express some combination of tenses, aspects and moods, and not necessarily even just one of them; and preferrably, they would be somewhat orthogonal to each other in what they express, so that they not form a neat paradigm.

Not every combination of subj.[case1], obj[case2], participle[case3] should be used, and some constructions where two of them have the same case could very well be permitted.

Short sketch #1: Case system with ergative detail

A language with a somewhat latinate case system, say nominative, genitive, accusative, dative, ablative.

This language descends from a clearly ergative stage, where the ergative case, as in many ergative languages, was identical to the genitive. The indefinite and the intransitive subject are both in the nominative. However, definite third person transitive subjects still are marked by the genitive, except for the pronouns.

The genitive/nominative distinction has carried over to the third person pronouns, but in the pronominal system, a genitive subject is obviative and a nominative one proximative. Genitive 1st and 2nd person subjects tend to mark seriousness.

The accusative is used to mark the object of verbs deemed not beneficial to the first or the second person, sometimes even a third person of personal relevance to either; the pragmatics and sociolinguistics of when the first or second person is relevant are slightly complicated. Beneficial or neutral objects tend to be marked with the dative.

The verb has the following set of forms: [singular, plural] x [1st, 2nd, 3rd] + [3rd II], where II just serves to disambiguate it from the explicitly 3rd person singular one; 3rd person II is used both with singular and plural indefinite subjects, some definite subjects under some circumstances, as well as with subjectless verbs. It has a smaller set of TAM-distinctions than the other persons, and cannot combine with auxiliaries to the same extent either.