Detail #410: Degrees of Definiteness and Tension between the Degrees

English has two levels of definiteness. Definite signifies that the referent is (expected by the speaker to be an) established referent in the mind of the listener.

A third degree exists in some languages, viz. specific: an established referent in the mind of the speaker

In English, "specific" sometimes is realized identically to indefinite: "I am looking for a car" (this can be either me looking for a new car, I have not yet decided which), or I may be on the search for a very specific car, I am presenting the information so as to establish a referent in your mind. This could be followed by "The car was last seen on this very island." - the referent has been established in the listener's mind.

Other languages have no definite, only specific - anything that is definite is likely also to be definite.

There are, however, situations where definite forms are used with specific referents despite lack of frame of reference in the listener's mind: "the tea I had this morning was pretty good.", not "a tea I had this morning" or "some tea" or even just "tea". It seems restrictive attributes make specific meaning take on definite marking. The speaker does not even have to assume that the listener knows of his matutinal tea habit.

Could we draw the line elsewhere?

1) Make the marking more consistent
Naturally, we could consider the restrictive attribute by itself to be sufficiently specific that a definite article is superfluous, and have "a tea I drank this morning was pretty good" be used when it is specific. This seems even more likely if the language has a visible distinction between restrictive and descriptive attributes.

2) Have different rules in different syntactic contexts

Some languages have definiteness marked only in some contexts - c.f. the Turkish direct object rule. Here, I see several interesting possibilities:

1. First person subjects license specific marking on objects and other NPs in the VP.
2. Split ergativity, in which either the ergative or accusative side of the system has a case distinction that marks for specific/definite distinction. This might be triggered by person (see previous point), or various environments such as subclauses (maybe specifically narrative such).
3. Maybe specific and definite nouns interact with congruence in different ways. This may restrict the environments in which it is explicitly marked:
1. Maybe only subjects (or only objects, or both but not other constituents) have verb congruence that permit for this distinction?
2. Maybe the marking on the adjective also is two-fold, but splits the difference differently. Thus red.def house.def is definite, but red.indef house.def is specific. (Here, "red.def house.indef" would seem like an attractive solution as well, if we assume Adj N word order.)
   

3) Multiple levels of specific-definite-contraspecific and ways in which the specificness and definitenesses of different speech participants interact in marking.

It is conceivable, that a speaker might want to communicate that he does not have a clear idea yet of the thing the listener has spoken of, and so could mark the lack of understanding as [+definite -specific]. In such a language, clearly, both specificity and definiteness need to be marked independently - but potentially, it could be marked independently in a way that isn't always visible or always clearly distinct. Consider, for instance, a system where adjectives mark for indefinite, specific-or-definite, whereas nouns only mark "specific-or-indefinite" vs. "definite". The normal "specific" combination would thus be "specific-or-definite" adjective but "specific-or-indefinite" noun. However, in that case, an indefinite adjective combined with a definite noun would perchance convey this confusion. The locuses needn't be nouns and adjectives, could as well be verbs and nouns or other carriers of congruence. Any ways, the adjectival congruence solution is nice because adjectives are often optional.

4) Have different rules for nouns of different topical salience

One could imagine a system whereby nouns that are topics have more levels of distinction.

5) Have different rules for nouns of different noun classes or number

Plurals or inanimates or mass nouns might very well differ. The difference may be a thing that has purely cultural origins, or may be the result of sound changes eliminating the distinction for some forms. Maybe in an IE-like gender system, masculines use neuter definite markers as specific forms.

6) In some languages with articles, there are contexts where no article is used. One could consider having articles dropped whenever there is tension or uncertainty regarding [?specific ?definite], or whenever unusual combinations such as [-specific +definite] appear.

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.

Detail #293: Indefinite Pronouns and Noun Morphology

Integrating definiteness and the whole indefinite pronoun system with its various functions into noun morphology instead of having things like case could be an interesting approach to noun morphology - it seems to me the order by which conlangers go for noun morphology beyond the derivative morphology is a hierarchy something like

number (maybe fused with gender)
possession marking (head or dependent marking)
other cases (maybe fused with gender)
possessive affixes
definiteness marking
noun class / gender (maybe fused with number)

This is not particularly bad or anything, but we could do something else with nouns than that. Some Native American languages offer us the idea of marking for obviativeness/proximativeness, which interacts with the verb and the more general discourse in interesting ways. Few conlangers make Native American languages, however.

The last in the hierarchy above is gender, which any Bantu-style language would almost necessarily be present.

Now, I've often gone and linked the typological classification of indefinite pronouns that Apollo Hogan wrote way back. To this, we could add some definite pronouns and determiners - demonstratives, maybe articles (if we go so far as to distinguish 'that', 'this' and 'the'; seems 'the' may easily turn superfluous). From this point on, 'the/a/any/some/...' represents whatever system you come up with from that classification.

Incorporating that whole system of 'the/a/any/some/...' into the noun, possibly in combination with possessive affixes (either giving {the, a, any, some, no, every, ...} * {my, your, his/hers, our, ...} or {the, a, any, some, no, every, ...} + {my, your, his/hers, our, ...} could give interesting results. Let's further permit a "light recursion", having the third person possessive suffixes further be marked for a less granular set of distinctions - merge a few of the different 'anies' and 'somes' that you have for that suffix, and maybe forbid certain combinations ('than any X of than any X' seems unlikely to ever be needed, i.e. forbid double indefinite standard of comparison. I find it likely that you'll ever need the possessor to be the indefinite standard of comparison, but you could of course permit having the marking go there nevertheless for whatever reason, or heck, require doubly marking it.)

Since indefinite pronouns often have somewhat overlapping functions (just check the amount of overlap in the example systems section of the link), this gives us a somewhat more overlapping system than the typical case system - which is a nice effect, in my opinion.

Even more interest could maybe be created by having different noun classes divide up this functional space in slightly different ways, maybe even having different numbers of divisions of it.

The Former Noun Morphology of Tatediem

Back when I first came up with the name and the concept of Tatediem, I wanted to have cases in it. In fact, my first post about it on this blog assumes it has the old case system that I originally envisaged for it; however, I never spelled it out in detail, and I figure doing so might be a good idea, because it's not entirely half bad.

	abs	erg	dat	instr	part
singular
def	-te	-k:ı	-k:ı	-istik:	-istik:
indef	-∅	-∅		-isti	-isti
dual
def	-ǎt	-dəki	-dnǎ	-dak	-dnǎ
plural
def	-aftin	-ambun	-ambun	-ǎmbust	-ǎmbust
indef	-ǎ	-abui		-ǎbuist	-ǎ
mass
indef	-o/-e	-o/-e	-osti/-esti	-ǎbuist	-o/-e

There are some things I'd do differently, now ten years later. I might rather have conflated ergative and instrumental in part of the system, than ergative and dative. However, I might also have omitted mass as a 'number', and rather described mass nouns as having their own declension. The omission of indefinite dative makes some kind of sense - indefinite beneficients would call for a slight periphrasis. I think it's fairly likely that the indefinite plural would conflate absolutive and ergative if the indefinite singular does so - in fact, I find it more likely that the plural would do so than that the singular would.

Still, I like this system a lot even though it dropped out of Tatediem as it grew more noun-class-centered and less reliant on case. Might revive it sometime.

In many ways, playing around with a less case-centered language is pretty interesting.

Ćwarmin: The adjective and a bit about the noun phrase

Despite my almost obsession with congruence between adjectives and nouns in NPs, I have decided not to do that in Ćwarmin. As previously noted, Ćwarmin has about 20 cases. The case suffix normally goes on the head noun, but sometimes a determiner will carry the main case marking of the clause, with the head noun either taking the genitive, the general ablative or the possessed objective (the last of which never goes on the determiner).

On occasion, an adjective may be inflected in some case other than the case of the noun. The only cases that do not appear on adjectives standing as attributes of nouns are the reflexively possessed accusative and the accusative.

Determiners

There are a number of determiners - demonstratives, indefinite determiners (including the negative determiner), amount-related determiners (numbers, 'many', 'a few', 'all', etc). As mentioned, these sometimes carry the whole noun phrase's case, in which case the noun either agrees with it in case (if the whole phrase is nominative, accusative or genitive), or takes either the general ablative or genitive.

Those determiners which can have a singular as well as a plural meaning usually have number congruence with the head noun. 

Some special lexemes

'One' - er - in combination with the nominative complement case or genitive, eramće or erća, roughly works like specific or particular. The genitive is most often used with timespans or with mass nouns, but does occur with other nouns as well.

erəmće seltimgə - a specific fisherman

erćə toŋugul - one particular winter

erćə mehwi - a particular loaf of bread

Ćul - 'few' - combines with the complement cases for a meaning along the lines of 'just a few'
ćulamćo nedim, ćulamćan nedim - just a few bits.
In the genitive it signifies 'too few'.

Cases with Adjectives

The cases can also alter how the adjective interacts with the head noun, both for adjectives in attribute position and in complement position.

Negative - the negative simply negates an adjective, essentially like sticking in- or un- or a- before an adjective in English.

Complement cases - the complement cases tend to mark temporary or clearly subjective qualities. The nominative complement is used with rather objective qualities or qualities an animate noun intentionally acquired or maintains, whereas the accusative complement more often implies that the quality has been caused to the noun without its participation or regardless of his or her wishes.

General ablative - roughly like affixing -ish to an adjective in English when used as an attribute. Also for complements that mark what something appears to be. In situations where this and genitive or instrumental could work, the ablative has priority.

Genitive - generally used to intensify the adjective, but also marks flavors when they're complements.

Instrumental - generally used to intensify the adjective. Also marks various sound qualities when as complements.

Locative cases - sometimes nouns with these cases are used as adjectives.

Dative - for some peculiar reason, this marks first-hand knowledge evidentiality.

Comitative-with and comitative-to mark different levels of evidentiality - basically hearsay and 'anything further off than that'.

Detail #49: Case system detail / Vocatives

Imagine a language with vocatives and with case congruence on adjectives. Further imagine the language has some kind of intensive or superlative adjective formation, either of indo-european style or just some kind of more general intensifying meaning.

Now, it would be rather natural that vocatives never use non-intensive/non-superlative adjectives; the actual meaning-change involved would be somewhat negated by the presence of the vocative, though, as even a 'good' friend would be called 'best friend!' in such a construction, and everyone was aware of the grammatical rule there. Thus, lexical items would have to be used instead to distinguish intensities instead of morphological devices.

One could even imagine a language where there are no explicit vocative markers, except the restriction on non-superlatives in vocative NPs. One could of course have some (morphologically) superlative/intensive dummy adjective for this role too, if no other adjective is present?

Detail #31: Pronouns doubling as particles

Certain pronouns - especially indefinite ones - lend themselves easily to adverbial uses as well, c.f. how some languages do not distinguish "not" from "no, none". (Example: Swedish dialects in southwest Finland use 'inga' for basically all negation, thus having the same negation in "I didn't see you" and "No car is fast enough". )

Somewhat inconsistently, dialects of Swedish also use 'all' to denote completion (and by extension, wearing out, lacking and running out: bɪɭɪn jä all - the car is worn out, mjöɭt͡ʃen jä al: - IMD at least usually used to say something like 'well, that was the last of the milk!'. The pronoun has gender marking in congruence with the noun. This is basically only used with all as a complement - a rather restrictive use. How about constructing a whole perfect/perfective/telic(?) aspect using all as the morpheme/particle marking it? I'd presume this use would not have congruence with anything (or whatever form the pronoun takes would be influenced by whatever.)

Certainly, of course, something along the lines of some could easily be an explicit marker for slightly intensifying a imperfect/imperfective verb. Do keep in mind that different languages of course may have different sets of indefinite and definite pronouns (outside of the basic personal pronouns), there's no guarantee that 'some' will have a perfect match.

'who, which, that, ..' (relativizers): questions like "Who built this?" could easily get an increasingly grammaticalized answer like "it's John who [built it]", where "who [built it]" slowly is reduced to just an intransitive relativizer. This would end up increasingly like some kind of definite article restricted to only some contexts, such as answering questions, contrastive statements ("... but it was really he who."), etc. (Reminds me of lambdas in programming, for some reason).

Just some ideas that could be developed, and probably are rather close to what actually may have happened in some natural languages.

Coming up at some point in the next weeks: a consideration of pragmatics in conlangs.

Detail #24: Voice Morphology on occasional nouns

I came up with an idea that kind of provides a possible road down which to take the question of challenge #3.

Reusing voice morphology on some nouns. It should be somewhat restricted which nouns do this, and there's no need that each noun take every form. In a language with this feature, it's no fun if the nouns and verbs tend to share a lot of roots already.

boss.passive = employee, servant

boss.reflexive = self-employed, independent

boss.mediopassive =  some kind of neurotic?