The Pazmat verbal system (WIP).

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The Pazmat verbal system (WIP).

Post by Chagen »

Okay, anyone who saw my previous conlangs, Hæsha and Demonos, would say that they had some good ideas but the whole thing fell apart in the verbal system. Which sucks, because coming up with verbal systems is my favorite part of conlanging. So, with my third conlang, Pazmat, I want this to stop happening. Therefore, I am planning out Pazmat’s verb system beforehand. I present it here for you to critique.

NOTE: I am taking a “grammar-first” approach to Pazmat. Right now, it has no phonology, orthography, or anything. This is not designed to show how conjugations look, but how they work. Once the system looks nice, I can work on the conjugations themselves. Right now, the base needs to be good.


Pazmat is a Fusional language spoken in the world of Full Auto by the humans of Pazmat, a continent on the artificial planet Techaria. This was the first of the four Primordial Worlds—Techaria, Gehenna, Celestia, and Animalia-- to be discovered.

The infinitive of a verb ends in “-ya” and can be used as a noun—the class is usually Intangible/Concepts
Verbs in Pazmat conjugate for three persons: 1st person, 2nd person, and 3rd person.
Classes:

One of the most interesting things about the verbs of Pazmat is that they are one of 4 classes—Motion, Active, Stative, and Directive. Actually, what makes it truly odd, is that each verb can actually be conjugated in any of the four classes. While each verb has a “base” class, they can be used in any of the four, meaning that a single verb can be used in many different and interesting ways.

Each class is distinguished from the others in conjugation. However, the infinitive forms of all four classes are the same for all verbs except the one/three (depending on whether you consider them to be three separate verbs or variants of the same one) for “to be”. The classes are below, with English examples of verbs that fit that class, and some special notes:

Motion: Moving from one location to another.
(run, fly, travel, walk, ride)

Action: Doing some kind of action (obviously)
(hit, shoot, write, kick, hold, free)

Stative: Staying as a state, changing a state, becoming something else, etc..
(Change, become, alter, hurt, destroy)

The Stative can be used to show changing a thing in another. Take the verb “to tear”. A Pazmat translation of “I tear the paper” would be “Tear-ACTIVE I the Paper”. “I tear the paper into pieces” would be translated into Pazmat literally as “Tear-STATIVE- Pieces I the Paper”. Therefore, the use of an adposition such as “into” to mean a change of state is not needed in Pazmat (there is an adposition that means “into”, but it is only used in the sense of motion.

In addition, a Active verb or a Directive verb conjugated in the Stative sense can be used as a reflexive verb.

Directive: Make something do something.
(drive, command, turn on, administer)

The Directive means that an action was done with something else. A Pazmat translation of “I drive” would be “Drive-ACTIVE I”. “I drive with the car” would literally translate to “Drive-DIREC I the Car”. Therefore, the use of an adposition such as “with” to show a pseudo-instrumental case is not needed in Pazmat. Similarly, even though "to write" is an Active verb in Pazmat, if you specified that you were writing with, say, a pencil, then "write" would be in the Directive sense.


With this, each verb in Pazmat can actually take several different meanings at once.


Tense/Aspect/Mood: These are rather simple in Pazmat:
Tense: Past/Present/Future distinction only
Aspect: Progressive and Simple [I still am not sure what to call this—is this supposed to be called “Perfect”?]
Mood: No conjugation, done through modal verbs and periphrastic combinations of adjectives/adverbs/modal verbs/etc.

Negation: Done through conjugation.

------

Hm...that was shorter than I expected. But I've only been working on this for only about 4 hours.
Nūdenku waga honji ma naku honyasi ne ika-ika ichamase!
female-appearance=despite boy-voice=PAT hold boy-youth=TOP very be.cute-3PL
Honyasi zō honyasi ma naidasu.
boy-youth=AGT boy-youth=PAT love.romantically-3S
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Re: The Pazmat verbal system (WIP).

Post by Micamo »

You wouldn't happen to have taken my advice to look at Midhera, would you? The verb class system sounds awfully familiar...

First, a nitpick about the aspect system. Do you really mean progressive and non-progressive (which is a really weird system) or a perfective/imperfective contrast (which is far more usual)?

I can't help but assume your verb class system works the same way my aspectuality classes do, and this is probably a very bad assumption to make because I never actually explained how the system works aside from just saying it exists. So I'll ask a few questions.

What does it mean for a verb to have one of the four classes as its "base"? How would it change the meaning of the verb, say, "hit" if you conjugated it as a motion verb rather than as an action verb?

Does the "action" class really have a distinct semantic core (like my own "Successive" class), or is it simply a "none of the above" class? Motion is a kind of action too, after all. So is a change of state.

How does the "stative" class differentiate between the verb interpreted with the "staying as a state" meaning and as the "changing state" meaning? In Midhera I handle this with a subsituational aspect, but you've mentioned nothing of the sort in your description.

Are you sure the "directive" should really be a verb class instead of something else entirely? How does "I walk-DIRECTIVE the dog" differ from a causative construction like "I made the dog walk"?
My pronouns are <xe> [ziː] / <xym> [zɪm] / <xys> [zɪz]

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Re: The Pazmat verbal system (WIP).

Post by Xing »

Chagen wrote:Aspect: Progressive and Simple [I still am not sure what to call this—is this supposed to be called “Perfect”?]
If it's supposeed to cover everything that is not progressive, then I can't come up with any better name than - non-progressive.

I assume that the progressive aspect will be the marked one - right?

(If it's meant to be a perfective-imperfective distinction, I think it's roughly equally common for either the perfective or the imperfective to be marked.)
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Re: The Pazmat verbal system (WIP).

Post by Chagen »

You wouldn't happen to have taken my advice to look at Midhera, would you? The verb class system sounds awfully familiar...
Actually no, I made this Verbal Class system ex nihilo. Though I will check out Midhera soon.
First, a nitpick about the aspect system. Do you really mean progressive and non-progressive (which is a really weird system) or a perfective/imperfective contrast (which is far more usual)?
The progressive aspect can mean the same thing as an imperfective in certain contexts.
What does it mean for a verb to have one of the four classes as its "base"? How would it change the meaning of the verb, say, "hit" if you conjugated it as a motion verb rather than as an action verb?
The base class is what the verb normally is. The verb in Pazmat for "to cast magic" is an Active verb in its base, because it normally is an action. The conjugation for a verb in its base form is subtly different than normal--that is, a stative verb, for example, conjugates differently in the Active sense than a Base Active would.

While all verbs can be conjugated in all Senses, some don't make sense/are strange to native speakers. Conjugating "hit" in the Motion sense would be like a wierd way of saying "to do a long-range attack".
Does the "action" class really have a distinct semantic core (like my own "Successive" class), or is it simply a "none of the above" class? Motion is a kind of action too, after all. So is a change of state.
Motion: The verbs describes movement.

Active: The verb describes an action of some kind done against something but does not change its state

Stative: The verb describes an action that changes something into something else. The verb for "hit" in the stative sense means a variant "to hurt".
Are you sure the "directive" should really be a verb class instead of something else entirely? How does "I walk-DIRECTIVE the dog" differ from a causative construction like "I made the dog walk"?
There's really no difference, though the second is considered mildly snobbish.
Nūdenku waga honji ma naku honyasi ne ika-ika ichamase!
female-appearance=despite boy-voice=PAT hold boy-youth=TOP very be.cute-3PL
Honyasi zō honyasi ma naidasu.
boy-youth=AGT boy-youth=PAT love.romantically-3S
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Re: The Pazmat verbal system (WIP).

Post by Micamo »

Chagen wrote:The progressive aspect can mean the same thing as an imperfective in certain contexts.
What contexts? Or rather, in what contexts does it differ from the imperfective?
The conjugation for a verb in its base form is subtly different than normal--that is, a stative verb, for example, conjugates differently in the Active sense than a Base Active would.
How so?
Motion: The verbs describes movement.

Active: The verb describes an action of some kind done against something but does not change its state

Stative: The verb describes an action that changes something into something else. The verb for "hit" in the stative sense means a variant "to hurt".
Which tells me nothing you didn't say in your first post.
There's really no difference, though the second is considered mildly snobbish.
Then why is it a verb class instead of just being a causative construction?

Also I'd like to know the answer to my stative question.
My pronouns are <xe> [ziː] / <xym> [zɪm] / <xys> [zɪz]

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Re: The Pazmat verbal system (WIP).

Post by Chagen »

What contexts? Or rather, in what contexts does it differ from the imperfective?
There's no set context. It simply depends on the conversation--like how Japanese in general depends on context for many things.
How so?
There are two conjugations for each Sense (excluding irregar verbs, of course, but there's only 3 of those anyway). The first conjugation is used by verbs who use that sense as their base. The second is used for all other verbs.

A Base Active verb uses the first Active conjugation. Any Motion, Stative, or Directive verb would take the second conjugation if they are used in the Active sense.
Which tells me nothing you didn't say in your first post.
I'm not sure how to explain it really. I answered your question. It makes sense in my my mind at least.
Then why is it a verb class instead of just being a causative construction?
Because certain verbs, such as "drive", "operate", "command", "power", and "use" are Base Directive verbs because they all operate on the process of "use X to do Y".
How does the "stative" class differentiate between the verb interpreted with the "staying as a state" meaning and as the "changing state" meaning? In Midhera I handle this with a subsituational aspect, but you've mentioned nothing of the sort in your description.
There are seperate verbs for each of those....just like how English has "stay", "remain" alongside "transform", "change", and the like
Nūdenku waga honji ma naku honyasi ne ika-ika ichamase!
female-appearance=despite boy-voice=PAT hold boy-youth=TOP very be.cute-3PL
Honyasi zō honyasi ma naidasu.
boy-youth=AGT boy-youth=PAT love.romantically-3S
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Re: The Pazmat verbal system (WIP).

Post by Micamo »

Chagen wrote:There's no set context. It simply depends on the conversation--like how Japanese in general depends on context for many things.
Context is not magical fairy dust you can sprinkle onto a phenomenon to be able to get out of explaining it. In which contexts does each aspect take on which meaning?
There are two conjugations for each Sense (excluding irregar verbs, of course, but there's only 3 of those anyway). The first conjugation is used by verbs who use that sense as their base. The second is used for all other verbs.

A Base Active verb uses the first Active conjugation. Any Motion, Stative, or Directive verb would take the second conjugation if they are used in the Active sense.
That sounds a bit... overcomplicated. It's also strange for something purely derivational to screw with inflectional morphemes.
Because certain verbs, such as "drive", "operate", "command", "power", and "use" are Base Directive verbs because they all operate on the process of "use X to do Y".
*why*?
There are seperate verbs for each of those....just like how English has "stay", "remain" alongside "transform", "change", and the like
And how is this handled when you change a non-base stative verb into a stative one? Let's say you changed "run" into a stative verb. Is it interpreted as "be running" or "start running" or "stop running"?
My pronouns are <xe> [ziː] / <xym> [zɪm] / <xys> [zɪz]

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Re: The Pazmat verbal system (WIP).

Post by Chagen »

Context is not magical fairy dust you can sprinkle onto a phenomenon to be able to get out of explaining it. In which contexts does each aspect take on which meaning?
I still haven't finalized it, but I will say that it's more likely that the progressive aspect is being used when the context is an action that is currently being done at the present location of the speaker. The imperfective is more likely when the context is an action that that is being done/had been done at a location far away from the speaker.

If clarification is neccessary, then there certain adpositions that can be used to specify the aspect.
*why*?
Because....I'm not really sure what you're asking here. Or what a causative construction actually is.
And how is this handled when you change a non-base stative verb into a stative one? Let's say you changed "run" into a stative verb. Is it interpreted as "be running" or "start running" or "stop running"?
Any Base Active or Motion verb in the Stative sense has the implications of starting or stopping that action. "To run" in the Stative sense is somewhay like saying "To start being in the act of running". Only less ridiculous and strange.
Nūdenku waga honji ma naku honyasi ne ika-ika ichamase!
female-appearance=despite boy-voice=PAT hold boy-youth=TOP very be.cute-3PL
Honyasi zō honyasi ma naidasu.
boy-youth=AGT boy-youth=PAT love.romantically-3S
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Re: The Pazmat verbal system (WIP).

Post by eldin raigmore »

Chagen wrote:....I'm not really sure .... what a causative construction actually is.
If
"Somebody does something"
is the base construction, anything that means
"Someone makes somebody do something"
is a related causative construction.

First thing I'd recommend you do is read
http://www.sil.org/linguistics/Glossary ... lation.htm
http://www.sil.org/linguistics/Glossary ... sative.htm
http://www.sil.org/linguistics/Glossary ... veCase.htm
http://www.sil.org/linguistics/Glossary ... icRole.htm
and look up their references.
Among other places you can find out a lot about them is:
http://wals.info/chapter/110
http://wals.info/chapter/111
And look up their references.
Also read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causative and look up its references.
Or look at the hits on this search.
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Re: The Pazmat verbal system (WIP).

Post by Cordoma »

Yes, it seems a bit complicated. But that doesn't make it terrible. I don't know... it sems out of left field. What I don't like is that you can use the class method of saying something, or the clausal method. Pehaps get rid of clauses all together, and I can see it becoming plausible, if strange.
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Re: The Pazmat verbal system (WIP).

Post by Chagen »

Is getting getting rid of clauses entirely even possible?
Nūdenku waga honji ma naku honyasi ne ika-ika ichamase!
female-appearance=despite boy-voice=PAT hold boy-youth=TOP very be.cute-3PL
Honyasi zō honyasi ma naidasu.
boy-youth=AGT boy-youth=PAT love.romantically-3S
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Re: The Pazmat verbal system (WIP).

Post by MrKrov »

Just no.
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Re: The Pazmat verbal system (WIP).

Post by joey »

Chagen wrote:The infinitive of a verb ends in “-ya” and can be used as a noun—the class is usually Intangible/Concepts
Can or is? If the former, what else does it do and how else is it used? If the latter, it's fine, but just know that you're basically duplicating everything from the English infinitive while leaving out the functions that make it an infinitive, as opposed to a simple gerund or something (e.g., occurring auxiliaries)
Chagen wrote:each verb has a “base” class
What besides makes this "base" class indicates that it is that verb's "base class"? If it doesn't stand out from the other classes' conjugations for that verb grammatically, there's no point in distinguishing it from them. I'm not saying that different verbs indicate different types of actions, and I'm not saying it's wrong to compartmentalize these types into categories and conjugate them differently. I'm just saying that to give each verb a "base class" and then not do anything special with it is kind of pointless.
Chagen wrote:Motion: Moving from one location to another.
(run, fly, travel, walk, ride)

Action: Doing some kind of action (obviously)
(hit, shoot, write, kick, hold, free)

Stative: Staying as a state, changing a state, becoming something else, etc..
(Change, become, alter, hurt, destroy)

Directive: Make something do something.
(drive, command, turn on, administer)
If I may, this system seems like there are a lot of overlaps. What about when a verb falls under criteria for more than one class at the same time? How do speakers say, "I hit the glass with a hammer (and broke it)?" There's certainly "some kind of action (obviously)" going on here (using one of your examples, "hit"), but there's also a change in state (the glass, which was previously intact, is now broken), as well as an instrument, the hammer, which, according to your explanation, doesn't need to use a prepositional phrase. (On another note, what happens to it if we leave it in the Pazmat sentence but keep the verb in the directive?)
Chagen wrote:Tense/Aspect/Mood: These are rather simple in Pazmat:
Tense: Past/Present/Future distinction only
Aspect: Progressive and Simple [I still am not sure what to call this—is this supposed to be called “Perfect”?]
Mood: No conjugation, done through modal verbs and periphrastic combinations of adjectives/adverbs/modal verbs/etc.

Negation: Done through conjugation.
Why did you bring up TAM if mood isn't part of conjugation? It's not like tense, aspect, and mood are in any way different or more important than anything else encoded in the verb (such as negation, evidentiality, telicity), and they should only be segregated if they are formally distinct from the other distinctions, such as by being combined into a single inflection.
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Re: The Pazmat verbal system (WIP).

Post by Micamo »

What besides makes this "base" class indicates that it is that verb's "base class"? If it doesn't stand out from the other classes' conjugations for that verb grammatically, there's no point in distinguishing it from them. I'm not saying that different verbs indicate different types of actions, and I'm not saying it's wrong to compartmentalize these types into categories and conjugate them differently. I'm just saying that to give each verb a "base class" and then not do anything special with it is kind of pointless.
He answered this question earlier when I asked it: There are 8 different verb conjugations, one for each "base" class and one for each "non-base" class. For example:

kta-no (Motion base)
blas-ta (Action base)
kta-so (Action verb, non-Action base)
blas-ka (Motion verb, non-Motion base)

Repeat for the other 2 classes.
If I may, this system seems like there are a lot of overlaps. What about when a verb falls under criteria for more than one class at the same time? How do speakers say, "I hit the glass with a hammer (and broke it)?" There's certainly "some kind of action (obviously)" going on here (using one of your examples, "hit"), but there's also a change in state (the glass, which was previously intact, is now broken), as well as an instrument, the hammer, which, according to your explanation, doesn't need to use a prepositional phrase. (On another note, what happens to it if we leave it in the Pazmat sentence but keep the verb in the directive?)
I can't speak for Chagen's system directly, but although he claims it was invented independently his system seems very similar to something I do in my own conlang, so I can explain how the system works in my own language:

The verb class system is not a gender system, but a classification system. The class used indicates which aspect of the verb is the most salient. Changing what class is used is a way of changing the perspective. For example, take the following sentence.

"I threw the wrench."

Depending on the context, this clause could take on some very different meanings. Like so,

"I threw the wrench at Jamie so he could use it to repair the plumbing."

"I threw the wrench out the window because I was angry."

"I threw the wrench because that bitch Susan wanted it and I felt like doing something nasty just to spite her."

Even though the same physical thing is happening in every case, how the event applies to us and our goals varies greatly. The problem is, how can we portray the meaning these contexts applies to the clause without necessarily having to provide the context itself?

This is what the aspectuality class system in my conlang attempts to provide: It distinguishes the same actions when viewed as activities ("I sat down in my chair and read"), when viewed as goals ("I tried to read that paper you gave me, but it was impossible to understand."), and when viewed as states ("I'm too busy reading to help you now.").
My pronouns are <xe> [ziː] / <xym> [zɪm] / <xys> [zɪz]

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Re: The Pazmat verbal system (WIP).

Post by Chagen »

What besides makes this "base" class indicates that it is that verb's "base class"? If it doesn't stand out from the other classes' conjugations for that verb grammatically, there's no point in distinguishing it from them. I'm not saying that different verbs indicate different types of actions, and I'm not saying it's wrong to compartmentalize these types into categories and conjugate them differently. I'm just saying that to give each verb a "base class" and then not do anything special with it is kind of pointless.
As Micamo said, a verb takes a different conjugation for it's base class than normal.
If I may, this system seems like there are a lot of overlaps. What about when a verb falls under criteria for more than one class at the same time? How do speakers say, "I hit the glass with a hammer (and broke it)?" There's certainly "some kind of action (obviously)" going on here (using one of your examples, "hit"), but there's also a change in state (the glass, which was previously intact, is now broken), as well as an instrument, the hammer, which, according to your explanation, doesn't need to use a prepositional phrase. (On another note, what happens to it if we leave it in the Pazmat sentence but keep the verb in the directive?)
"Hit" would be in the directive, as it was done with the help of the hammer. "Broke" would be in the stative, as it's a change in state (it's a Base Stative verb anyway).
Why did you bring up TAM if mood isn't part of conjugation? It's not like tense, aspect, and mood are in any way different or more important than anything else encoded in the verb (such as negation, evidentiality, telicity), and they should only be segregated if they are formally distinct from the other distinctions, such as by being combined into a single inflection.
It felt wierd to bring up Tense and Aspect without mood, so I brought Mood up for sake of completeness.
Nūdenku waga honji ma naku honyasi ne ika-ika ichamase!
female-appearance=despite boy-voice=PAT hold boy-youth=TOP very be.cute-3PL
Honyasi zō honyasi ma naidasu.
boy-youth=AGT boy-youth=PAT love.romantically-3S
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Re: The Pazmat verbal system (WIP).

Post by eldin raigmore »

About Aspect:

David McCann recently posted on CONLANG-L something about aspect that I find useful.

In the purest most technical sense, maybe it's only an approximation of the truth.

But for purposes of a conlanger, especially one whose aspect system is going to be simple or only middling-complicated, it's IMO more useful than (what I've been taught is) the pure, complete, and exact truth.
David McCann wrote:The main options are
  1. Perfective "He read", "Il lus"
  2. Imperfective "Il lisait"
    1. Continual
      1. Durative
      2. Progressive "He was reading"
    2. Non-continual
      1. Iterative
      2. Habitual "He used to read"
  3. Perfect (past event with present relevance) "He has read", "Il a lu"
    1. of Result "She has gone to America"
    2. of Experience "She has been to America"
  4. Prospective "She is about to leave"
Note that there are often gaps. English has only two Imperfective forms, and one of them is optional, so the Perfective is used as a default when they are inappropriate. English only distinguishes the two Perfects in one verb, while Chinese (if I remember correctly) always distinguishes them.

The contrast (1)/(2) is the most common. The Perfect is less so and the Prospective is rare. They can be combined with the Perfective/Imperfective distinction.

The Present is inherently imperfective, and in many languages the form of the Present Perfective is used as a Future (e.g. Georgian).

Languages which have two methods of indicating the (1)/(2) contrast (e.g. inflexion and derivation), like Bulgarian and Georgian, can combine them: the Imperfect Perfective is used for an Iterative or Habitual where the individual events would be Perfective!

Have fun!

Micamo wrote:I can't speak for Chagen's system directly, but although he claims it was invented independently his system seems very similar to something I do in my own conlang, so I can explain how the system works in my own language:

The verb class system is not a gender system, but a classification system. The class used indicates which aspect of the verb is the most salient. Changing what class is used is a way of changing the perspective. For example, take the following sentence.

"I threw the wrench."

Depending on the context, this clause could take on some very different meanings. Like so,

"I threw the wrench at Jamie so he could use it to repair the plumbing."

"I threw the wrench out the window because I was angry."

"I threw the wrench because that bitch Susan wanted it and I felt like doing something nasty just to spite her."

Even though the same physical thing is happening in every case, how the event applies to us and our goals varies greatly. The problem is, how can we portray the meaning these contexts applies to the clause without necessarily having to provide the context itself?

This is what the aspectuality class system in my conlang attempts to provide: It distinguishes the same actions when viewed as activities ("I sat down in my chair and read"), when viewed as goals ("I tried to read that paper you gave me, but it was impossible to understand."), and when viewed as states ("I'm too busy reading to help you now.").


This sounds a lot like Mood or Mode or Modality.

chagen wrote:Is getting getting rid of clauses entirely even possible?
MrKrov wrote:Just no.
What he said.
But languages can have clauses that wouldn't be considered clauses in the languages we're more familiar with, or at least not by our prescriptivists.
For one thing, some clauses don't have to have verbs in them in some languages.
You could re-analyze that as meaning that "not every sentence contains a clause" or something like that, in those languages.
But it's actually easier on the terminology just to call those non-verbal clauses; and every language has clauses that do have verbs (though the word that's a verb in one clause doesn't have to be a verb in every clause it occurs in).
Does that help?
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Re: The Pazmat verbal system (WIP).

Post by Micamo »

eldin raigmore wrote:What he said.
But languages can have clauses that wouldn't be considered clauses in the languages we're more familiar with, or at least not by our prescriptivists.
For one thing, some clauses don't have to have verbs in them in some languages.
You could re-analyze that as meaning that "not every sentence contains a clause" or something like that, in those languages.
But it's actually easier on the terminology just to call those non-verbal clauses; and every language has clauses that do have verbs (though the word that's a verb in one clause doesn't have to be a verb in every clause it occurs in).
Does that help?
Are there any examples of non-verbal clauses in such languages where an analysis of the "verb" being a null element is impossible? As I understand it this is the generativist method of handling untensed small clauses in English.
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Re: The Pazmat verbal system (WIP).

Post by eldin raigmore »

Micamo wrote:Are there any examples of non-verbal clauses in such languages where an analysis of the "verb" being a null element is impossible? As I understand it this is the generativist method of handling untensed small clauses in English.
I do not know of any; but I think there are some, though, provided you de-intensify "impossible". That is, there may be some that very few linguists outside the generativist tradition consider to be very reasonably analyzed as non-verbal, although no actual word in the clause is always a verb in every clause it occurs in.

Tongan, if I remember correctly what I read and if what I read was true, is a language that some have analyzed as not actually having parts-of-speech; or, at least, as not having any such as verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, adpositions, pronouns, nor conjunctions.

I doubt it's possible that every clause in Tongan (or whatever language or languages, in case I got it wrong) could be "non-verbal". I guess, in my lack of knowledge, that there are clauses in Tongan that must contain a word that serves as the verb of that clause, even though no word of the entire language is actually a "verb" in any morphosyntactic sense that applies across all clauses of the language.

[hr][/hr]
Man, that "hr" thing is way too light.
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For those who wonder what Micamo and I are talking about:
For instance, in many languages many or most copular clauses are non-verbal.

Imperfective-aspect indicative-mood affirmative-polarity Present-tense copular clauses in modern Russian, as I understand it; at least for third-person-singular subjects. (I think probably copular clauses are always the default voice, which is "active" voice in Russian -- if "voice" even applies to non-verbal clauses).

Essentially the present-tense indicative-mood imperfective-aspect affirmative third-person singular form of "to be", in Russian, is a zero or null -- nothing to pronounce.

So if you want to say "Olga is a hygienist" you in effect just say "Olga hygienist".
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Re: The Pazmat verbal system (WIP).

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eldin raigmore wrote:Tongan, if I remember correctly what I read and if what I read was true, is a language that some have analyzed as not actually having parts-of-speech; or, at least, as not having any such as verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, adpositions, pronouns, nor conjunctions.

I doubt it's possible that every clause in Tongan (or whatever language or languages, in case I got it wrong) could be "non-verbal". I guess, in my lack of knowledge, that there are clauses in Tongan that must contain a word that serves as the verb of that clause, even though no word of the entire language is actually a "verb" in any morphosyntactic sense that applies across all clauses of the language.
I'm not so sure about Tongan: It's one thing to have a zero derivation, such that the same string of phonemes can be both a noun or a verb depending on where in the sentence it is ("hunger" in English, for example) and another thing entirely to lack the syntactic roles of the various parts of speech.
Imperfective-aspect indicative-mood affirmative-polarity Present-tense copular clauses in modern Russian, as I understand it; at least for third-person-singular subjects. (I think probably copular clauses are always the default voice, which is "active" voice in Russian -- if "voice" even applies to non-verbal clauses).

Essentially the present-tense indicative-mood imperfective-aspect affirmative third-person singular form of "to be", in Russian, is a zero or null -- nothing to pronounce.

So if you want to say "Olga is a hygienist" you in effect just say "Olga hygienist".
Actually, I've read arguments the indo-european copula doesn't actually perform predication but instead is a vessel that holds the verb inflections in nominal/adjectival predications because nouns and adjectives cannot. The actual predication is always performed by a null argument, so if you define a verb as the word that predicates the sentence, every copular clause in the indo-european family is verbless.
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Re: The Pazmat verbal system (WIP).

Post by eldin raigmore »

Micamo wrote:I'm not so sure about Tongan: It's one thing to have a zero derivation, such that the same string of phonemes can be both a noun or a verb depending on where in the sentence it is ("hunger" in English, for example) and another thing entirely to lack the syntactic roles of the various parts of speech.
Well, forgetting, or at least leaving aside, that "doesn't have parts-of-speech" claim:
Can you see that if a language (Tongan or any other) has such thoroughgoing "zero-derivation" that most words, whatever their part-of-speech, can be homophonous with words in most other parts-of-speech; then odds are it has many clauses which have a verb-for-this-clause that's not necessarily a verb in every other clause the word is in?

Whether we call all verb-like uses of a particular string of phonemes one word, and all noun-like uses of the same string a different word, or instead call them the same word, is really a matter of our choice of analysis rather than of the actual phenomenon being analyzed.

If most of a language's words cannot be "zero-derived", or, cannot be used as most parts-of-speech, or, are not homophonous with a word that's another part of speech; then it makes sense to say that those strings-of-phonemes that can be used as more than one part-of-speech, are two homophonous words, one of which is zero-derived from the other.

But if almost all of the words in almost every part-of-speech can also be used as almost every other part-of-speech then it saves us nothing, Occam's-razor-wise, to decide that adjective-like uses are a different word from noun-like uses are a different word from verb-like uses.

If you can see: They're not claiming that the syntactic role "verb" doesn't happen in the language (Tongan or whatever). Rather, they're claiming that it happens only in the clauses, not in the lexicon. They're claiming that the simplest way to analyze it is: A word sitting all by its lonesome in the lexicon isn't any more one part-of-speech than another. Only when it's actually used in a clause can one tell whether it's that clause's verb or one of that clause's nouns or whatever.

Naturally it's always possible to analyze anything different from how someone else has analyzed it. The point being made is that for certain languages analyses that say "word-class (part-of-speech) is not part of the lexical data in the lexicon for this language" is superior in some fashion, for instance, more parsimonious and simpler, than analyses that say otherwise. That still leaves open the possibility that some other analysis is superior in some other fashion; for instance, more capable of fitting into a cross-linguistic typology or theory.

Micamo wrote:Actually, I've read arguments the indo-european copula doesn't actually perform predication but instead is a vessel that holds the verb inflections in nominal/adjectival predications because nouns and adjectives cannot. The actual predication is always performed by a null argument, so if you define a verb as the word that predicates the sentence, every copular clause in the indo-european family is verbless.
That doesn't strike me prima facie as a theory-independent analysis. I would guess that it's not even meaningful ("not even wrong") to some schools.

But I'm an ignoramus so I could be wrong.
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