Random ideas: Morphosyntax

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Re: Random ideas: Morphosyntax

Post by kiwikami »

Creyeditor wrote: 19 Nov 2020 21:08 Isn't (some version of) Kiwikami's Hypry a bit like that?
The very first version required tenses to be marked with some agreement indicating what entity's perspective they were from - I'm planning to do the same thing with V4, but haven't figured out how it'll work just yet. Effectively, there were particles such that you'd have "the man hit [1-recent.fut] [2-pst] the dog" meaning "The man is just about to hit the dog (as far as I can see), but from your perspective he has already done so", and there was also a kind of "universal" time which was meant to describe strictly-linear progression (e.g. "from the perspective of a thing that cannot time travel").
Edit: Substituted a string instrument for a French interjection.

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Re: Random ideas: Morphosyntax

Post by Omzinesý »

A lang has a Bantu-style noun class system. If the class marker precedes the lexical root, the noun is non-generic. If the class marker follows the lexical root, the noun is gereric.

(Idea taken from Pilipino "triggers" in verbs whose location encodes aspect.)
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Re: Random ideas: Morphosyntax

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You've probably heard of pluractionality, so how about duactionality, a verbal number used if an event occurs exactly twice?
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Re: Random ideas: Morphosyntax

Post by Omzinesý »

Creyeditor wrote: 17 Feb 2021 09:56 You've probably heard of pluractionality, so how about duactionality, a verbal number used if an event occurs exactly twice?
Could the same form also mean 'redo'?

Pluractionality also often means that several persons do the same thing separately. Probably that could also be the case with duactionality.
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Re: Random ideas: Morphosyntax

Post by Creyeditor »

Actually, ANADEW. Mono-Alu (Oceanic) has both duactionality and pluractionality. I thought I invented the word duactionality, but I forgot to google beforehand.
Omzinesý wrote: 17 Feb 2021 11:54 Could the same form also mean 'redo'?

Pluractionality also often means that several persons do the same thing separately. Probably that could also be the case with duactionality.
I like both ideas. The first one could also include things like trying again. The second could be used for dual subjects to indicate separate actions. Dual subjects plus a default verb form would indicate joint action.
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Re: Random ideas: Morphosyntax

Post by eldin raigmore »

To me “duactionality” suggests “do it again: except, this time, actually do it!”
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Re: Random ideas: Morphosyntax

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I see what you did there. Do-actually-ty [:D]
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Re: Random ideas: Morphosyntax

Post by Omzinesý »

All prepositions have a deictic element. You cannot say "In [the] hospital" but you can say "here [in the] hospital" or "there [in the] hospital".
Prepositions are used as perfective prefixes of verbs, too, so you say "A there-kill B." or "A here-kill B." Those deictic elements work as direct and inverse markers. "A there-kill B." means 'A kills B.' i.e. action goes from the focal participant A to the less focal participant B. "A here-kill B." means 'A is killed by B.' i.e. the action comes from the less focal participant to the more focal participant. In imperfective aspect, there is no possibility of inverse marking.
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Re: Random ideas: Morphosyntax

Post by Creyeditor »

That sounds fascinating. It takes a lot of things that exist in some natlangs and merges them into a unique phenomenon. Cool idea [:)]
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Re: Random ideas: Morphosyntax

Post by Porphyrogenitos »

It seems plausible enough. There is some Amazonian language (I forget which, this was from a morphology practice set) that evolved tense marking from deixis marking: "That man sleep" became interpreted as "That man (in the past) slept), vs. "This man sleep" which became interpreted as "This man (in the present) is sleeping". If that can happen, then surely this can happen.
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Re: Random ideas: Morphosyntax

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Porphyrogenitos wrote: 01 Mar 2021 18:45 It seems plausible enough. There is some Amazonian language (I forget which, this was from a morphology practice set) that evolved tense marking from deixis marking: "That man sleep" became interpreted as "That man (in the past) slept), vs. "This man sleep" which became interpreted as "This man (in the present) is sleeping". If that can happen, then surely this can happen.
Don’t you mean, “If this can happen, then surely that can happen”?
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Re: Random ideas: Morphosyntax

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eldin raigmore wrote: 01 Mar 2021 19:13
Porphyrogenitos wrote: 01 Mar 2021 18:45 It seems plausible enough. There is some Amazonian language (I forget which, this was from a morphology practice set) that evolved tense marking from deixis marking: "That man sleep" became interpreted as "That man (in the past) slept), vs. "This man sleep" which became interpreted as "This man (in the present) is sleeping". If that can happen, then surely this can happen.
Don’t you mean, “If this can happen, then surely that can happen”?
I interpreted it as "If that (something Porphyrogenitos read about outside of the CBB) can happen, then surely this (something Omzinesý described here in the thread) can happen".
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Re: Random ideas: Morphosyntax

Post by Omzinesý »

The past form is formed periphrastically:
'Has done it.'

The pluperfect form is formed two times periphrastically:
'Has had done it.'
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Re: Random ideas: Morphosyntax

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Omzinesý wrote: 29 Mar 2021 11:29 The past form is formed periphrastically:
'Has done it.'

The pluperfect form is formed two times periphrastically:
'Has had done it.'
ANADEW, some forms of colloquial German do this. Except the auxiliary can be independently inflected for past again, so you can get a contrast between 'has done' 'had done', 'has had done' and 'had had done'.
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Re: Random ideas: Morphosyntax

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Porphyrogenitos wrote: 01 Mar 2021 18:45 It seems plausible enough. There is some Amazonian language (I forget which, this was from a morphology practice set) that evolved tense marking from deixis marking: "That man sleep" became interpreted as "That man (in the past) slept), vs. "This man sleep" which became interpreted as "This man (in the present) is sleeping". If that can happen, then surely this can happen.
Yeah, nominal TAM is "fairly common"- insofar as it's not just attested in one language, but actually multiple from Guarani to Iaai. IIRC Lahu, of Indochina, is the one that has deictic tense on nouns though.
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Re: Random ideas: Morphosyntax

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Creyeditor wrote: 29 Mar 2021 14:09
Omzinesý wrote: 29 Mar 2021 11:29 The past form is formed periphrastically:
'Has done it.'

The pluperfect form is formed two times periphrastically:
'Has had done it.'
ANADEW, some forms of colloquial German do this. Except the auxiliary can be independently inflected for past again, so you can get a contrast between 'has done' 'had done', 'has had done' and 'had had done'.
It seems that Yiddish has this as the only possible pluperfect. It apparently doesn't have synthetic past tenses even for auxiliaries.
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Re: Random ideas: Morphosyntax

Post by Omzinesý »

The languages has noun class markers / classifiers / generic nouns (the terms are messy anyways). They can appear alone (often anaphorically) or be prefixed with the head noun. They are usually of the form CVC. When prefixed, they lose the value of the vowel, which becomes schwa or mirrors the value of the first vowel of the root (dunno yet). Some distinctions of the vowels can also disappear.

An arbitrary example:

tsek 'a tree'
manut 'a perch'

sak-manut 'a perch tree'
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Re: Random ideas: Morphosyntax

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This looks cool because it's unique yet naturalistic. A mixture of pronouns getting added to nouns (like grammaticalized definite articles), noun classes from numeral classifiers and the type of noun incorporation I always forget the name of.
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Re: Random ideas: Morphosyntax

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My language Ronc Tyu has something like that too, with several different stages of grammaticalization appearing in the language simultaneously depending on the morpheme in question.

The first stage is productive head-initial compounding, which can happen with almost any noun as the head (and both nouns and verbs as the dependent), and is pronounced as two full syllables with independent tones. Number inflection appears on the head, sometimes suppletively:

hli-zèi ‘grass snake’, PL fwá-zèi (hli‘snake’ + zèi ‘grass’)
rèi-rae ‘honey’, SGV yèi-rae (rèi ‘juice, sap’ + rae ‘bee(s)’)

In the second stage, certain nouns (typically semantically generic ones such as yàe ‘tool’ or śou ‘place, location’) are regularly used to form compounds with similar semantics, but still with two phonologically independent syllables:

yàe-kàc ‘travois, sledge’, PL nyàe-kàc (kàc ‘bear, carry’)
yàe-ngge ‘raft’, PL nyàe-ngge (ngge ‘flow (of liquids)’)
yàe-sin ‘musical instrument’, PL nyàe-sin (sin ‘music’)

In colloquial speech, these words already tend to simplify their first syllable to a toneless CV(N)- with vowel assimilation, resulting in something like ya-kàc, ye-ngge, yi-sin.

As the third stage, there are a number morphemes that appear only as the first part of compounds, with a similar behaviour compared to the words in stage 2. These "cranberry morphemes" also typically still have a phonologically full syllable in careful speech:

ngèa-kàc ‘bucket’, PL ngào-kàc (kàc ‘bear, carry’)
ngèa-póu ‘barrel’, PL ngào-póu (póu ‘be closed’)

Probably related is ngì-tóun ‘mortar, grinding bowl’ (tóun ‘crush, grind’); note that all three compounds describe types of containers. This word has no morphological number inflection though and may thus already represent the next stage of grammaticalization.

Phonological simpification in colloquial speech happens frequently again: nga-kàc, ngo-póu, ngo-tóun.

In the fourth stage, former head nouns have phonologically eroded to toneless CV(N)- in all circumstances, becoming true derivational prefixes, the oldest of which may also trigger morphophonological changes on the second element. The original number inflections on the first element often disappear completely (especially if they were irregular), and are sometimes replaced with number inflection on the second element if that is transparently the same as an independent noun.

Instrumental dV-:
dagàc ‘handle (for carrying)’, PL ndagàc (kàc ‘carry’)
dihmi ‘clasp, brooch, fibula’, PL ndihmi (hmi ‘squeeze, pinch’)
duhrù ‘talisman’, PL nduhrù ( ‘bless’, PASS hrù)

Locative źV- (etymologically related to the word śou ‘place, location’ mentioned above):
źindlíc ‘the shaman's garden’ (no PL, ndlíc ‘magical herbs’)
źiźenc ‘wind burial platform’ (no PL, śenc ‘ashes’)
źundúc ‘battlefield’ (no PL, ndùc ‘battle, skirmish’)

Diminutive mVN-:
manggác ‘puppy’, PL manggwác (kác ‘male dog, hound’, PL kwác)
mandaoc ‘foal’, PL mindźinc (taoc ‘male horse, stallion’, PL tśinc)
mindzìnc ‘calf’, PL mandràenc (zìnc ‘cow’, PL zràenc)
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Re: Random ideas: Morphosyntax

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So it's ACADEW
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