Pazmat Relative Clauses [Split]

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Pazmat Relative Clauses [Split]

Post by Chagen »

Edit: Split from (Conlangs) Q&A Thread

Pazmat bans participial phrases and infinitive phrases from having a nominative (with the former, it's more that the phrases cannot have a nominative different from the noun that the participle is agreeing with). Since Pazmat uses participial phrases for relative clauses, this means that in a relative clause where the modified noun is an oblique in the relative clause, Pazmat elects to represent the oblique antecedent with the relative pronoun uźā, and, most importantly, it has the relative clause actually agree with its nominative. Or, to use an example:

Nayakā yīdasāya, swotā uźāmi qiḥāya kansayṛtā, vīghevyū
NAME-NOM dagger-DEF.SG.NOM criminal-DEF.SG.NOM REL.PRO-INSTR man-DEF.SG-ACC die-CAUSE-PTCPL.PST.ACT-1STDECLENSION.DEF.SG.NOM find-PERF-3S
"Nayaka has retrieved the dagger with which the criminal killed the man"


Literally, this is "Nayaka retrieved the dagger, the criminal having killed the man with which". Unlike English, the relative clause does not agree or modify "dagger"--rather, it agrees with "criminal". This is because this is the ONLY way to ensure that the nominative of the clause is the same as the noun its agreeing with. If anything, it almost sounds more like "Nayaka retrieved the dagger--you know, the one the criminal killed the man with..." though in Pazmat it sounds totally normal and not slightly awkward like this English translation here.

Is this naturalistic?
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: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Salmoneus »

I don't think I understand. To start with, I think your terminology is unusual. When you say "a nominative", do you mean a subject? Or anything that happens to be in the nominative case? It's best to distinguish role from case (marking of role). I also don't understand about relatives "agreeing" parts of themselves? And then you suggest also that the "nominative of the clause" is meant to agree with something, potentially itself?

And in your example, where is "retrieving" in the sentence? And why are both the subject and object of the elided 'retrieving' in the nominative? Does that make both of them "a nominative", even though only one is the subject? Or is this some sort of hyper-specialised appositive construction? It seems awkward having a run of three nouns in the nominative! [oh wait, is that 'find' at the end the 'retrieve' of the translation?]

You say your clause is literally "the criminal having killed the man with which", and that this does not modify 'dagger'. But obviously if this is the literal translation then it does modify 'dagger'!

[EDIT: likewise in your paraphrase, "the one the criminal killed the man with", this still obviously modifies "dagger"?]


So I'm not really clear what's going on here.


I will say though that it's not unusual to have different constructions for relativisation of sufficiently non-core nouns, or even to disallow this entirely.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Sequor »

Salmoneus wrote: 13 Oct 2020 14:05 I don't think I understand. To start with, I think your terminology is unusual. When you say "a nominative", do you mean a subject? Or anything that happens to be in the nominative case? It's best to distinguish role from case (marking of role). I also don't understand about relatives "agreeing" parts of themselves? And then you suggest also that the "nominative of the clause" is meant to agree with something, potentially itself?

And in your example, where is "retrieving" in the sentence? And why are both the subject and object of the elided 'retrieving' in the nominative? Does that make both of them "a nominative", even though only one is the subject? Or is this some sort of hyper-specialised appositive construction? It seems awkward having a run of three nouns in the nominative! [oh wait, is that 'find' at the end the 'retrieve' of the translation?]

You say your clause is literally "the criminal having killed the man with which", and that this does not modify 'dagger'. But obviously if this is the literal translation then it does modify 'dagger'!
He's making a mess of the linguistics terminology, yes, while also making the classic mistake of assuming specific named forms (morphological forms, morphosyntactic constructions) inherently carry specific functions. (You may recall people who get shocked when they learn the Georgian "nominative" and "dative" regularly mark direct objects.) However, if you approach his post as written by someone who has studied some Latin, has imperfectly learned the terminology used in Latin textbooks/grammars specifically, and is using constructions inspired from Latin (his relative clauses are clearly inspired from the ablative absolute and accusativus-cum-infinitivo constructions; also Latin participles are only used in syntactic contexts when they modify an explicit or implied noun, unlike participles in modern Romance or Germanic), I think you can perfectly understand what he means.

I also suspect he made a mistake in his gloss, and yīdasāya is supposed to be accusative (dagger-DEF.SG.ACC). It seems to have the same -āya accusative ending of qiḥāya 'man.ACC'.

If it helps, since you (Sal) know some Latin too, he's doing what would be literally, in Latin (with the stretch of rendering the past active participle as Latin 'interficiēns', which in Latin is not past-tense):
Naiaca pugiōnem, scelerātus quō virum interficiēns, invēnit.
Naiaca.NOM dagger.ACC, criminal.NOM with.which man.ACC kill.PAST.PTCP.NOM, found-3SG
'Naiaca found the dagger with which the criminal killed the man.'

Chagen is basically saying the main verb of a Pazmat relative clause is an adjective-like "participle" thing that agrees with the nominative-marked subject of the relative clause ('criminal'). (And when he says that this is "unlike English" because the Pazmat "relative clause" agrees with its "nominative", he's confusing the function of the Pazmat main verb and that of the English relative pronoun.)

Chagen wrote: 13 Oct 2020 00:07Is this naturalistic?
Yes, it's naturalistic. In fact, in much of Slavic, this is what past-tense verbs are like, no matter if they're in a main clause or subordinate clause, being able to take direct objects too (like qiḥāya kansayṛtā) and whatnot, all while being adjective-like things agreeing with their nominative-marked subject. And this is because, indeed, these Slavic past tenses descend from what formerly used to be past-tense participles.

I think it'd do you a lot of good to better learn linguistics terminology though, in particular, the difference between form and function. If it is illuminating, unlike Latin, Arabic sometimes has accusative-marked subjects in main clauses for example (and yes, with verbs in normally inflected finite verbs, not an infinitive or such), Georgian has nominative-marked objects, and many Austronesian languages have "symmetric voices" in which the subject-marker and object-markers exchange meanings from subject to object and viceversa depending on the voice used in the verb (this is also true, but to a lesser extent and for different reasons, of direct-inverse languages like those of the Algonquian family).
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Creyeditor »

Chagen wrote: 13 Oct 2020 00:07 Pazmat bans participial phrases and infinitive phrases from having a nominative (with the former, it's more that the phrases cannot have a nominative different from the noun that the participle is agreeing with). Since Pazmat uses participial phrases for relative clauses, this means that in a relative clause where the modified noun is an oblique in the relative clause, Pazmat elects to represent the oblique antecedent with the relative pronoun uźā, and, most importantly, it has the relative clause actually agree with its nominative. Or, to use an example:

Nayakā yīdasāya, swotā uźāmi qiḥāya kansayṛtā, vīghevyū
NAME-NOM dagger-DEF.SG.NOM criminal-DEF.SG.NOM REL.PRO-INSTR man-DEF.SG-ACC die-CAUSE-PTCPL.PST.ACT-1STDECLENSION.DEF.SG.NOM find-PERF-3S
"Nayaka has retrieved the dagger with which the criminal killed the man"


Literally, this is "Nayaka retrieved the dagger, the criminal having killed the man with which". Unlike English, the relative clause does not agree or modify "dagger"--rather, it agrees with "criminal". This is because this is the ONLY way to ensure that the nominative of the clause is the same as the noun its agreeing with. If anything, it almost sounds more like "Nayaka retrieved the dagger--you know, the one the criminal killed the man with..." though in Pazmat it sounds totally normal and not slightly awkward like this English translation here.

Is this naturalistic?
I found your descriptions very clear, but this might be because we share some implicit background assumptions. Still, I am curious. Is there a nat lang precedent for the "one-nominative-maximum"? Also, how exactly is the nominative case used in Pazmat? I noticed that criminal, dagger and the proper name bear it. Also, can your participle phrases be transitive?
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Chagen »

Salmoneus wrote: 13 Oct 2020 14:05 I don't think I understand. To start with, I think your terminology is unusual. When you say "a nominative", do you mean a subject? Or anything that happens to be in the nominative case? It's best to distinguish role from case (marking of role). I also don't understand about relatives "agreeing" parts of themselves? And then you suggest also that the "nominative of the clause" is meant to agree with something, potentially itself?
Let me explain better.

In Pazmat, a deranked verbal clause--that is, a clause that has a participle or infinitive--has some restrictions. For participles, this restriction is that the subject of their clause cannot be different from the noun that the participle is modifying.

Since Pazmat uses participles for relative clauses, this causes a problem when the noun is an oblique in the relative clause (as in my example), because then the relative clause will have a subject different from the noun its modifying. In "Nayaka retrieved the dagger with which the criminal killed the man", the relative clause "with which the criminal killed the man" has a subject ("criminal") that is not the actual noun the clause is modifying ("dagger"). This is fine in English. It is not in Pazmat.

Pazmat's method of getting around this is to actually completely disconnect the relative clause from "dagger" and instead make it modify "criminal" (hence my literal translation: "Nayaka retrieved the dagger, the criminal having killed the man with which"). Rather than directly modify "dagger", the relative clause is now more like a side comment that speakers of Pazmat simply know is referring to the dagger.

(if you're wondering, when the noun being modified is a direct object in the relative clause, Pazmat just passivizes the relative clause, so "the girl whom that boy loves" becomes "the girl, (her) being loved by that boy". Obviously, this cannot be done when the modified noun is an oblique in the relative clause--Pazmat does not have any kind of special voice like some natlangs do to force an oblique to be the subject, it only has active, passive, and casuative voices)
[oh wait, is that 'find' at the end the 'retrieve' of the translation?]
Yes.
You say your clause is literally "the criminal having killed the man with which", and that this does not modify 'dagger'. But obviously if this is the literal translation then it does modify 'dagger'!

[EDIT: likewise in your paraphrase, "the one the criminal killed the man with", this still obviously modifies "dagger"?]
As explained above, in Pazmat, the clause is not literally modifying dagger, it's just taken to by native speakers of the language. A better literal translation might be "Nayaka retrieved the dagger, you know, the criminal having killed the man with which..."
I found your descriptions very clear, but this might be because we share some implicit background assumptions. Still, I am curious. Is there a nat lang precedent for the "one-nominative-maximum"? Also, how exactly is the nominative case used in Pazmat? I noticed that criminal, dagger and the proper name bear it. Also, can your participle phrases be transitive?
I messed up--yīdasāya is an accusative, as Ser correctly figured out.

Participle phrases can be transitive. The restriction is that the subject of the relative clause cannot be different from the noun modifying it, so transitive phrases are totally fine:

Nayakā yīdasāya veghaśamāva, swettā nucallītam vūstubbū
NAME-NOM dagger-DEF.SG-ACC find-PTCPL.FUT.ACT-DEF.SG-LOC case-DEF.SG.NOM fast-SUPERLATIVE-ADV walk-INCHO-3S
"After Nayaka found the dagger, the case started going a lot faster.

(for reference: a future participle in the locative vase means "after [clause]", even if the actual clause is referring to a past-tense event; the superlative in Pazmat can be used as an intensive without any intent of comparison)
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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Post by Salmoneus »

Ser wrote: 13 Oct 2020 20:41 I think you can perfectly understand what he means.
I'm afraid you overestimate my intelligence!
[and also, eheu!, with how great a nonchalent facility I remember my Latin syntax...]
I also suspect he made a mistake in his gloss, and yīdasāya is supposed to be accusative (dagger-DEF.SG.ACC). It seems to have the same -āya accusative ending of qiḥāya 'man.ACC'.
OK, yes, that does make more sense.
Chagen is basically saying the main verb of a Pazmat relative clause is an adjective-like "participle" thing that agrees with the nominative-marked subject of the relative clause ('criminal')
I got that, but since the participle structure was introduced off-handedly in a "since..." clause, I assumed it wasn't what he was asking about. And what else would the participle agree with? (assuming that he'd have mentioned if this language generally agreed with objects rather than subjects...)


...although this is kind of where the ambiguity comes in, I guess. Is he saying that the participle agrees with the subject (assuming that the nominative marks the subject), or that it agrees with the agent? Could he equally use a passive participle agreeing with "man" ('the man having been killed by which by the criminal')?

I suppose my confusion is: what is it he's saying Pazmat can't do?
. (And when he says that this is "unlike English" because the Pazmat "relative clause" agrees with its "nominative", he's confusing the function of the Pazmat main verb and that of the English relative pronoun.)
So you think he thinks that:
- his verb agrees with the subject of the relative clause
- the English relative pronoun agrees with the object of the matrix clause
- thus they are different?

But Pazmat has a relative pronoun that, just like in English, seems to agree with the object of the matrix clause?

The only difference between English and Pazmat here seems to be that the verb form in Pazmat is a participle, whereas English (particularly spoken English) gets wobbly about participles in relatives. But I don't think that was what he was asking about?


But I'm probably missing something.

Creyeditor: isn't his example - "the criminal killing the man with which" - prototypically transitive?



EDIT: I'll go ahead and post this now, and then either modify it or post again once I've read Chagen's post (which popped up while I was writing this one).
Last edited by Salmoneus on 13 Oct 2020 23:30, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Salmoneus »

Chagen wrote: 13 Oct 2020 22:09
Salmoneus wrote: 13 Oct 2020 14:05 I don't think I understand. To start with, I think your terminology is unusual. When you say "a nominative", do you mean a subject? Or anything that happens to be in the nominative case? It's best to distinguish role from case (marking of role). I also don't understand about relatives "agreeing" parts of themselves? And then you suggest also that the "nominative of the clause" is meant to agree with something, potentially itself?
Let me explain better.
I think you've made me more confused!
In Pazmat, a deranked verbal clause--that is, a clause that has a participle or infinitive--has some restrictions. For participles, this restriction is that the subject of their clause cannot be different from the noun that the participle is modifying.

Can I rephrase this just to be clear that we're talking about the same thing? I would say: the antecedent of a relative clause (the noun the relative clause modifies) must be the subject of that relative clause. Is that right?

If so, that's fine. It's... well, I'm not sure it's very common, but it's a recognised thing, for relative clauses.

[tangent: I'm not sure what other participle clauses that 'modify a noun' but aren't relative clauses you may be thinking of... if it modifies a noun, isn't it a relative by definition? But anyway, let's just stick with the relative clauses for now...]
Since Pazmat uses participles for relative clauses, this causes a problem when the noun is an oblique in the relative clause (as in my example), because then the relative clause will have a subject different from the noun its modifying.
Yes. An oblique is, as people say, 'lower on the accessibility hierarchy' than a subject; many languages cannot have the antecedent of a relative be an oblique in that relative, or employ different strategies when it is. [for example, Irish has a different structure for 'indirect' relatives - those with neither and object nor a subject as the antecedent]

[indeed, even English is a sort-of example: although both types of relative can use relative pronouns, only direct relatives can drop them]
In "Nayaka retrieved the dagger with which the criminal killed the man", the relative clause "with which the criminal killed the man" has a subject ("criminal") that is not the actual noun the clause is modifying ("dagger").
Yes.
This is fine in English. It is not in Pazmat.
OK.
Pazmat's method of getting around this is to actually completely disconnect the relative clause from "dagger" and instead make it modify "criminal" (hence my literal translation: "Nayaka retrieved the dagger, the criminal having killed the man with which").
Here you lose me. In this 'literal translation', the relative clause is still modifying "dagger". That's what the 'which' refers back to.
Rather than directly modify "dagger", the relative clause is now more like a side comment that speakers of Pazmat simply know is referring to the dagger.
I don't understand this bit. The Pazmat seems to a) put the relative clause adjacent to its antecedent, and b) point this out with a relative clause. So in what way do they 'simply know' this, rather than it being marked exactly as in English?
(if you're wondering, when the noun being modified is a direct object in the relative clause, Pazmat just passivizes the relative clause, so "the girl whom that boy loves" becomes "the girl, (her) being loved by that boy". Obviously, this cannot be done when the modified noun is an oblique in the relative clause--Pazmat does not have any kind of special voice like some natlangs do to force an oblique to be the subject, it only has active, passive, and casuative voices)
OK, that makes sense. [unless the oblique is a cause, of course!]
You say your clause is literally "the criminal having killed the man with which", and that this does not modify 'dagger'. But obviously if this is the literal translation then it does modify 'dagger'!

[EDIT: likewise in your paraphrase, "the one the criminal killed the man with", this still obviously modifies "dagger"?]
As explained above, in Pazmat, the clause is not literally modifying dagger, it's just taken to by native speakers of the language.
I don't understand.

a) in your translations, the clause is literally modifying dagger. I don't see from your gloss how Pazmat is any different from English in this regard. I don't even know how the Pazmat indirect relative is meant to differ from its direct relative!

b) if native speaker "take it" to modify 'dagger', then it modifies 'dagger', no? What native speakers take something to mean IS what it means!

A better literal translation might be "Nayaka retrieved the dagger, you know, the criminal having killed the man with which..."
But this 'literal' translation still has a relative clause - "the criminal having killed the man with which" - that clearly and unambiguously, literally, modifies "dagger"! The "you know" in the middle doesn't alter the syntax, as it's just a pragmatic intrusive tangent.


-------

Perhaps it would be clearer if you laid out:

- how Pazmat would translate a direct relative, like "Nakaya saw the criminal who killed the man" (A)
- how Pazmat would translate an indirect relative, like "Nakaya saw the dagger with which the criminal killed the man" (B)
- how B differs from A
- how Pazmat WOULD translate B IF it did NOT have the restriction you're discussing (C)?

Because at the moment, B looks exactly like C to me. I don't get what the difference is. You're saying "but instead of modifying 'dagger', this clause is only 'taken' to modify 'dagger' by all speakers" - but I don't see how the speakers are wrong!
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Post by Chagen »

I find it odd that you're confused, but I think I've figured out what's tripping you up: when I talk about participles agreeing with particular nouns, I'm referring to them agreeing with them in declension and case, similar to how adjectives in many European languages agree with them. Part of the reason this isn't obvious is because all of the nouns in my example are the same declension. Lemme provide you with the example sentence, but switching out "criminal" (a 1st-declension word) for "girl" (a 2nd-declension one):

Nayakā yīdasāya, cṛsūrē uźāmi qiḥāya kansēyṛtūrē, vīghevyū
NAME-NOM dagger-DEF.SG-ACC girl-DEF.SG.NOM REL.PRO-INSTR man-DEF.SG-ACC die-CAUSE-PTCPL.PST.ACT-2ND-DEF.SG.NOM find-PERF-3S
"Nayaka has retrieved the dagger with which the girl killed the man"

You will note here that the participle agrees with "girl" (cṛsūrē) and NOT "dagger" (yīdasāya). The whole clause may be modifying "dagger", but the actual participial head of the clause agrees with its actual subject, "girl", in both declension and case. There is a relative pronoun that refers to the dagger, of course, to explain what it's doing in the relative clause (being used as an instrument).
Perhaps it would be clearer if you laid out:

- how Pazmat would translate a direct relative, like "Nakaya saw the criminal who killed the man" (A)
Nayakā swotāya, qiḥāya kansēyṛtāya vēttavyū.
NAME.NOM criminal-DEF.SG-ACC man-DEF.SG-ACC die-CAUS-PTCPL.PST.ACT-1ST-DEF.SG-ACC see-PERF-3S

"Criminal" is modified by a participial phrase whose participle agrees with it in both noun declension and case. Literally, this is "Nayaka saw the criminall, (he) having killed the man"
- how Pazmat would translate an indirect relative, like "Nakaya saw the dagger with which the criminal killed the man" (B)
Nayakā yīdasāya, swotā uźāmi qiḥāya kansēyṛtā, vēttavyū
NAME-NOM dagger-DEF.SG-ACC criminal-DEF.SG.NOM REL.PRO-INSTR man-DEF.SG-ACC die-CAUSE-PTCPL.PST.ACT-1ST-.DEF.SG.NOM see-PERF-3S

In this sentence, the participle of the relative clause does not agree with the noun it is modifying in case. That's because it agrees with its own subject, "criminal" and thus is in the nominative case, whereas with the previous example, it agreed with the noun it was modifying because said noun was actually the subject of the clause.

Put another way: participles in Pazmat agree in declension and case with their own subjects, which usually are the same as the actual noun they are modifying, but in this instance (a relative clause where the modified noun is an oblique), it isn't.
- how Pazmat WOULD translate B IF it did NOT have the restriction you're discussing (C)?
Absolutely nothing would change except the participle would be in the accusative to agree with "dagger".
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: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Salmoneus »

Chagen wrote: 14 Oct 2020 02:02 I find it odd that you're confused,
Update: reading this post, I'm now even more confused!
but I think I've figured out what's tripping you up: when I talk about participles agreeing with particular nouns, I'm referring to them agreeing with them in declension and case, similar to how adjectives in many European languages agree with them.
Yeah, sure. Got that.

[although: are there European languages in which participles always take the declension of the noun they modify? I'm sure I'm just missing something, but this seems a little odd to me. Agreement in number, case and gender is of course perfectly ordinary]

Part of the reason this isn't obvious is because all of the nouns in my example are the same declension. Lemme provide you with the example sentence, but switching out "criminal" (a 1st-declension word) for "girl" (a 2nd-declension one):

Nayakā yīdasāya, cṛsūrē uźāmi qiḥāya kansēyṛtūrē, vīghevyū
NAME-NOM dagger-DEF.SG-ACC girl-DEF.SG.NOM REL.PRO-INSTR man-DEF.SG-ACC die-CAUSE-PTCPL.PST.ACT-2ND-DEF.SG.NOM find-PERF-3S
"Nayaka has retrieved the dagger with which the girl killed the man"

You will note here that the participle agrees with "girl" (cṛsūrē) and NOT "dagger" (yīdasāya).
Yeah, of course. Why would it ever agree with "dagger"? The participle is modifying its subject, just as in English.
The whole clause may be modifying "dagger", but the actual participial head of the clause agrees with its actual subject, "girl", in both declension and case.
Well yeah, of course. Just the same as in English. [well, English doesn't have to agree in 'declension', and it happens not to use a participle in relatives, but otherwise...]

So, in English, using present tense to induce non-zero agreement marking:
Nayaka sees the dagger, with which the criminal stabs the man (obviously 'is stabbing' is more natural, but shows the same agreeement)
vs
Nayaka sees the dagger, with which the criminals stab the man (again, same for 'are stabbing')

So, 'stab' agrees with the subject, 'criminal', not with 'dagger', the antecedent of the clause.

Other than that your language uses participle clauses for relatives (whereas English only uses them in an adverbial sense), and that modern English has lost all its agreement on participles by now, Pazmat seems to have exactly the same structure as English. It seems to me that you could construct, as Ser suggests, exactly the same construction in Latin, or to some extent even in literary Old English (it's debated to what extend absolute participle constructions were used in ordinary speech, and to what extent they were just a stylistic imitation of Latin in high-register and translated texts, but let's not quibble over details...).

This is why I'm confused. You're obviously aware that languages can have more or less non-zero agreement marking on participles, so that's presumably not what you're asking about. And you seem to be aware that languages can certainly use deranked constructions, including participles, in relative clauses, so I assume that's not what you're asking about either. And all the rest seems exactly the same as in English, so I presume you're not asking about any of that either. So what's the issue you'd like our opinion on?
There is a relative pronoun that refers to the dagger, of course, to explain what it's doing in the relative clause (being used as an instrument).
Well, not really 'of course', no - that's just how English happens to do it. WALS' survey came up with only 13 languages that do this, compared to 99 that don't. 12 of those 13 are from Europe (well, one is Georgian, but close enough).
Perhaps it would be clearer if you laid out:

- how Pazmat would translate a direct relative, like "Nakaya saw the criminal who killed the man" (A)
Nayakā swotāya, qiḥāya kansēyṛtāya vēttavyū.
NAME.NOM criminal-DEF.SG-ACC man-DEF.SG-ACC die-CAUS-PTCPL.PST.ACT-1ST-DEF.SG-ACC see-PERF-3S

"Criminal" is modified by a participial phrase whose participle agrees with it in both noun declension and case. Literally, this is "Nayaka saw the criminall, (he) having killed the man"
OK, pretty much like in English, yes. That makes sense.
- how Pazmat would translate an indirect relative, like "Nakaya saw the dagger with which the criminal killed the man" (B)
Nayakā yīdasāya, swotā uźāmi qiḥāya kansēyṛtā, vēttavyū
NAME-NOM dagger-DEF.SG-ACC criminal-DEF.SG.NOM REL.PRO-INSTR man-DEF.SG-ACC die-CAUSE-PTCPL.PST.ACT-1ST-.DEF.SG.NOM see-PERF-3S

In this sentence, the participle of the relative clause does not agree with the noun it is modifying in case. That's because it agrees with its own subject, "criminal" and thus is in the nominative case, whereas with the previous example, it agreed with the noun it was modifying because said noun was actually the subject of the clause.
So, the same as before, yes.

OK! So, the difference between these two sentences seems to be that when you relativise on an oblique, you need a relative pronoun, whereas when you relativise a subject, you can drop the pronoun. Is this the difference you're asking about?

If so, yes, this is perfectly ordinary. WALS suggests that Spanish does this? [English isn't far off either - direct relatives can be replaced by participial constructions ("I saw the man (who was) chasing you"), but indirect relatives can't, and there's an optional special pronoun-less constuction only when its the object that's the antecedent ("I saw the man (who) you married"). Pronoun dropping in certain sorts of clause but not others is something many languages do.

(btw, it's intuitively easier to understand glosses if you only include the parts that are relevant - like, you don't need to wite 'sg' for every singular, or 'def' for every definite, when we're not talking about those things; likewise, you can just say 'kill', you don't have to say 'die-CAUSE' every time...)
Put another way: participles in Pazmat agree in declension and case with their own subjects
Sure, of course.
, which usually are the same as the actual noun they are modifying,
Almost by definition, yes
but in this instance (a relative clause where the modified noun is an oblique), it isn't.
Huh? Now I'm confused again. The modified noun here is not an oblique, it's the subject. "killing" modifies "criminal", not "dagger". How could it modify "dagger"? In what language would it ever modify "dagger"?

[well, you could have a language where it did, where every relative was an adjectival, and there was incorporation, and "the dagger with which the criminal killed the man" was always translated "the man-killing dagger of the criminal", but that doesn't seem to be how Pazmat (or English) does it]

Similarly, in English, "kill" agrees with "criminal", not with "dagger" (as the above examples with number alternations demonstrate).

Perhaps you're confusing "verb" with "clause"?

The verb, which is inside the clause, modifies the subject of the relative clause. [In Pazmat, the verb is participial in form.]
The relative clause as a whole modifies the antecedent, which can be any noun (in this case an object) in the matrix clause.

But Pazmat seems to behave exactly the same way that English does in this regard, and that most languages do. Indeed, the only slight oddity seems to be that when the antecedent co-refers with the object of the relative clause, the relative clause uses the passive (in English, both the passive and the active are allowed, although only in the active is the relative pronoun droppable ("I saw the man (who) the muggers stabbed", vs "I saw the man who was stabbed by the muggers").
- how Pazmat WOULD translate B IF it did NOT have the restriction you're discussing (C)?
Absolutely nothing would change except the participle would be in the accusative to agree with "dagger".
But... why? Why would that ever happen? "Dagger" isn't the subject of the verb!

See, I think what's confusing me is that you're effectively saying "on Tuesdays, water runs downhill; God has put in place a special rule to make water run downhill specifically on Tuesdays". And I'm left saying: but water always runs downhill, on every day of the week. What would be really weird would be if, on Tuesdays only, it didn't run downhill!

So, both Pazmat and Standard Average European have verbs agree with their subjects. Both Pazmat and SAE specifically have verbs agree with their subjects inside relative clauses. So far as I can see, both Pazmat and SAE have rules whereby the verb only EVER agrees with the subject.

But if the verb agreed with "dagger", which isn't only not the subject, but isn't even in the same clause!, then this would be something that doesn't happen anywhere else in the language. Either in Pazmat or in SAE.


So given that the behaviour when the antecedent of a relative is oblique within the relative is exactly the same as when it's not oblique (other than the obligatory pronoun), and given that this behaviour is exactly the same as in a standard average European language, including English... I'm confused why you're asking if it's naturalistic! And why you're describing with phrases like "the relative clause does not modify 'dagger'", and "it almost sounds more like..." and the like...


Not trying to be rude. It's just that I think either you must be misunderstanding something or I must be, and I'm not entirely clear which it is!
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Sequor »

Salmoneus wrote: 13 Oct 2020 22:41So you think he thinks that:
- his verb agrees with the subject of the relative clause
- the English relative pronoun agrees with the object of the matrix clause
- thus they are different?

But Pazmat has a relative pronoun that, just like in English, seems to agree with the object of the matrix clause?
I think his misuse of terminology suggests he's not consistent with his analysis either. Especially as his relative clause begins not with a relative pronoun, but with the subject of the relative clause, I imagine that throws off how he thinks of his sentence. I think he confused the nominative-marked subject (and the verb participle that agrees with it) as having the equivalent function of the English relative pronoun, thinking of the presence of his clause-medial relative pronoun as less important (maybe he thinks of it as an anaphoric demonstrative pronoun, rather, even though he doesn't call it that). This is why he talks about the agreement of the "relative clause", thinking of the rel. cl. subject and participle verb as what links the whole rel. clause to the matrix clause (something I consider a misanalysis).

I apologize for not having the time to sort out all of your questions. Personally I find his post understandable by drawing analogies to Latin, in spite of his confused use of linguistics terminology and concepts. I forgive him if he finds your posts, and their many questions, frustrating and a bit obnoxious. (And I'm really saying this with the best intentions for you, and as someone who really appreciates your contributions; it's not even criticism of you, just, maybe you don't have the background to make it through his confusing posts? His writing reminds me of similar things I come across among Latin learners. For context, I've been very involved in Latin-learning circles, especially this year, often helping people who are starting or kinda starting.)
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Salmoneus »

Ser wrote: 14 Oct 2020 20:14 I think his misuse of terminology suggests he's not consistent with his analysis either. Especially as his relative clause begins not with a relative pronoun, but with the subject of the relative clause, I imagine that throws off how he thinks of his sentence. I think he confused the nominative-marked subject (and the verb participle that agrees with it) as having the equivalent function of the English relative pronoun, thinking of the presence of his clause-medial relative pronoun as less important (maybe he thinks of it as an anaphoric demonstrative pronoun, rather, even though he doesn't call it that). This is why he talks about the agreement of the "relative clause", thinking of the rel. cl. subject and participle verb as what links the whole rel. clause to the matrix clause (something I consider a misanalysis).
Well, you can theorise what you like, I suppose. But that seems like a lot of supposition when the guy is standing right there and able to explain his question for himself.

The core of this exchange is that Chagen wants to know if "X" is naturalistic, but I don't understand what "X" is - because it seems as though "X" is just what English does (around agreement in relative clauses), and I assume he's not trying to ask about something he knows English does. You seem to think that "X" is just using participles like Latin does. But since Chagen does not appear to be treating the fact that the verb here is a participle as being the thing that's in its own right the focus of his attention - it's introduced in an offhand remark, with no suggestion I can see that he is asking whether participles are naturalistic - I don't think that's faithful to his intent.

I'm not sure why you're going to such effort to shut down the conversation. If you can only "understand" him by flat-out assuming he's trying to say something different but must have been "inconsistent" and "confused" in both "terminology and concepts"... isn't it both more productive and more polite to actually ask him what he means, rather than deciding what he means on his behalf?
I find his post understandable by drawing analogies to Latin... His writing reminds me of similar things I come across among Latin learners. For context, I've been very involved in Latin-learning circles.
OK, but given that Chagen never mentioned Latin, maybe we should consider that he's NOT talking about Latin? And that we shouldn't rewrite his post in our heads to make it be just about Latin, but should instead asking him what it really is about? I don't see what the relevance of Latin is here, when Chagen and I are talking about Pazmat.
I forgive him if he finds your posts, and their many questions, frustrating and a bit obnoxious... maybe you don't have the background.
...well, that's the end of this conversation then, I guess.
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