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Lemizh: Difference between revisions
Rule Seven etc.
Anypodetos (talk | contribs) (See also: Tower of Babel) |
Anypodetos (talk | contribs) (Rule Seven etc.) |
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'''Rule Five. A case characterises the action it refers to completely with regard to its case descriptor.''' | '''Rule Five. A case characterises the action it refers to completely with regard to its case descriptor.''' | ||
For example, the nominative object "Father Christmas" has to name the complete sender of the above instance of giving. This excludes from this instance all giving not done by Father Christmas. So each object places a restriction on the action of giving the main predicate refers to. Thus, the subset of giving meant by this instance of ''dà.'' – what the sentence is ultimately talking about – is defined more and more precisely with each additional object. (This is true not only of the main predicate but of all words in a sentence.) | For example, the nominative object "Father Christmas" has to name the complete sender of the above instance of giving. This excludes from this instance all giving not done by Father Christmas. So each object places a restriction on the action of giving the main predicate refers to. Thus, the subset of giving meant by this instance of ''dà.'' – what the sentence is ultimately talking about – is defined more and more precisely with each additional object. (This is true not only of the main predicate but of all words in a sentence. Also, as inner and outer cases can be interconverted via inversion, this rule applies to inner cases as well.) | ||
'''Rule Six. A missing object is equivalent to the absence of information about its descriptor.''' | '''Rule Six. A missing object is equivalent to the absence of information about its descriptor.''' | ||
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Above sentences do not have, for example, locative objects, so Rule Five cannot place a restriction on the place of giving. Because of Rule Six, this does not mean there are no restrictions on the location, but only that this kind of information has not been included in the sentence (for example, because the speaker does not know about it, considers it irrelevant, assumes that the listener already knows or – perhaps most importantly – that the listener can infer it). In fact, everything not useful for understanding a sentence should be omitted to save the listener processing effort. (See the inversion example above, which omits the nominative "someone".) | Above sentences do not have, for example, locative objects, so Rule Five cannot place a restriction on the place of giving. Because of Rule Six, this does not mean there are no restrictions on the location, but only that this kind of information has not been included in the sentence (for example, because the speaker does not know about it, considers it irrelevant, assumes that the listener already knows or – perhaps most importantly – that the listener can infer it). In fact, everything not useful for understanding a sentence should be omitted to save the listener processing effort. (See the inversion example above, which omits the nominative "someone".) | ||
Rules Five and Six imply that every instance of a word has exactly one action (which, however, need not be contiguous), one sender (which | Rules Five and Six imply that every instance of a word has exactly one action (which, however, need not be contiguous), one sender (which may consist of several people), and so on: Five excludes additional senders if one nominative object is already present, and Six gives meaning to missing objects, establishing them as an integral part of Lemizh sentence grammar. | ||
'''Rule Seven. Given an object and its predicate, the predicate is considered more real and the object more hypothetical.''' | '''Rule Seven. Given an object and its predicate, the predicate is considered more real and the object more hypothetical.''' | ||
{{Interlinear|indent=3|display-messages=no|ablist=FACT:factive case; 1:first level; 2:second level; 2A:second level, agentive; 3:third level | |||
|láxt föpysryfè dày dwywỳ lusỳi. | |||
|want-FACT-1 {Father Christmas}-ACC-NOM-2A give-FACT-ACC-2 bottle-ACC-ACC-3 Lucy-ACC-DAT-3. | |||
|''Father Christmas wants to give Lucy a bottle.'' (The action of giving is the content of the wish. The nominative object of "give", which is also Father Christmas, is omitted per Rule Six.)}} | |||
This sentence contains the information that Father Christmas wants something (i.e. to give Lucy a bottle), but not that he actually gives something (i.e. Lucy a bottle). The main predicate "want", so to speak, lives in the world the sentence is talking about (more formally, the world of the parole), which is the more real, while its object "give Lucy a bottle" lives in the world of his wish, which is the more hypothetical. The parole, having level zero, acts as the predicate to the sentence as a whole and is therefore still more real. This reflects the fact that the parole is part of the real world; it is as real as anything linguistic can be. Turning this around, we see that the sentence is more hypothetical than reality: it can be a metaphor or some other figure of speech, a statement about a fictional or otherwise imagined world, an error, a lie, a linguistic example sentence, etc. We call the main predicate's kind of reality, the one that is just one level more hypothetical than the parole and the real world, ''grammatical reality''. | |||
The bottle and Lucy, having third level, are still more hypothetical than the action of giving; their existence does not follow from grammar but from logic and context: someone nonexistent cannot be given something. A better example would be "I see white mice", where the existence of the mice may or may not be inferred from context such as the amount of alcohol I have drunk. | |||
-- | In the sentence "I think that Father Christmas wants to give Lucy a bottle", "to think" is grammatically real, while the other two verbs, so to say, are pushed down one degree of reality. Furthermore, inversion changes degrees of reality: | ||
{{Interlinear|indent=3|display-messages=no|ablist=FACT:factive case; 1:first level; 2:second level | |||
|làxt dày. ⇔ dà lỳxta. | |||
|want-FACT-1 give-'''FACT'''-'''ACC'''-2. ⇔ give-FACT-1 want-'''ACC'''-'''FACT'''-2. | |||
|''[He] wants to give. ⇔ [He] gives "wantingly", i.e. gladly.''}} | |||
There is no real difference between phrases and complete sentences in Lemizh: | |||
{| class="wikitable" | {| class="wikitable" | ||
|- | |- | ||
! !! as an object !! as a complete sentence | ! !! as an object (hypothetical) !! as a main predicate / complete sentence (grammatically real) | ||
|- | |- | ||
| ''dà.'' || to give; giving || An action of giving exists = Someone gives something. | | ''dà.'' || to give; giving || An action of giving exists = Someone gives something. | ||
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===Noun phrases=== | ===Noun phrases=== | ||
Forming noun phrases does not require any new grammatical rules. | Forming noun phrases does not require any new grammatical rules. Taking the first example sentence from above and changing the inner case of "give" to the nominative yields "one giving something, a giver". The objects are still sender, content and recipient of the ''action'' of giving, as outer cases define relations to the predicate's ''stem'' per Rule Three. | ||
{{Interlinear|indent=3|display-messages=no|ablist=FACT:factive case; 1:first level; 2:second level; | {{Interlinear|indent=3|display-messages=no|ablist=FACT:factive case; 1:first level; 2:second level; 2A:second level, agentive | ||
| | |dé föpysryfè dwywỳ lusỳi. | ||
| | |give-'''NOM'''-1 {Father Christmas}-ACC-NOM-2A bottle-ACC-ACC-2 Lucy-ACC-DAT-2. | ||
|'' | |''[There is] one giving Lucy a bottle, Father Christmas''}} | ||
Rules Four and Five guarantee that the giver is identical to Father Christmas: both are the sender of the same instance of the stem ''d–'' "give" (the giver via its inner nominative, Father Christmas via its outer nominative), and both are the ''complete'' sender of this action. This type of construction, where an object's outer case matches its predicate's inner case, is called a '''bracket'''. Brackets are very widely used: | Rules Four and Five guarantee that the giver is identical to Father Christmas: both are the sender of the same instance of the stem ''d–'' "give" (the giver via its inner nominative, Father Christmas via its outer nominative), and both are the ''complete'' sender of this action. This type of construction, where an object's outer case matches its predicate's inner case, is called a '''bracket'''. Brackets are very widely used: | ||
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|gangà txỳska. | |gangà txỳska. | ||
|sing-'''FACT'''-1 loud-ACC-'''FACT'''-2. | |sing-'''FACT'''-1 loud-ACC-'''FACT'''-2. | ||
|''(an action of) singing, a loud thing = loud singing = singing loudly, to sing loudly''}} | |''(an action of) singing, a loud thing = loud singing = singing loudly, to sing loudly'' (Compare "to give gladly" above, under Rule Seven.)}} | ||
{{Interlinear|indent=3|display-messages=no|ablist=FACT:factive case; 1:first level; 2:second level; 3:third level | {{Interlinear|indent=3|display-messages=no|ablist=FACT:factive case; 1:first level; 2:second level; 3:third level | ||
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===Dependent clauses=== | ===Dependent clauses=== | ||
Dependent clauses employ the same principles as above, as we have seen with the sentence "Father Christmas wants '''to give Lucy a bottle'''" under Rule Seven. | |||
The difference between English gerund clauses and | The difference between English gerund clauses and that-clauses roughly translates into a difference between an inner factive (''action'') and an inner affirmative (''fact''). | ||
{{Interlinear|indent=3|display-messages=no|ablist=FACT:factive case; 1:first level; 2:second level; 3:third level; 3A:third level, agentive | {{Interlinear|indent=3|display-messages=no|ablist=FACT:factive case; 1:first level; 2:second level; 3:third level; 3A:third level, agentive | ||
|dmàt tryxkì dáe föpysryfè dwywỳ lusỳi. | |dmàt tryxkì dáe föpysryfè dwywỳ lusỳi. | ||
|see-FACT-1 beaver-ACC-DAT-2 give-'''FACT'''-NOM-2 {Father Christmas}-ACC-NOM-3A bottle-ACC-ACC-3 Lucy-ACC-DAT-3. | |see-FACT-1 beaver-ACC-DAT-2 give-'''FACT'''-NOM-2 {Father Christmas}-ACC-NOM-3A bottle-ACC-ACC-3 Lucy-ACC-DAT-3. | ||
|''The beaver sees [the action of] '''Father Christmas giving Lucy a bottle'''.'' (The dependent clause could also be in the accusative to focus on the optical information transmitted to the beaver.)}} | |''The beaver sees [the action of] '''Father Christmas giving Lucy a bottle'''.'' (The beaver is at the receiving end of the optical stimulus or information, hence the dative. The dependent clause could also be in the accusative to focus on the optical information transmitted to the beaver.)}} | ||
{{Interlinear|indent=3|display-messages=no|ablist=FACT:factive case; AFF:affirmative case; 1:first level; 2:second level; 3:third level; 3A:third level, agentive | {{Interlinear|indent=3|display-messages=no|ablist=FACT:factive case; AFF:affirmative case; 1:first level; 2:second level; 3:third level; 3A:third level, agentive | ||