Re: Noimi Inverse Marking

On Tue, 5 Jul 2005 16:22:24 -0500, Thomas Wier <trwier@...> wrote:
>
> > A possible exception is when both 1st and 2nd person arguments occur;
> > I'm not sure whether to use
> > (a) a special A2 marker for 1st person acting on 2nd person, or
>
> In Algonquian languages, when the speech-act participants are
> restricted to first and second person, special inverse forms
> are used, which treat second person as higher in the hierarchy
> than the first person, contrary to the generalization of
> Silverstein's hierarchy:
>
>  ke-wa:pam-i   ke-wa:pam-ene
>  2-look.at-1,2.DIR  2-look.at-1,2.INV
>  "You (sg) are looking at me." "I am looking at you."
This is consistent with what I recently found on an Ojibwe site
you (singl.) see me - giwaabam
i see you (singl.) - giwaabamin
you (pl.) see me - giwaabamim
i see you (pl.) - giwaabamininim

http://www.first-ojibwe.net/translations/weshki-ayaad/verbs/vta_A_indic.htm

The Potawatomi site I've looked at seems to have inconsistencies.

The Algonquian method seems to be like (b); I got the idea of (a) from
Miapimoquitch. For the second part, I'm leaning toward following the
(Silverstein's -- I didn't remember the name for it) hierachy, since it
makes more sense to me, and the 2nd-person-first way implies some
connection to Algonquian.

>  ke-wa:pam-i-pwa  ke-wa:pam-ene-pwa
>  2-look.at-1,2.DIR-2Pl 2-look.at-1,2.INV-2Pl
>  "Y'all are looking at me" "I am looking at y'all."
>
> The data is from Meskwaki, of course.  I use '1,2' to
> distinguish these from the regular direct and inverse
> thematic markers that are used when a third person
> participant is involved. Note how every verb form has
> a second person prefix, whatever the grammatical function
> of that prefix.
>
> > (b) a special A3/A1 marker for 2nd person used only with A2 = 1st
> > person.
> > I'm also not sure whether I should swap 1st and 2nd person above.
> >
> > At this point, I should mention inverse marking. Inverse marking is
> > necessary to change which roles are mapped to which arguments. If no
> > such marking appears, the word has a *direct* form and the roles R1,
> > R2, and R3 go with arguments A1, A2, and A3 respectively. The inverse
> > marker will swap R2 with R1 if V=2 and with R3 if V=3.
> >
> >        Role Mapping    A1      A2      A3
> >        ---------------------------------------
> >        V=3  direct     R1      R2      R3
> >        V=3  inverse    R1      R3      R2
> >        V=2  direct     R1      R2      --
> >        V=2  inverse    R2      R1      --
>
> I had been meaning to get to this earlier, but the July 4th
> celebrations interceded. :)
>
> I should point out that the system you've created here is
> AFAIK entirely unattested among inversion languages.  In
> all cases that I'm familiar with (Algic, Ktunaxa, Kiowa-Tanoan,
> Mapudungun, etc.), the inversion process only cares about
> who's the subject and who's the object; secondary objects
> don't figure into the equation.  Thus, you would only
> expect an inversion between R1 and R2 (being linked to
> A2 and A1 respectively), not between R2 and R3.
This is interesting. I can only tell you why I've done it this way:

Noimi has only a few primitive V=3 words. For these, the indirect object
role goes with A3 (when direct), since a recipient etc. will normally be
animate, and A3 is animate only (like A2), while A1 can't be animate. These
are:
A2 gives A1 to A3
A2 takes A1 from A3
A2 tells A3 A1
It seems more likely that a 1st or 2nd person would take that role much
more often than direct object.

There are also a number of V=3 derived by compounding some actional V=2
with a locational V=2. In these, the agent is R2 (as usual), the location
referent is A1, and the entity at/going to/coming from the location is R3.

Jeff

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