Tag Archives: morphosyntax

‘Locational’ Instrumental with Prepositions

Grammar Musings, , , , , ,

I was making up a bunch of words tonight and also some example sentences to go along with them and came across something like this:

[gloss]Ang pukay manga eyrarya lahanya.
AT jump-1SG.TOP MOT over fence-LOC[/gloss]
‘I jump over a fence.’

Now, I’ve long kind of disliked eyrarya ‘over, above’ as a word itself and should maybe replace it with a word I like better sometime.[1. The issue I take with it is that it’s a rather basic lexical item but it’s derived from eyra ‘below, under’ with the negative suffix -arya, so basically ‘un-under’, which I personally find very confusing and which has led me to confusion in the past, in fact.] However, in relation to an earlier blog entry, “‘Locational’ Dative and Genitive with Prepositions” (Apr 2, 2013), I was thinking about why not making use of a device I came up with to express lative (moving to) and ablative (moving from) motion and extending it to perlative motion (moving through, across, along) with the instrumental, since that also already covers the meaning “by means of”. So another possible way to express the above may well be:

[gloss]{​Ang pukay} (manga) luga lahaneri.
… (MOT) top fence-INS[/gloss]
‘I jump over a fence.’

The motion particle manga may not even be necessary since ‘by means of the top’ in conjunction with the dynamic action ‘jump’ in my opinion already reasonably conveys that the person jumping won’t get stuck straddling the fence. Besides, ‘jump onto’ would normally be expressed like this, since the simple locative conveys a static meaning, i.e. one of resting in a place:

[gloss]{​Ang pukay} manga luga savaya.
… MOT top wagon-LOC[/gloss]
‘I jump onto a wagon.’

Whatever eyrarya may end up as in the future, just describing something resting over a thing would still use that word to make clear that the thing is not sitting on top of something but hovering over it. Alternatively, there would be an opportunity here to get rid of dedicated words for ‘over’ and ‘under’ completely (at least in transitive contexts) and just have them be ling ‘top’ and avan ‘bottom’ plus instrumental, and manga would after all indicate that motion along that point is involved.

“And” as a Relative Particle

Stuff, , , , ,

Another blog post on Middle High German (I know, right?) … This time with something I’d like to point out to other conlangers to consider for inspiration, because I found it kind of interesting/cool/unexpected. While doing research for my MA thesis, I came across a few cases where unde ‘and’ appears to be used as a general kind of relative particle (emphasis and translations mine):

  1. Augsburg, 1277:
    ſogtan Eigen vnde ich hete
    ‘such property as I had’ (CAO I.316.304.27)

  2. Munich, 1283:
    mit allem dem vnd dar zu gihoͤrit
    ‘with all that which belongs to it’ (CAO II.569.005.04–05)

  3. [Nuremberg], 1288:
    ſit den malen vnd ich zv ir cherte
    ‘since the time when I turned to her’ (CAO II.1044.359.04)

  4. Passau, 1290:
    des gvͦtes vnd ich ze chovfen han gegeben minem herren piſcholf Wernharte
    ‘of the estate which I offered my lord bishop Wernhard for sale’ (CAO V.N446.327.41)

  5. [St. Bernhard near Horn, Lower Austria], 1298:
    mit allem dinſt vnd ich iz gehabt han
    ‘with all the levy with which I owned it’ (CAO IV.2896.202.32)

The big Middle High German dictionary by Benecke/Müller/Zarncke cites further evidence from editions of literary texts in the article on unde (see vol. III, p. 185a, def. III, in German). Now I’m wondering what a grammaticalization path for “and” as a relativizer could look like.

Note, however, that these cases do not constitute a majority, which is why they stood out to me as I came accross them in the first place. From what I can tell, more common ways to introduce relative clauses are sô ‘so’, dô ‘when’, or just plainly the definite article (or, if you insist, for historical accuracy, the short demonstrative) like in modern German. For example:

  1. Zurich, 1283:
    mit allem dem rechte ſo ich ez vnz har han gehebt
    ‘with all the rights with which I have owned it up to now’ (CAO II.590.017.21)

  2. Werdenberg, 1294:
    als des tagis do er ſinin æigin herrin schlvͦg
    ‘as on the day when he slayed his own lord’ (CAO III.1873.167.41)

  3. Salzburg, 1294:
    durich der Svone willen / dev […] gemachet ward
    ‘by will of the reconciliation which was made […]’ (CAO III.1967.223.17–18)

  • Added a few more examples to show what more common cases look like and to show that there’s variation.
  • A colleague of mine at university that I mentioned this phenomenon to pointed me to the following article (in German): Ferraresi, Gisella, and Helmut Weiß. “‘Al di wîle und ich lebe’: Und nicht nur koordinierend.” Satzverknüpfungen: Zur Interaktion von Form, Bedeutung und Diskursfunktion. Edited by Eva Breindl, Gisella Ferraresi, and Anna Volodina. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011. Print. Linguistische Arbeiten 534. 79–106.
  • “Unde, und, unt.” Mittelhochdeutsches Wörterbuch. Ed. Wilhelm Müller and Friedrich Zarncke. Vol. 3. Leipzig: Hirzel, 1866. 183–186. Wörterbuchnetz. Trier Center for Digital Humanities, 2011. Web. 8 Dec. 2015. ‹http://woerterbuchnetz.de/BMZ›.
  • Wilhelm, Friedrich et al., eds. Corpus der altdeutschen Originalurkunden bis zum Jahr 1300. 5 vols. Lahr and Berlin: Moritz Schauenburg and Erich Schmidt, 1932–2004. <CORPUS>. Corpus der altdeutschen Originalurkunden bis zum Jahr 1300. Trier U, 2007. Web. 8 Dec. 2015. ‹http://tcdh01.uni-trier.de/cgi-bin/iCorpus/CorpusIndex.tcl›.

Translation Challenge: The Beginning of Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina”

Translations, , , , , , , , ,

Text in English

The text to be translated in this Translation Challenge is the initial passage of Tolstoy’s 1878 novel Anna Karenina.[1. Hat tip to Steven Lytle for suggesting it.] The Ayeri translation here follows the English one by Constance Garnett (1901), which can be found on Project Gutenberg.

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Everything was in confusion in the Oblonskys’ house. The wife had discovered that the husband was carrying on an intrigue with a French girl, who had been a governess in their family, and she had announced to her husband that she could not go on living in the same house with him. This position of affairs had now lasted three days, and not only the husband and wife themselves, but all the members of their family and household, were painfully conscious of it. Every person in the house felt that there was no sense in their living together, and that the stray people brought together by chance in any inn had more in common with one another than they, the members of the family and household of the Oblonskys. The wife did not leave her own room, the husband had not been at home for three days. The children ran wild all over the house; the English governess quarreled with the housekeeper, and wrote to a friend asking her to look out for a new situation for her; the man-cook had walked off the day before just at dinner time; the kitchen-maid, and the coachman had given warning. (Tolstoy 2013)

Ayeri translation

Translation Challenge: The Beginning of Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina"

Kamayon pandahajang-hen mino; minarya miraneri sitang-ton pandahāng-hen minarya.

Enyareng atauya kāryo nangaya pandahana Oblonski. Silvisaye sarisa envanang, ang manga miraya ayon yena cān-cānas layeri Kahani, seri ganvayās pandahaya ton, nay ang narisaye ayonyam yena, ang ming saylingoyye mitanyam nangaya kamo kayvo yāy. Eng manga yomāran eda-mineye luga bahisya kay, nay tong vakas ten pulengeri, sitang-tong-namoy ayonang nay envanang, nārya nasimayajang-hen pandahana nay nangānena ton naynay. Ang mayayo nyān-hen nangaya, ming tenubisoyrey, mitantong kadanya. Ang engyon vihyam miromānjas keynam si sa lancon kadanya apineri kondangaya, nasimayajas pandahana nay nangānena Oblonski. Ang saroyye envan sangalas yena, ang manga yomoyya ayon rangya ton luga bahisya kay. Sa senyon ganye nangaya-hen; ang ranye ganvaya Angli kayvo lomāyaya visam nay ang tahanye ledoyam, yam mya balangyeng pinyan yanoley gumo hiro ye; ang saraya ersaya bahisya sarisa pidimya tarika sirutayyānena; ang narisaton lomāya risang nay lantaya vapatanas ton.

More information

I also made a PDF containing interlinear glosses and commentary for this translation.[1. Also, please let me add that XƎTEX is pretty darn awesome.],[1. Updated with some corrections on Dec 11, 2014. See the diff on Github for changes.]

  • Plank, Frans, Thomas Mayer, Tatsiana Mayorava and Elena Filimonova, eds. The Universals Archive. 1998–2009. U Konstanz, 2009. Web. 26 Oct. 2014. ‹http://typo.uni-konstanz.de/archive/intro›.
  • Schachter, Paul. “The Subject in Philippine Languages: Topic, Actor, Actor-Topic, or None of the Above?” Subject and Topic. Ed. Charles N. Li. New York: Academic P, 1976. 493–518. Print.
  • Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina. Eds. David Brannan, David Widger and Andrew Sly. Trans. by Constance Garnett. Project Gutenberg. 11 Oct. 2014. Project Gutenberg, 22 Feb. 2013. Web. 26 Oct. 2014. ‹http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1399›.

‘Locational’ Dative and Genitive with Prepositions

Grammar Musings, , , , , , , ,

In the Grammar (§ 5.4) I mention something I dubbed ‘locational dative/genitive’, where instead of the locative case marker you would use the dative and genitive case marker respectively to indicate simple ‘to’ and ‘from’ – so basically, the dative is coupled with a lative meaning and the genitive with an ablative meaning, respectively:

[gloss]Ang nimp-ye māva-yam yena.
AT run-3SF.T mother-DAT 3SF.GEN[/gloss]
‘She runs to her mother.’

The example with the genitive that is currently in the grammar is not really locational at all, actually, now that I look at it. But anyway, lest I forget, here’s something I came across while translating something for myself today:

[gloss]Yam sarayan ayonang sam manga ling natrang, no natratang.
DATT go-3PM man-A two MOT top temple-T, want pray-3PM.A.
[/gloss]
‘Two men went up to the temple; they wanted to pray.’

In this case, it’s one of those ‘locational’ datives, but extended by a preposition unlike in the example from the Grammar above. Here, the preposition (manga) ling ‘(to the) top of’ does not trigger the locative case as usual, but the dative case. This is because with the locative, the phrase would imply that the two men were going literally to the top of the temple, that is, they end up standing on its roof. This is not the intended meaning, because they are only going up to the temple, that is, the temple is on a hill – Ayeri can’t distinguish ‘up’ from ‘to the top of’ just with the preposition. So, in order to differentiate going up to from going to the top of, the dative and the locative case are used respectively. The same works for ‘come down from X’:

[gloss]saha- manga avan X-na
come MOT bottom X-GEN[/gloss]

as opposed to

[gloss]saha- manga avan X-ya
come MOT bottom X-LOC[/gloss]
‘come to the bottom of X’.

Also, in the same translation challenge to myself, I discovered that it would make sense to allow div- ‘to stay’ to be used as a modal (ish), so that for example you can say diva bengyāng timangya ‘he remained standing at a distance’, as opposed to remaining seated at a distance. Now, what’s the difference between div(a)- ‘stay, remain’ and hang- ‘keep, hold; remain, stay’, though?!

What I’ve been up to recently

Grammar Musings, , , , ,

There hasn’t been much going on here recently. This is mainly due to working on the research for my BA thesis at the moment. However, I’ve also done a little general information hunting on causative constructions on the side that will eventually result in a blog article discussing Ayeri’s way of handling these things in more detail. I touched on the topic briefly and tentatively already in a thread respectively on Conlang-L and the ZBB. Especially in the case of the ZBB thread, be aware that I’ve corrected myself multiple times in the course of it. And I’m still not quite sure if I’ve understood everything correctly, so if you’re knowledgeable about Tagalog et al.,[1. Ayeri’s case marking was originally inspired by a misunderstood and simplified version of that by way of lacking linguistic background knowledge at the time. I’ve kept coming back to it recently in order to compare and see where I’ve been “wrong”.] don’t hesitate to contact me for correction. Both threads are basically only about syntactic ways of handling causative marking, but Ayeri definitely also has morphologic causative marking on verbs (e.g. kond- ‘eat’, kondisa- ‘feed’) as well as some lexical causatives (e.g. tenya- ‘die’, tomba- ‘kill’). Some more thoughts on that will likely go into the blog entry as well, of course.

Flicking Switches: Ayeri and the Austronesian Alignment

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  • This article still receives rather a lot of views, so if you are seriously interested in what I wrote below, please read my reevaluation of Ayeri’s syntactic alignment (a preliminary version of chapter 5 of the Grammar). The article below neither properly reflects current Ayeri grammar nor relatively more recent academic research on Austronesian alignment.

In this article, a number of features of the Austronesian alignment will be discussed in hope to gain a better understanding about the difference between what David J. Peterson called the ‘conlang trigger system’ – of which Ayeri uses a variety – and the naturally occurring ‘trigger system’ of South-East Asia, namely the ‘Philippine’ or ‘Austronesian’ alignment which served as an inspiration for part of Ayeri’s grammar, albeit with some misunderstandings. In order to examine and test how Ayeri works with regards to the terms topic, focus, and subject and in how far it differs from Austronesian languages such as Tagalog, papers by Charles N. Li and Sandra A. Thompson, Paul R. Kroeger, and Paul Schachter were taken into consideration.

As the focus of this article is mainly on how Ayeri relates to the Austronesian alignment system, the language’s detailed way of assigning case to the different semantic roles as well as the details of its handling of morphologic case marking with regards to verb transitivity and the classic constituent-order typology will only be touched on superficially. Continue reading Flicking Switches: Ayeri and the Austronesian Alignment →