Hallo!

On Thu, 26 Mar 2009 18:44:16 +0100, Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:

> Jörg Rhiemeier skrev:
> > Hallo!
> > 
> > On Thu, 19 Mar 2009 13:03:15 +0100, Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
> > 
> >> ## Kijeb verb inflection
> > 
> > I apologize for answering so late, saw it in Thursday, thought
> > I'd reply on the weekend when I'd have more time, then forgot it.
> > So, here I am.
> 
> Well, I'm late too.  Things got really hectic IRL
> for a couple of days.

Sure.  Everybody has such times occasionally.

> [...]
> > So you have a direct/inverse system as in Algonquian, except that
> > in the latter, 2nd person is higher on the hierarchy than 1st.
> 
> That actually is an Algonkian peculiarity.  Other
> languages/lang families with hierarchic alignment
> usually have the first person highest.

Indeed.  I am not familiar with other hierarchic alignment
languages (I am not even very familiar with Algonquian, but
it is the only family of which I know that it is).

> > Do you also use an obviative marking if both arguments are 3rd
> > person animate?
> 
> Not exactly, but there is a system of free
> pronouns marked for increasing remoteness from the
> speaker.
> 
> <http://wiki.frath.net/Kijeb#Third_person_emphatic_pronouns>
> 
> I call them "proximal -- medial -- distal" and
> translate them somewhat loosely as 'this -- that
> -- yon' (in German 'der hier -- der da -- jener'.
> In practice these can be used to serve obviation
> in that they rank differently, as amended in the
> list above.  They can also be used as a kind of
> 'articles' but what's more any new referent is
> automatically assigned a place in the proximal--
> medial--distal hierarchy' so that an Algonkian
> obviate will normally correspond to a Kijeb distal
> in relation to a medial corresponding to a non-
> obviate or sometimes a Kijeb medial *or* distal in
> relation to a proximal corresponding to a non-
> obviate.

I see.  A nice and economic system which deals with obviation
without introducing an extra morphological category.

> Moreover there is an enclitic marker _-ya_ which
> is attached to a non-animate agent NP of a higher-
> ranking patient (expressed or unexpressed) *or* to
> an animate patient NP of a a lower-ranking animate
> agent (which also may be unexpressed) -- i.e. it
> is a kind of inversion marker attached to NPs.
> The distributional pattern arises because it is
> attached to the 'most inverted participant' and it
> can only be assigned once.  In practice this means
> that since inanimates cannot be grammatical
> subjects but are inflected in the instrumental
> case _-r_ there arises a virtual 'ergative ending'
> _-rya_ used when the agent is inanimate and
> ranking lower than the patient, and a virtual
> 'accusative ending' _-ya_ which is used on animate
> patients when the agent is also animate and
> ranking lower than the patient. Not surprisingly
> this is restructured into a split ergative case
> marking system in the later Sohlob languages, so
> that they have
> 
> * an unmarked absolutive-nominative used for all
>    patients of inanimate agents, for inanimate
>    patients of animate agents and for animate
>    agents.
> 
> * an ergative marked by _-Vl_ (where /l/ is the
>    regular reflex of the [L] /r_j/ //rj// of the
>    Kijeb _-r-ya_) used for inanimate agents.
> 
> * an accusative marked by _-Vy_ used for animate
>    patients of animate agents.

That's an interesting and plausible development.  I like
this very much.  I just *love* interesting morphosyntactic
alignments and changes thereof!

> [...]
> 
> > Verb-initial word order is nice - I like it, too, and use it
> > in Old Albic, as well as in the experimental languages X-1 and
> > X-3.  In Old Albic, the word order is very free, and all six
> > logically possible permutations of verb, subject and object
> > are allowed, though the unmarked order is VSO.  X-1 requires
> > a fixed order of arguments, while in X-3 the verb must go
> > first but the arguments are all case-marked and may follow in
> > any order.
> 
> In Kijeb the verb-first rule is probably absolute.
> The other constituents may follow in any order
> except that the topic comes in the second place --
> which incidentally helps alleviating the lack of
> overt obviation marking, since the topic will
> normally be the non-obviate!

I see.  In Old Albic, topics are often moved to the front of the
sentence, or at least to the position immediately after the verb.

> [...]
> > Like what is assumed to have been in place in Proto-Indo-European.
> > PIE apparently had truckloads of aktionsart-deriving suffixes,
> 
> In pre-Kijeb these were a regular system of
> prefixes and suffixes, but the regular loss of
> unstressed vowels in verb forms and subsequent
> sandhi effects make the processes seem almost
> suppletive in Kijeb.  Consider what happens to the
> cusative prefix *p- when it 'fuses' with different
> root-initial consonants by following the _p_ row
> in the Kijeb sandhi table at
> 
> <http://wiki.frath.net/Kijeb#Sandhi_table>
> 
> (Initial _mb_ and _ñgw_ aren't possible, so they
> become _m, ñw_!)

The sandhi rules are beautiful, and result in fascinating
allomorphies, I guess.

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