groups of verbs for a paper (translative motion, posture, cut/break, statives)

[judytuna]

My friend (who is ABD in linguistics at berkeley!) is gathering data for a paper. He knows I'm really into Na'vi, and he said that if I gave him Na'vi data, he might include it =D But I need your help! He gave me a sheet of paper from his notes sorta listing what he's gathering for each language he's looking at.

Here is what it says:

For each language, list, minimally, verbs of:
- translative motion

- posture

- verbs of material destruction, principally CUT and BREAK

- some prototypical statives

For each language, find, minimally:
- transitivity-altering morphology/syntax/lexically-encoded stuff, etc

- causative m/s/l. How do the forms fit Comrie's (2000:159-162) typology of 'prototypical' analytic [syntactic], morphological and lexical patterns?\

- major aspectual m/s/l [likely limit to perf v imperf]

- serial verb constructions?

Talmy and the atomization of event structure --
  for each language: determine verb-framed, or satellite-framed, according to Talmy's typology?

What other entities are encoded (Figure, Ground, Path, etc)?
  for each verb, is the formally simplest form Talmy's (a) be in state; (b) put into state? Do any clear patterns emerge?

Now, I don't even know what m/s/l means, and I certainly don't know anything about the "atomization of event structure," so I guess I can't gather words for those parts until I get an explanation from my friend (also maybe a master's in linguistics QQQQQQ). But we can start getting working on the word lists for the first part, at least.

So here's my list and the work/explanations that have been given to me so far, starting with translative motion.

Translative motion is motion that gets you places. So what it means practically is: the agent moves from one place to another (as opposed to just moving). There has to be ground covered.
the world's languages fall into 2 major types:
- verbs that encode action plus path <--japanese doesn't have any "waddle" or "stroll". in japanese, you'd say "walk" and add an adverb that means "in a waddling way" as a different word.
- verbs that encode action plus manner <--english loves manner. has a lot of verbs that put action and manner together. "waddle" "jog" "stroll" "pace" ... means walk or run, but talks about manner. "she new yorked her way into the room"

List 1: verbs of translative motion (intransitive)
-- usually has to be a path along the ground.
-- can you say "i fell to the store"?

kxll si: vin. charge (c.w. from kxll charge and si make)

tul: vin. run

tìran: vin. walk

(?) tswayon: vin. fly (?) <--has to be "fly to somewhere" not "fly the ikran" ... Dear LNers, which one is it?

za'u: vin. come

za'u nì'eng: phrase. come in a level or equal manner (c.w. from za'u come and nì'eng equally)

(?) zup: vin. fall (?) (dubious)

kllkä: [kl"."k·æ] PF v. descend (c.w. from kä go)

travel: if you can say, prototypically, "i traveled to japan" (instead of "i travel as a hobby") then it's ok to put in this list.
(?) sop: vin. travel (?)

(?) kämakto: v. ride out (c.w. from kä go and makto ride)
(?) makto: v.ride
I don't know if kämakto is ok to put in the list, because I don't know if it's two verbs or one verb. Ramon wants me to find out: for these words made up of "two" verbs,
---- if you try to put in an infix, does each part take an infix?
---- can you mark them separately for aspect?
---- can you negate the "go" part or just the "ride" part? (i kä-ed, but i didn't kamakto--i flew instead?). if you can negate the parts separately, then it's probably two words



List 2: Posture verbs, like: sit, stand, lie
Ramon is interested in: are they inherently stative or are they "change of state" verbs?
As part of this section: find the shortest word in the language that means "sit" -- does it mean "be sitting" (stative) or "sit down" (change of state)? Every language can say both of these, but what is the SMALLEST unmarked word?

heyn: vin. sit
Is this stative or a change of state? How does a Na'vi say "be sitting" vs "sit down"? Edit: heyn is the state of sitting.

kllkxem: v. stand

(no "lay" or "lie down" in the dictionary)

tuvon: v. lean


List 3: verbs of material destruction, principally CUT and BREAK

mun'i: v. cut

ska'a: vtr. destroy

(((fwel: adj. broken (?) not a verb... could you say fwel si? Can you even si an adjective? hahah... )))

(((no "break", but there is "fwel: adj. broken". and no "tear", but there is "ke'aw: adj. divided, torn apart, strife-ridden" -- which I guess only refers to people and relationships?)))


List 4: some prototypical statives

lìm: svin. far, be far

sim: svin. near, be near


That's all I have so far. Can you throw some words at me?

[omängum fra'uti]

I'm only an armchair linguist so my suggestion is going to be present some simple examples and let him fit in the details of how it works linguistically.  For one thing, part of it sounds like it is referring to some authors work and putting languages in terms with them.  Anyway...

Verb morphology that alter transitivity - causative (<eyk> infix) and reflexive (<äp> infix) are the two for Na'vi.

Oe kllkxem - intransitive; I stand (Be standing, not the act of standing)
Oel poti kllkx<eyk>em - transitive; I stand him (I cause him to be standing)
Oel poti tse'a - transitive; I see him
Oe ts<äp>e'a - intransitive; I see myself
Oe kllkx<äpeyk>em - intransitive; I stand myself (I cause myself to stand)

Aspect infixes are <ol> perfective and <er> imperfective, which can be combined with tense or subjunctive forms

Serial verb constructions - Don't think Na'vi does this, but what do I know, I'm only an armchair linguist.

To address your comments..

Tswayon is intransitive, so it couldn't be "fly an ikran" (Though you could probably say that with something like tswayon fa ikran, it's still flying somewhere).
kämakto is considered one word.  In these only one verb gets the infixes (Though in some cases, one verb gets one position, the other gets the other position, in other cases one verb gets both positions, it's irregular which is which).  If it's negated, the whole thing is negated.

heyn is the state of sitting, not the act of sitting.  There's also a verb for leaning.  For "sit down" - I can think of several posibilities, but I don't know if I could give an authoritative answer worthy of a paper.  For imperative, using the verb on its own is probably sufficient, but for narrative (While he was sitting down, I pulled his chair out from under him) I'm not sure.  If I had to come up with something informally I'd probably say it as "häpeykeyn" but I'm not sure if that is kosher.

[judytuna]

Thank you O.F.!



Comfya armchair aean

[Plumps]

(((fwel: adj. broken (?) not a verb... could you say fwel si? Can you even si an adjective? hahah... )))

Yes, we can

tstu si, piak si, law si, teya si, win si are the official ones.

[judytuna]

Can I piak si my eyes?

[Plumps]

I'm really not sure about that... but since it's an intransitive form, I'd use it more in the sense of
prrnesyul piak soli "the bud opened (i.e., by itself)"
... but I could be completely wrong there

[Carborundum]

Si-constructions are only grammatically intransitive. Many of them can have direct objects, which then take the dative case.
Whether or not piak si can be used like that I don't know.

[Plumps]

Molte oe.
Here, an example sentence from K. Pawl would be more than welcome

[judytuna]

Would fwel si be intransitive then, like "the vase breaks" ? You wouldn't be able to say "Jake fwel si the vase" ?

BUT... we should not include fwel si on the word list anyway, because it's not officially on the list with tstu si, piak si, law si, teya si, and win si, right?

[omängum fra'uti]

Yeah if *fwel si were to be lexical, I'd imagine it would be like in "The vase breaks".  Then you could say *"Oeri txärem fwel si" without having to say it the weird way English does.

I'm actually now sort of curious how Na'vi is on the whole agentive/non-agentive phrasing of actions.  You could phrase it in an agentive manner with the causative, for example *"Oel vulut fwel seyki" for "I broke a branch".  Other words such as "tungzup" (allow fall) for drop does seem to suggest the language tends to give actions a more passive role.