Causative with New and Other Modals

Started by Txawey, November 29, 2020, 04:36:24 PM

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Txawey

Following is an email response from Karyu Pawl regarding the existence, or rather lack thereof, of neykew:

QuoteInteresting question and discussion!

Recall that new is both a modal and a vtr. So to say "I want to dance," you have two choices:

A. Oe new srivew.
B. Oel new futa srew.

A is more common, but B is certainly possible. (It's also the only way to have the "wanter" and the dancer be different: To say, "I want you to dance," it's got to be "Oel new futa nga srew.") Note that after futa in such constructions, you don't need <iv> on the verb.

So far so good. Now . . . how do we convert this to a causative construction?

First of all, <eyk> doesn't go with modals. (I hope I'm not contradicting myself here! But to my knowledge, the canonical corpus bears that out. If you discover a counterexample, please let me know.) So it's the B version that gets "causitivized," not the A version.

Second, the causer--the one making something happen--is always in the agentive case.

Wm. Annis's brilliant and invaluable Horen states the rule clearly:

6.11.2. Causative of Transitive Verb. When a transitive verb is made into a causative, the

causee, which had been in the agentive case, goes into the dative. This leaves the original accusative

in place.


Neytiril yerikit tolaron. Neytiri hunted hexapede.



Eytukanìl Neytirir yerikit teykolaron. Eytukan made Neytiri hunt a hexapede.



So applying this rule to B, we get:



Fìpamtseol oeru neykew futa srew.



And now here's a question for you:



How would you say, "He made me stop dancing?"  😄



P.

Wllìm

For me the main surprise in this email is the Note that after futa in such constructions, you don't need <iv> on the verb. To my knowledge, it was previously believed that even if you use construction B instead of construction A, you'd still need the <iv> from construction A.

To be clear: I think not using <iv> here makes total sense (until a year or so ago I didn't even know that this "rule" existed so I must have done it without <iv> more times than with <iv>).

Tirea Aean

Wou! :0

Really great stuff here. And I was surprised for the same reason as Wllìm. It was indeed a thing people have been saying for years (myself included), now debunked. :0 That, and causatives don't go with modals is also a surprise to me. I'm glad to know about this stuff. (even if it means that probably several of my past sentences / utterances have been rendered ungrammatical! HRH ;D)


Fìpostìri ngaru irayo seiyi ma Txawey :)

wm.annis

Quote from: Tirea Aean on November 29, 2020, 06:49:39 PMReally great stuff here. And I was surprised for the same reason as Wllìm. It was indeed a thing people have been saying for years (myself included), now debunked.

But we have two very early separate notes from Paul saying that <iv> can (if not must) be used in this situation: the Jan 20 entry and here. So, less debunked than complexified.

I have so little idea how to handle this for the Horen that I've sent him email asking for what clarification he can give.