Linguistics Lingo...

HawkPidgeon · December 22, 2009, 01:07:11 AM

Pejoratives, datives, perfective aspects, imperfective aspects, prospective aspects, topic vs subject, aspect vs tense...

It's all very confusing, and the information on the internet doesn't help much. It's all incredibly... technical.

I'd love it if someone could just... dumb it down a bit for the rest of us.

Skxawng · December 22, 2009, 01:14:07 AM

SECONDED!!

This would make a good Stickied topic ...

wisnij · December 22, 2009, 01:37:34 AM

Well, let's start with the verbs.

Tense refers to the point in time at which the action in question happened: e.g. yesterday ("I ate"), as opposed to now ("I eat"), as opposed to tomorrow ("I will eat").

Aspect is about the internal "structure" of the action within time: as a single event (perfective; "I ate"), an ongoing action (imperfective: "I'm (in the process of) eating"), something that's about to start happening (prospective: "I'm just about to eat"), etc. English tends to use the imperfective a lot for activities, and makes marking verbs according to tense mandatory. ("I ate yesterday" is a valid sentence, but *"I eat yesterday" is not.) Some other languages, Chinese for example, tend to downplay tense and instead use aspects more often.

A laudative or pejorative expresses approval or disapproval of something. For instance, for some statement X:

X lu            neutral: X is true
X l<ei>u      laudative: X is true (and I'm happy about it)
X l<äng>u   pejorative: X is true (and I'm not happy about it)

The dative is a noun case that shows the indirect object of a verb. In the sentence "Alice gave Bob the book", "Bob" would be in the dative case if English marked that specially. (We can also write that as "Alice gave the book to Bob", where the purpose that the dative would normally serve is instead handled by the preposition "to".) Some languages also use the dative to show motion towards a destination: in "I'm going home", "home" would be in the dative in those languages.

Topic versus subject is very complicated, and it's too late at night for me to write an explanation that will make any sense.

The Wikipedia page may be a good start.

Lora'txum · December 22, 2009, 01:44:35 AM

Irayo, ma wisnij. This is very helpful!

HawkPidgeon · December 22, 2009, 02:06:30 AM

Irayo nìtxan, ma wisnij! Very helpful

Tiri · December 22, 2009, 05:57:47 AM

So, from the explanation, these are my assumptions:

I-TOP nose-GEN full is-NEG-ATTITUDE

The TOP means topic, GEN means genitive?, and NEG-ATTITUDE is negative attitude? Am I close?

Elysio · December 22, 2009, 06:07:06 AM

You couldn't be closer

Brainiac · December 22, 2009, 07:13:49 AM

Quote from: Tiri on December 22, 2009, 05:57:47 AM
So, from the explanation, these are my assumptions:

I-TOP nose-GEN full is-NEG-ATTITUDE

The TOP means topic, GEN means genitive?, and NEG-ATTITUDE is negative attitude? Am I close?

Yup.
Top stands for topic-marker, I think.

Antony · December 22, 2009, 07:29:17 AM

I find that extremely difficult to read, all the bit's in capitals I mean. What does it mean? :S

Tiri · December 22, 2009, 07:32:37 AM

Quote from: Antony on December 22, 2009, 07:29:17 AM
I find that extremely difficult to read, all the bit's in capitals I mean. What does it mean? :S

I nabbed it from the grammar portion of the site. It's illustrating in translation what function each word in the sentence has, I think.

wm.annis · December 22, 2009, 07:33:13 AM

Quote from: Antony on December 22, 2009, 07:29:17 AM
I find that extremely difficult to read, all the bit's in capitals I mean. What does it mean? :S

The small-caps are used in linguistic analysis so you can tell the difference between a word definition, and a word type or affixes that don't have meaning on their own (like a case marker). See the wikipedia discussion of Interlinear gloss for some really full examples.

Karyu Amawey · December 22, 2009, 09:08:46 AM

Hey guys, i'll be posting tonight about all the linguistic terms in the Na'Vi reader. I just had a class on morphology and syntax, so I can break down all the terms with examples. However, if you just simply cannot wait and need to learn now, there are many great websites out there, such as:

http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/contents.htm

wisnij · December 22, 2009, 01:29:44 PM

I've been using the glossing rules here: http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/resources/glossing-rules.php

Karyu Amawey · December 24, 2009, 04:33:40 AM

Kaltxì frapo! I created a pdf (gotta love those pdfs!) for a "Crash course in linguistic terminology for Na'Vi". It is, in my opinion, easy to read and has plenty of new examples. Please let me know what you think, or if there needs to be better/further explanation on any of the terms.

http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0BxURBDXVBWhHZTk1NjAwYzctN2IxMi00NWU3LTgxMDktMzVjMGI4ZmU2YzA5&hl=en

Txur’Itan · December 24, 2009, 04:43:44 AM

The problem with English is, you have to know English, to learn English.

And I was born in America, so I still don't, so... I look everything up, and it helps.

My memory is not what it used to be, but I like to think I can have a conversation in Na'vi one day.

So here's to learning every day.

omängum fra'uti · December 24, 2009, 04:45:11 AM

Your dative case example should probably include the suffix for subject and object as appropriate... And a different name for the giver might be good to, so you can side-step the issue of what to do about l-l.
*Amhul-l Ralu-ru vul-ti tìng

Eywayä Irrtok · December 24, 2009, 05:01:17 AM

Quote from: wisnij on December 22, 2009, 01:37:34 AM
Well, let's start with the verbs.

Tense refers to the point in time at which the action in question happened: e.g. yesterday ("I ate"), as opposed to now ("I eat"), as opposed to tomorrow ("I will eat").

Aspect is about the internal "structure" of the action within time: as a single event (perfective; "I ate"), an ongoing action (imperfective: "I'm (in the process of) eating"), something that's about to start happening (prospective: "I'm just about to eat"), etc. English tends to use the imperfective a lot for activities, and makes marking verbs according to tense mandatory. ("I ate yesterday" is a valid sentence, but *"I eat yesterday" is not.) Some other languages, Chinese for example, tend to downplay tense and instead use aspects more often.

A laudative or pejorative expresses approval or disapproval of something. For instance, for some statement X:

X lu            neutral: X is true
X l<ei>u      laudative: X is true (and I'm happy about it)
X l<äng>u   pejorative: X is true (and I'm not happy about it)

The dative is a noun case that shows the indirect object of a verb. In the sentence "Alice gave Bob the book", "Bob" would be in the dative case if English marked that specially. (We can also write that as "Alice gave the book to Bob", where the purpose that the dative would normally serve is instead handled by the preposition "to".) Some languages also use the dative to show motion towards a destination: in "I'm going home", "home" would be in the dative in those languages.

Topic versus subject is very complicated, and it's too late at night for me to write an explanation that will make any sense. The Wikipedia page may be a good start.

So basically a dative is the noun that the verb is "affecting", you could say

Brainiac · December 24, 2009, 05:32:54 AM

Quote from: elemental_1_1 on December 24, 2009, 05:01:17 AM
Quote from: wisnij on December 22, 2009, 01:37:34 AM
Well, let's start with the verbs.

Tense refers to the point in time at which the action in question happened: e.g. yesterday ("I ate"), as opposed to now ("I eat"), as opposed to tomorrow ("I will eat").

Aspect is about the internal "structure" of the action within time: as a single event (perfective; "I ate"), an ongoing action (imperfective: "I'm (in the process of) eating"), something that's about to start happening (prospective: "I'm just about to eat"), etc. English tends to use the imperfective a lot for activities, and makes marking verbs according to tense mandatory. ("I ate yesterday" is a valid sentence, but *"I eat yesterday" is not.) Some other languages, Chinese for example, tend to downplay tense and instead use aspects more often.

A laudative or pejorative expresses approval or disapproval of something. For instance, for some statement X:

X lu            neutral: X is true
X l<ei>u      laudative: X is true (and I'm happy about it)
X l<äng>u   pejorative: X is true (and I'm not happy about it)

The dative is a noun case that shows the indirect object of a verb. In the sentence "Alice gave Bob the book", "Bob" would be in the dative case if English marked that specially. (We can also write that as "Alice gave the book to Bob", where the purpose that the dative would normally serve is instead handled by the preposition "to".) Some languages also use the dative to show motion towards a destination: in "I'm going home", "home" would be in the dative in those languages.

Topic versus subject is very complicated, and it's too late at night for me to write an explanation that will make any sense. The Wikipedia page may be a good start.

So basically a dative is the noun that the verb is "affecting", you could say

affecting, but not the Accusative (or whatever it's called again in english $:-\$ )
in "I throw the ball", the ball isn't a dative.

omängum fra'uti · December 24, 2009, 05:55:46 AM

Quote from: Brainiac on December 24, 2009, 05:32:54 AM
affecting, but not the Accusative (or whatever it's called again in english $:-\$ )
in "I throw the ball", the ball isn't a dative.

"I throw the ball at Brainiac", Brainiac IS a dative.

Karyu Amawey · December 24, 2009, 02:15:54 PM

Quote from: umängam fra'uti on December 24, 2009, 04:45:11 AM
Your dative case example should probably include the suffix for subject and object as appropriate... And a different name for the giver might be good to, so you can side-step the issue of what to do about l-l.
*Amhul-l Ralu-ru vul-ti tìng

Ah, thank you so much for catching that! I believe, however, that in Na'Vi, Amhul would have to be ergative sometime, and so in that situation you would just elongate the /l/ sound to emphasize ergativity!