Re: VMs: Natural-language weirdoes. Was: excessive frequency of doubles...

[Koontz John E <John.Koontz@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 20 Aug 2004, Jacques Guy wrote:

Thanks for the clarifications!

> The subject is normally left unexpressed, and that makes it extremely
> difficult to figure out who does what to whom or what. In fact, most of
> those legends are incomprehensible unless you already know the story,
> ...

In a situation I'd look for some switch reference scheme - something that
marks "same subject" vs. "different subject."  I've never heard of one in
a Polynesian language, but they are common in New Guinea.  A number of
Native American languages have them, too.  They are often overlooked in
understudied languages through several generations of grammars.  Just a
suggestion of course.

> The pre-verbal particles are difficult. We have nothing
> similar at all. As I just wrote, "he" is just a narrative:
> "and then... and then..." "E" is er... the relative future,
> or delayed action. E.g. He oho i te hare e haka-uru
> lit. narrative (he) go (oho) in (i) the (te) house (hare)
> e (future) haka-uru (cook) = he/she went home to cook
>
> That is different from "he oho i te hare he haka-uru"
> = he/she went home and then cooked.
>
> If I say "he oho i te hare e hakauru" that leaves it
> open for something to happen before he/she has finished
> cooking. If I say "he oho i te hare he hakauru", he/she
> went home, cooked, and the story continues from there.

Sounds a bit like a purposive or subordinative ('e') vs. a consecutive
('he').  Of course, those are just labels for what you said, but they're
used, and sometimes labels help persuade us we've got a pattern.

> It gets worse... there is another preverbal particle, "ka",
> and, as far as I could figure out, it means the immediate
> future... or past (yes!) As a consequence, it is used for the
> imperative, e.g. ka oho "let's go (now)", as well as
> an exclamative: ka riva! "wonderful" literally,
> "[it was] good [just now, an instant ago]". Then you
> have the relative past, "ku"... and... had enough yet?

Some sort of assertion marker?  It is neat when one comes face to face
with the novel in a new language!

> Now tell me. Didn't those sentences sound like gibberish? Worse still:
> doesn't the literal translation look like gibberish?

I assume you mean this in a good way, of course - isn't this neat and
different - but I'd have to say, no, not like gibberish, even though it is
confusing.  I noticed immediately that there were a series of clauses
structured in the same way.  I just didn't figure out what kind.

Polynesian languages definitely have a differently organized syntax, and
so does Japanese, or, for that matter, any Siouan language.  When you
learn another European langauge you notice a few changes like different
relative orders of adjective and verb.  In some cases you have to get used
to suffixed definite articles, but, in general, the syntax of two European
languages is going to be very similar.  They are all SVO, form relative
clauses in similar ways, use definite marking (until you get to the East
and reach Slavic and Uralic territory), and so on.  Some of this is
because some of them are quite closely related, but a lot of it has to do
with an ongoing pattern of bilingualism and borrowing that lets them all
influence each other strongly.

European languages are not substitution codes for each other, but they are
far more similar and have far more shared patterns of syntax and reference
tracking than does one of them and one of the languages we've been
discussing.  Hence my bafflement at the sense of the Rapa Nuian example,
nicely cleared up by you.  We miss that experience learning another
European language.  We're learning another language with the same
weirdnesses as our own, but we take those weirdnesses for granted and
think them normal.

> Watch Kurosawa's "Kagemusha", and pay attention to the opening scene,
> the very first words. What does Takeda no Shingen say? "Yoku nite-iru".
> Literally: "Well to-be- resembling". Who resembles? Resembles whom/what?
> It has to be inferred. The equivalent English would be "He _is_ the
> spitting image of me". But in Japanese, no "he", no "me", nothing.

Yes, but of course, the obscurity of the remark is only in the literal
translation into English.  I suspect it's perfectly grammatical and clear
in Japanese, or at least that the pattern of ambiguity is normal and
wouldn't cause comment.

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