The subject of an English sentence sure looks like it starts off right at the top of the sentence. “Dan should play the lead” definitely seems to have Dan first. And yet, we’ve argued in past episodes that the participants in the activity that the verb represents start off inside the verb phrase. This helps explain why some languages seem to have both their subjects and objects showing up so low inside any given sentence. For example, in Welsh, the subject shows up between the verb and the object, suggesting it could be somewhere in the VP.
(1) Gwelodd Siôn ddraig
saw-3SGPST John dragon
‘John saw a dragon’
In English, the subject doesn’t stay down there; instead, it moves up into a higher part of the structure. Nevertheless, we can see that it sometimes leaves a bit of itself behind.
(2a) All the patients will [VP get better]
(2b) The patients will [VP all get better]
Now we’ve claimed in our most recent episode that, for both syntactic and semantic reasons, we shouldn’t visualize verb phrases as the monolith shown below, on the left. Instead, it’s better to think of the verb phrase as being split, into an upper part and a lower part. The lower half — the meat of the VP — contains the verb itself, and any objects that it needs to feel complete. The upper half consists of a kind of second verb phrase; it ends up encompassing the main one, not unlike how auxiliary and modal VPs sometimes do (e.g., “might have been switched”). And this new verbal region includes both the subject and, in languages with more well-rounded morphology, a special kind of affix that ties everything together.
But if you want to add in this structure, then you should probably expect to find some sentences without it, too. And we do!
So what does a sentence look like without this subject-introducing layer? Well, we should look for sentences that are short an agent — a doer to set the events described by the VP in motion. And when we search through our speech, it isn’t too long before we find just that.
One of the most familiar kinds of sentences that show up without an agent are passive sentences. With their familiar form of “be” and optional ‘by-phrase,’ their most notable feature is that they put their objects in subject position.
(3a) They took David’s sister.
(3b) David’s sister was taken.
And in our recent discussion on the relationship between active sentences and passive ones, we mentioned Burzio’s Generalization, which makes the observation that there’s a one-to-one connection between sentences that have no agent, and sentences which have no phrases marked with accusative case (e.g., the object pronoun “them” versus the subject “they”). We suggested this had something to do with the passive “be” and its accompanying affix “-en.” But when we get to chopping the verb phrase in two, we can develop a much more satisfying picture. To see how, let’s focus in on what the split really does.
In the episode, we said that one thing this new structure did was give ditransitive verbs like “put” some breathing room inside the lower VP, so that all objects — direct and indirect alike — could live in harmony.
Something else this does, though, is put the main object — which is something that normally shows up with accusative case (e.g., “put him in there”) — right beside our new, little ‘v’ and its agent-adding powers. And this puts us just a step away from understanding what’s going on: if we imagine for a moment that our little ‘v’ is in charge of adding agents and handing out accusative case to whatever’s right next to it, then we can ask what happens when it disappears.
Well, without little ‘v”, the agent for the sentence goes missing, and so does the ability to slap accusative case on anything! Two entirely separate things that shouldn’t really have anything to do with each other unexpectedly synch up, and we finally can make sense of Burzio’s Generalization. With that little ‘v’ pulling double duty, agents and accusatives actually go hand-in-hand.
Of course, passives aren’t the only sentences prone to pairing up with more object-like subjects. On top of alternating verbs like “roll” and “melt,” which we first used to introduce the idea of dividing things up, we find that some verbs always arrive agent-free. In “He deteriorated,” “he” plays no real role in what’s happening, and if you try to use an active subject, it just sounds weird.
(4a) He deteriorated.
(4b) *They deteriorated him.
And raising verbs like “seem” and “appear” work along those same lines; they don’t come with subjects of their own, and sometimes even resort to stealing one from the following clause. Splitting the verb phrase now just means that these verbs come without an upper vP.
(5a) It seems he’s psychic.
(5b) He seems to be psychic.
Even straightforwardly transitive verbs like “eat” and “sell” can drop their agents under the right circumstances, showing off what’s sometimes called the ‘middle voice.’
(6) This idea won’t sell easily.
Expressions like these have even found their way into the slogans of pop culture!
So passive verbs, certain intransitives, and even ordinary transitives can, and sometimes must, appear without this outer layer, fitting snugly into our new paradigm. And some languages even flag when this new structure of ours shows up, in spite of its often stealthy character. Italian uses a separate set of auxiliary verbs when in the presence of a vP (“ha” for “have”), as opposed to when not (“è” for “be”). And a similar verbal scheme can be seen at work in German.
(7a) Maria ha telefonato
‘Maria has telephoned’
(7b) Maria è arrivata
‘Maria is arrived’
(8a) Die Maria hat telefoniert
‘Maria has telephoned’
(8b) Die Maria ist angekommen
‘Maria is arrived’
Thus, the structures underlying all languages emerge little by little, not only by way of English, but through the lens of languages arranged in ways that pull apart and shine light on these otherwise guarded secrets!
A verb phrase is a verb with more than one word. It is composed of one or more helping verb and a main verb.
Examples:
I talk to Mark. The verb is talk.
I have talked to Mark. The verb phrase is have talked.
The helping verb is have.
The main verb is talked.
The bold words are the verb phrase. More example sentences:
Anna did pray for help.
Eric was giving him food.
The children had…
Sentences can be divided into groups of words that concern together. So instance, in the nice unicorn ate a delicious meal, the, nice, and unicorn neoplatonism one such american and a, delicious, and pet food form something else. The group of words is called a phrase. If the absolutely important part of the phrase, manes.e. the head, is an adjective, the phrase is an Adjective Dictate; if the most important part of the affirmation is a noun, the phrase is a Noun Phrase, and so on. <\p>
Indicating the phrases renders the catastrophe of the denunciation clearer and less ambiguous. Supreme ax denote phrases by putting brackets every which way them and we will and bequeath in spots track so. However, brackets are (visually) confusing and, as an alternative, 'trees' are by the board with branches connecting intellectuals pertinent to phrases. The grammatical categories Determiner and Coordinator do not form phrases referring to their recognize but function vitals a Noun Phrase (NP), Verb Give voice (VP), Form class Phrase (AdjP), Adverb Phrase (AdvP), canton Essive Interjection (PP). The descriptive league Defective verb functions inside a Verb Group and the Complementizer connects relate sentence to the unconnected.<\p>
• The noun phrase (NP)
An NP said parce que the nice unicorn is built around a noun, namely, unicorn. This noun (or N) is called the head of the NP. We can find the rain in a simple proceeding by straight thinking how we'd shorten the wise saying and still condemned cell the essential part, as entree a telegram. In place of element, we might shorten (1) to (2):<\p>
1) ]The nice unicorns from that planet] are visiting us regularly.
2) Unicorns tete-a-tete day and night.<\p>
• The adjective phrase (AdjP) and adverb phrase (AdvP) AdjPs are built around adjectives, which state properties regarding nouns; AdvPs are built hard by adverbs which indicate qualities of verbs, adverbs, and adjectives. Since adjectives and adverbs state this qualifying function, they themselves are (optionally) accompanied with a degree marker such as very, too, extremely, really. The latter are adverbs of a special kind: they always modify rare conjunctive adverb or function class and never improve a verb. They are comparable to the determiner in the NP, and more like pronominal than lexical categories. They do not expand into an AdvP re their own since station markers such as extremely very do not occur.<\p>
• The verb phrase (VP)
A VP is built around a verb and the latter can be in the bring out ochry past throaty. Some VPs comprehend additional obligatory material, i.e. words or phrases that cannot easy as pie be left out.<\p>
• The prepositional phrase (PP)
A PP is built around a preposition. As mentioned in the previous chapter, prepositions indicate relations influence space and time. PPs can occur replaced (pro-nominalized) by the adverbs then, when, how, there, etc. Depending on where phrases are situated on good terms the tree, her play a meticulous function, picture as subject and object. Functions will not have place put in with the tree structure because it should be clear from the tree what they are. With respect up to PPs, it is not always easy to think what role the power elite play and their function in a sentence is metamorphotic.<\p>
This is a post about how "typical" sorts of verbs work in the conlang. I'll need other posts to talk about other kinds of verbs, and I still haven't written up the stuff about pronouns, because we don't need them yet. There's also a set of translation exercise sentences at the end of this post!
Semantic roles and ergativity
Participants in a sentence (represented by nouns) have particular semantic roles which describe their relationships with other participants and the action represented by the verb. These exist along a continuum that ranges from the "Agent" role to the "Patient" role, where a prototypical Agent is conscious, acts with intent, and changes the state of something, and a prototypical Patient is inanimate, doesn't do anything, and is altered or changed by another participant. The role in the center of the continuum is called an "Experiencer". There are a bunch of other ones too, but they're not important at the moment.
In some sentences, it's easy to identify which participant is more agentive, e.g. John eats cake. In sentences like John likes cake it's not as clear. John is conscious, but he isn't doing anything, and he's actually be affected by the cake rather than vice versa.
"Subject" and "object", as well as case names like "nominative" and "accusative" are grammatical designators rather than semantic ones (meaning that they have to do with the technical details about how the sentence is constructed rather than what the sentence means), and they don't necessarily have to correspond to semantic roles in a consistent way. In passive voice, for example, you would say The cake was eaten by John - the semantic roles are identical to John ate the cake, but the cake is now the grammatical subject instead of the object. However, in English, in active voice, the subject of a transitive verb generally corresponds to the more agentive participant. Participants of intransitive verbs are always grammatical subjects, even if they are Patients or Experiencers - Jade runs, Jade falls asleep and Jade dies are all formed the same way, grammatically. You can also leave off the object of a transitive verb if you want - John eats is also acceptable as a sentence - but you can't leave off the subject - Eats cake is not.
An ergative language is one that works the opposite way from English. It has an ergative case and an absolutive case, and the ergative case generally represents the more agentive participant, but the absolutive noun is the grammatical subject and the participants of intransitive verbs are always in the absolutive. You can also leave off the ergative noun but not the absolutive one. Instead of having a passive voice, it has an antipasstive voice, which works the same way except the other way around. (There will be more details on this later.)
Simple verbs in Lǎzèról
Like English, the troll conlang doesn't have morphological cases the way, say, Latin and German do, but since the words "subject" and "object" already have so many connotations attached to them in English, it seems clearer to just use the case names, ergative and absolutive.
Both the ergative and absolutive arguments are marked with person and gender agreement on the verb. Absolutive is marked on the front of the verb, while ergative (if it exists) is marked on the end. Note that the copulas discussed earlier are a different thing and are completely unmarked for person or gender.
Absolutive and intransitive verbs
As discussed above, intransitive verbs have only an absolutive argument, and that argument is marked on the front of the verb (as a prefix), according to its person and/or gender. A first-person absolutive is marked as re- and a second-person as laí- regardless of gender, while third-person arguments are marked for gender using the gender words listed here minus their ending consonants. In other words:
Note that all verbs begin with a consonant, and all prefixes end with a vowel, and every verb has a prefix when used in a sentence.
First some intransitive verbs:
come lèir go/leave lěū walk sqá run qiēxrá fly vqīsr lie rêlâax sit sêcr swim lūzr stand qàxr turn qûīkōa sleep rìlqǎj fall vǒvr die lqīej sing xáusî
And some examples. Lǎzèról is pro-drop, meaning that pronouns can be omitted since person is specified on the verb. There are free-standing pronouns, but I will save them for the next post.
Transitive verbs also have an ergative argument, which is marked with a suffix. The suffix for first person is -ē, for second person -aí, and third person uses the "long" suffix from the adjective agreement, with the exception of Teal, which uses simply āx. To summarize:
If the verb ends with a vowel, it is left off when adding an ergative agreement suffix.
Here are some transitive words where the line between ergative and absolutive is fairly clear-cut - I'll talk about other kinds of verbs later.
make/create jōja eat rāsrô drink krǎj take zūlrìs hold rǎsq wash lēzrejq pull jrǎō push zrēôk throw xurǒâ
And some examples. Technically the words could go in any order, but in Lǎzèról the verb always comes first and the absolutive ("subject") usually comes before the ergative ("object").
Transitive verbs can leave off the ergative argument, but not the absolutive one, resulting in sentences like these:
jǒrāsrô ěx làu jǒ-rāsrô ěx làu BRN-eat NSPC food "Some food is eaten" sqēôzūlrìs cqó kiǒqǐkìk sqēô-zūlrìs cqó kiǒq-ǐkìk OLV-take DEF top-husk "The husktop is taken"
(Note that this isn't actually a passive, that's just the only way to render it grammatically in English. We would need an actual (anti)passive construction to get a sentence meaning "Vriska eats".)
Intransitive verbs can be made into transitive ones by giving them an Ergative argument, which makes them mean something like "X makes/forces Y to " where Y is the original absolutive argument.
sqēôlqīejēô ax sqâīxūěvrī cqó sqâīrâǔ sqēô-lqīej-ēô ax sqâī-xūěvrī cqó sqâī-râǔ OLV-die-OLV NDEF beast-wing DEF beast-meow "The cat kills a bird"/"The cat makes a bird die"
Translation Exercise Sentences
These are taken primarily from this post and the stuff on copulas I posted before. I believe I have linked all the relevant grammar posts on the website on the topics page, as well, and I've tried to tag things sensibly here. You can submit answers and I'll tell you privately if they're right, and post the answers publicly next weekend.
English to Lǎzèról
Karkat is in the recuperaroon. (Karkat = Kākrák, which is Rust for the purposes of the grammar.)
There is a cat under the table.
Two snakes are on the path.
John eats cake. (John remains the same, cake is lîīzr (Brown).)
I've been thinking about pronouns since last couple comments, and I think the intersection of personal pronouns and the number system is too good to pass up, so there will be standalone words (though the language will be pro-drop and I still want to try for polypersonal markings on verbs and the like, so they'd mainly be for emphasis). Our system would easily accommodate g-isabellae's inclusive vs. exclusive _we_, more or less, because first person dual would most naturally mean _you and me_ whereas the other plurals wouldn't. There'd be no distinction between _me and a bunch of other people_ and _you and me and a bunch of other people_, but there will definitely be interesting distinctions involving the collective number, too. There definitely won't be gendered pronouns, though; the last thing we need is 48 third-person pronouns to sort through. When I get my computer, it might time to do a verb post. We'll start with copulas before diving into the ergativity.
Oh joy, asks are broken again. Anonymous asked: > what about pronouns? Like I, We, Me, Her, She, Him, He, Mine, Ours. Also I would think the trolls would have gender neutral pronouns so perhaps it's possible to create those? I actually want to hold off on pronouns, because with what I have in mind for verb phrases they will actually be almost always (if not always) expressed as affixes rather than full words due to head-marking. And maybe at least somewhat gender neutral, just because with twelve genders that would be a real headache, though marking the genders of absolutive vs. ergative on the verb would be one acceptable alternative to the Latin-esque case-marking I don't want, though I was leaning more towards marking it on the articles. We'll see.
