Agent and patient,etc.

[Scott Tyler]

Hi James,
Thanks for the reply, will need to read these over,
and hopefully things will sink in!
nayka nanich tlaas
tlonas nahka chako kumtaks
scott
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "James Crippen" <jcrippen at GMAIL.COM>
To: <CHINOOK at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>
Sent: Saturday, September 27, 2008 5:14 PM
Subject: Re: How do you say "it" in Jargon?


> On Sat, Sep 27, 2008 at 06:31, Scott Tyler <s.tylermd at comcast.net> wrote:
>> I'll have to save your comments on 'patient' in the linquistic sense.  It
>> also makes sense in the physician sense.  I've been reading papers of 
>> Makah
>> grammar and this term stumped me.  Still hard to make sense of it.  Need 
>> to
>> probably pull out English grammar and review subject, agent, dependent, 
>> etc.
>>
>> Could you clarify using some specfic and albeit simple sentences in 
>> Chinook
>> Wawa to illustrate the use of these terms and concepts.
>
> There are two different layers at work here. Subjects are grammatical
> categories, they're dependent on how the verb fits with its arguments.
> On the other hand, agents are thematic roles, they're dependent on the
> event structure of the verb, on how it describes what is occuring.
>
> Náika nánič yáka
> I see him
>
> "Náika" is the agent, the one doing the action. "Yáka" is the patient,
> the one to whom the action is done. "Náika" is also the subject, and
> "yáka" is the direct object. Since there are both a subject and a
> direct object for this verb, this means that the verb is transitive
> (i.e., it takes two core arguments).
>
> Náika nánič q'aláxan
> I see fence
>
> Here, "q'aláxan" is the patient, "náika" is still the agent. "Náika"
> is also the subject, and "q'aláxan" is also the object. It doesn't
> matter whether an agent or patient is animate in CJ. There are
> restrictions on this in other languages, for example Navajo where
> subjects cannot be inanimate.
>
> In CJ the agent is the same as the grammatical subject, and the
> patient is the same as the direct object. I don't know if there's a
> passive form in CJ, so I can't give an example in CJ where the reverse
> is true. But English does have passivization, and the passive form has
> the patient as a subject and optionally gives the agent as an indirect
> object.
>
> He was seen by me
>
> Here "he" is the grammatical subject, but it's still the patient. "By
> me" is the indirect object of the verb "was seen". It's an indirect
> object because it's marked with the preposition "by". In contrast, a
> direct object in English is unmarked, there's no preposition. We have
> to differentiate subject and agent, and direct object and patient,
> because in passive form and various other situations (e.g. causative)
> this equivalence is not true.
>
> Intransitive verbs only have a grammatical subject and no direct object.
>
> Náika músəm
> I sleep
>
> Here "náika" is the sole subject. You can't "sleep something", there's
> no possible direct object for the verb. So it's intransitive. The
> subject here is (arguably) an agent, because the subject is in control
> of the action denoted by the verb. But that's not always true...
>
> Náika míməlust
> I die
>
> In this sentence, "náika" is almost certainly not in control of the
> action, and thus can't be the agent. Instead, "náika" is the
> experiencer, or undergoer. Note that "náika" is again the subject, and
> since the verb is intransitive there's no direct object. There could
> be an indirect object:
>
> Náika míməlust kópa latáp
> I die on table
>
> Here "kópa latáp" is an indirect object, with the preposition "kópa"
> indicating this. The following would be ungrammatical (indicated with
> a star *):
>
> *Náika míməlust latáp
> I die table
>
> This is ungrammatical because an intransitive verb like "míməlust"
> can't take a direct object, it only takes a subject.
>
> Since CJ is/was often spoken as a pidgin, people would make
> grammatical mistakes all the time. It's quite likely that another CJ
> speaker would understand the previous example even though it's
> ungrammatical, the same way an English speaker would understand the
> English version despite its ungrammaticality. Ungrammaticality does
> not imply incomprehensibility, although both often cooccur.
>
> Unfortunately there's no really good textbook on descriptive syntax,
> so I can't point you to a decent introductory reference. I learned
> from William O'Grady who uses his own textbook that he promises to
> publish someday, but for now it's only available from him.
>
> Does that help, or does my explanation make things even more confusing?
>
> Cheers,
> James
>
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> 

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