How do you say "it" in Jargon?

[James Crippen]

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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