statives

[Magnus Pharao Hansen]

But Joost and John

That definition of "stative" is semantic, and it defines "statives" as a
semantically defined subclass of intransitive verbs. IN contrast, several
Mesoamerican languages including Maya, Totonacan and Otomian have been
analyzed as having a *syntactic *class of stative verbs that behave
morphosyntactically different from other verbs and which also tend to
include semantic content about properties or states. That is what my
analysis of Nahuatl wordclass suggests is a useful way of understanding and
describing the morphological and syntactic behavior of words like "kwalli",
"weyi" and "yolik", "chichiltik".

Lots of verbs have a stative meaning, but as long as they behave the same
as all other verbs there is no reason to set them apart as a wordclass. The
specific reason the verb *nehnemi *has a stative like meaning (actually I
would consider it progressive and not stative) is that it is a reduplicated
form that has been lexicalized, and reduplication was historically used to
form the frequentative aspect.

best,
M



On 15 January 2013 13:00, <nahuatl-request at lists.famsi.org> wrote:

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>    1. Re: Nahuatl word classes (John Sullivan)
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> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: John Sullivan <idiez at me.com>
> To: Joost Kremers <joostkremers at fastmail.fm>
> Cc: nahuatl discussion list <nahuatl at lists.famsi.org>
> Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2013 13:10:58 -0600
> Subject: Re: [Nahuat-l] Nahuatl word classes
> Piyali Joost,
>         But if this is the case, then, at least in Modern Huastecan
> Nahuatl, the present tense is inherently stative. "ninehnemi", for example
> doesn't mean "I walk", it means "I am walking". To get it to mean "I walk"
> you have to add an adverb. For example, "Mohmoztlah ninehnemi", "I walk
> everyday". I still don't understand the difference between, "ninehnemi" and
> ninehnenticah". I'll have to run this by the macehualmeh here at IDIEZ.
> Best,
> John
>
> On Jan 6, 2013, at 6:16 AM, Joost Kremers <joostkremers at fastmail.fm>
> wrote:
>
> > Hi John,
> >
> > Though I can't comment on your Nahuatl examples in particular, there is
> > a working definition of statives that might help. In general, a verb is
> > stative if it describes a situation or property without specific
> > duration. That is, if you can split up the event being described into
> > smaller subevents and these subevents can still be described by the same
> > verb form, then the verb form is stative.
> >
> > So "He is sleeping" is stative because if the sleeping lasts for say
> > eight hours, and you consider any subinterval of those eight hours, you
> > can describe each correctly with "he is sleeping". On the other hand,
> > "he fell asleep" is not stative, because if the falling asleep takes 10
> > minutes, then any subinterval does not constitute a falling asleep
> > event.
> >
> > HTH
> >
> > Joost
> >
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Jan 04 2013, John Sullivan <idiez at me.com> wrote:
> >> Piyali listeros,
> >>      I'm a little confused with how the word stative is used (in
> linguistics?). Would all of these words be considered stative?
> >> 1. Cuaciyah tlachihchihualli. "It's a hand-made chair".
> Tlachihchihualli is a noun formed from the passive form of a verb, and
> refers to the result of an action.
> >> 2. Cuaciyah chichiltic. "It's a red chair". Chichiltic literally means
> "it has become a very red chilli". This seems to me to be the relationship
> of a metaphor, in other words, chair is identified with a chilli, it is not
> in a certain state.
> >> 3. Eliazar ihcatoc. "Eliazar is standing". Ihcatoc is literally "he
> stands up and has rested in that state."
> >> 4. Eliazar mocehuihtoc. "Eliazar is seated." Mocehuihtoc is literally
> "He sits down and has rested in that state."
> >> John
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >
> >
> > --
> > Joost Kremers
> > Life has its moments
>
>
>
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-- 
Magnus Pharao Hansen
PhD. student
Department of Anthropology

Brown University
128 Hope St.
Providence, RI 02906

*magnus_pharao_hansen at brown.edu*
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