statives

Wed Jan 16 16:22:01 UTC 2013

Dear Magnus,

Your work sounds fascinating. Someone recommended the Oxford Advanced
Learner's Dictionary (
http://oald8.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/dictionary/talk) as a model for
lexicography of Indigenous languages, and although English works like this
are thousands of man/woman hours in the making I think there is a lesson on
the importance of diagnostics and subdivisions in classes. After the works
of scholars starting with Ross, perhaps, on squishes or clines, or on
unergative/unaccusative verbs, etc. there is a clear idea that word class
categories such as Noun, Verb, etc. are not really adequate: they are
prototypical categories with some more representative than others and with
non-discrete boundaries, etc.

Cf. ablaze in the Oxford dictionary where it is stated to be an adjective
"but not before nouns". It seems that this could be expressed just as well
by dividing the adjective class into predicates and modifying/attributive
and creating two classes. Or one can do what Levin did with English
verbs and create subclasses (e.g., 'wave verbs' vs. 'crook verbs', if I
remember correctly, with the former being able to delete the body part and
the second not: I waved my hand goodbye/I waved goodbye cf. I crooked by
neck to see/I crooked to see.

While these might be morphosyntactic classes, there are also semantic
groups as well as something like frame semantics might be worth looking.
Cf. poliwi

poliwi in the context of V N and the present indicative usually has the
meaning of 'to be lacking'

poliwi mokone:w  'Your child is missing (e.g., hasn't arrived)

But in the perfective it would mean 'to get lost'

o:poliw mokone:w  'You child got lost'

One cannot use, I don't think poliwi (present) NP to mean 'gets lost'
except with certain adverbial modifiers

Mohmo:stla poliwi mokone:w  ('Every day your child gets lost' although one
could also interpret this as 'Every day your child is late/lacking')

Best, jonathan

On Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 9:13 AM, Jonathan Amith <jdanahuatl at gmail.com>wrote:

> I think that one must analyze any meaning/use of a verb with a specific
> context of utterance (both the words surrounding it and the actual
> situation in which something is said). For me, certain verbs can be used in
> the present indicative to indicate an ongoing action:
>
> cho:ka mokone:w   'Your child is crying' (said by one person to another
> upon hearing a child cry in the other room; I would find it unusual, though
> not wrong, to say cho:katok mokone:w, at least in Balsas and Sierra
> Nororiental)
>
> ?miki mokone:w  ? for me not a felicitous statement. I would say, in
> Balsas i (or ye) miktok mokone:w 'Your child is dying'
>
> o:mik mokone:w  'Your child is dead', 'Your child has died'
>
> koto:ntok mola:soh  'Your rope is snapped' (i.e., is in the state that
> results from it having snapped in two, cut in two)
>
> i koto:ntok mola:soh 'Your rope is on the verge of snapping'  (i.e., it is
> being frayed against something as it about to snap apart)
>
> It is a matter for empirical analysis to determine which verbs belong in
> which paradigm (frame, or whatever). The process of research should be
> similar to that undertaken by Beth Levin for English verb classes. The
> result would be a sort of cline in which certain verbs ("cho:ka" verbs)
> would use the present indicative as a progressive and the durative (-tok,
> -tikah) would be a sort of more emphatic statement of progressivity.  A
> second set of verbs (e.g. "miki" verbs) would use the perfective as a
> stative/resultative.  Finally, a third set would use the durative marker
> (-tok, -tikah) as a resultative and would mark the progressive with "ye".
> The last two categories come somewhat together with some internal
> variation, e.g., miki. Cf. also poliwi.  I would find it more usual to say
> 'o:poliw X' than 'poliwtok X' to indicate 'X is lost'  'o:poliw notomi:n'
> 'My money is lost' 'My money got lost' And cf. 'i polihtok' 'It is starting
> to get out of sight'. But with wa:htlapolihtok there is a progressive sense
> that doesn't require "ye"  and with the sense of a countryside becoming
> obscured as a rain and mist are approaching.
>
> Note that in N. Veracruz, and somewhat in N. Puebla (though less so) -tok
> can have a sort of perfect meaning
>
> nitakwahtok a  in N. Puebla   'I've already eaten'.
>
> Basically, then, verb classes are a matter for empirical investigation in
> the context of use and, significantly, can be used as diagnostics for
> classes of verbs.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 12:43 PM, Magnus Pharao Hansen <
> magnuspharao at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> 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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>> > Today's Topics:
>> >
>> >    1. Re: Nahuatl word classes (John Sullivan)
>> >
>> >
>> > ---------- 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*
>> US: 001 401 651 8413
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>
>
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