Light Verbs, Serial Verb Constructions, & other verb "oddities", in Conlangs and Natlangs.
Solarius wrote:Kobon is really cool also- verbs are a small closed class, so you have to do a bunch of serial verb constructions.
Micamo wrote:Here's an example from Kalam, which is closely related to Kobon:Solarius wrote:Kobon is really cool also- verbs are a small closed class, so you have to do a bunch of serial verb constructions.
yad am mon pk d ap ay-p-yn (Pawley 1980)
1s go wood hit hold come put-PERF-1SG
I fetched firewood.
Unfortunately, good luck finding any first-hand material for these languages online! I've only been able to find second-hand fragments like the above.
EDIT: Nevermind!
And I'd been searching in vain for "Kalam" all this time. Screw you, google search algorithms.
gach wrote:Wonderful, thanks for that. Kalam's verbal semantics is magnificent. I've too had my eyes on them for a while but unfortunately the stuff Foley cites is in these unpublished manuscripts that might randomly pop up or then might not.Micamo wrote:EDIT: Nevermind!
XXXVII wrote:Okay... that is simply wonderful!Micamo wrote:Here's an example from Kalam, which is closely related to Kobon:
yad am mon pk d ap ay-p-yn (Pawley 1980)
1s go wood hit hold come put-PERF-1SG
I fetched firewood.
In terms of conlanging... how would you even determine what types of things would need to be included in a "closed class" for verbs?
Micamo wrote:Foley claims that only about 25 of Kalam's verbs are commonly used: These verbs are "generic verbs" with very broad meaning that depends on context. Serialized generic verbs often have a somewhat idiomatic meaning:XXXVII wrote:Okay... that is simply wonderful!
In terms of conlanging... how would you even determine what types of things would need to be included in a "closed class" for verbs?
It's also possible to have an adjunct (that is, non-argumental) nominal further narrow down the verb's meaning:Spoiler:
Spoiler:
eldin raigmore wrote:(My answer is not as fascinating, IMO, as Micamo's and your discussion about Kalam; but here it is.)XXXVII wrote:In terms of conlanging... how would you even determine what types of things would need to be included in a "closed class" for verbs?
You might take, for instance, the 300 most common light verbs of Korean; or the twelve, or three, or whatever number, most common light verbs of any language the majority of whose "verbs" (do I mean "lexical verbs"?) are two-word lightverb+contentword phrases rather than one-word verbs.
A closed class is just a word-class to which new members are not synchronically being added, by coinage or by borrowing or by derivation or whatever processes make open classes grow. Small classes tend to be closed and closed classes tend to be small, but the exact meaning of "small" is relative. For instance, consider numeral classifiers in those languages that have them. The number of genders (concordial noun-classes) in which the gender is lexically inherent in the noun seems to be limited to about 40 among natlangs that have them but don't have numeral classifiers; but the number of numeral classifiers seems to be limited to a much larger number, about 400, among natlangs that have them rather than some other kind of noun-class system.
Just as numeral classifiers are the only nounlike word-class that can inflect for grammatical number (e.g. singular or plural) in natlangs that have numeral classifiers, so also light verbs are the only verblike word-class that can inflect for most verbal accidents (e.g. agreement (with person or nominal accidents of participants), aspect, evidentiality, mirativity, modality/mode/mood, pluractionality, polarity, tense, valency, validationality, voice) among natlangs most of whose "semantic verbs" are lightverb+contentword phrases.
But light verbs are semantically "light" rather than semantically "empty". To qualify as a "light verb", a word needs to be grammatically usable as the only verb in a clause.
For most "semantic verbs" in such natlangs, most of the weight of the semantic content is carried by the content-word: which needn't be, and probably usually isn't, grammatically (i.e. morphologically and syntactically) a verb; but also might be pretty much any "part-of-speech" or word class.
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Some languages have serial verb constructions.
Apparently the source Micamo and you have been discussing says most (or is it just "many"?) of Kalam's semantically content-heavy "semantic verbs" are light-verb series -- serial verbs.
I am not clear whether they sometimes, or even often, include a content-word that isn't grammaticaly a verb; but I take it that the comment Micamo quoted about the "adjunct nominal" means they do sometimes occur (the "adjunct nominal" being such a content-word).
I am not clear whether there is never more than one such "adjunct nominal", but my impression from the quotes cited is that there either never is, or seldom is, more than one non-verb content-word such as an "adjunct nominal".
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Does any of that help anyone, or inspire anyone? (Even someone besides XXXVII or Micamo?)
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BTW should this sub-thread be moved to some other thread than "What did you accomplish today?"?
Like the Conlangs Q&A Thread?
Or perhaps split to its own thread?
gach wrote:There are apparently vast differences in the frequency of the verbs in Kalam. The exact quote from Foley about the statistics is: "Kalam has under 100 verb stems and, of these, only about twenty-five are commonly used. Almost every action, process or state is categorized to one of these twenty-five verbs, which Pawley (1980) calls 'generic verbs'." So even though there are only few verbs to begin with, some of them must still be much rarer than others or in other words have more specific functions.eldin raigmore wrote:Some languages have serial verb constructions.
Apparently the source Micamo and you have been discussing says most (or is it just "many"?) of Kalam's semantically content-heavy "semantic verbs" are light-verb series -- serial verbs.
The whole list of examples in Micamo's second scan gives such noun-verb compounds. It's not entirely clear from the glosses, but I get the idea that only the last word in each of the examples is a verb while the preceding ones are nominal complements to it. Most of the given examples are of the form noun verb but there are also many three word ones of the form noun noun verb, a very nice example being jwn bobam ay- (head dandruff put) for "have dandruff".I am not clear whether they sometimes, or even often, include a content-word that isn't grammaticaly a verb; but I take it that the comment Micamo quoted about the "adjunct nominal" means they do sometimes occur (the "adjunct nominal" being such a content-word).
I am not clear whether there is never more than one such "adjunct nominal", but my impression from the quotes cited is that there either never is, or seldom is, more than one non-verb content-word such as an "adjunct nominal".
And by the way, the source here is Foley's The Papuan languages of New Guinea which is a fascinating book and definitely worth reading.
It would certainly be worth archiving in a more accessible place than here. Do we have a thread on serialisation?BTW should this sub-thread be moved to some other thread than "What did you accomplish today?"?
Like the Conlangs Q&A Thread?
Or perhaps split to its own thread?
eldin raigmore wrote:Thank you, @gach. It looks like I had misunderstood earlier.gach wrote: .... (other stuff I also want to thank you for, but in particular: .... ) The whole list of examples in Micamo's second scan gives such noun-verb compounds. It's not entirely clear from the glosses, but I get the idea that only the last word in each of the examples is a verb while the preceding ones are nominal complements to it. Most of the given examples are of the form noun verb but there are also many three word ones of the form noun noun verb, a very nice example being jwn bobam ay- (head dandruff put) for "have dandruff". ....
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Edit:Apparently not.gach wrote:It would certainly be worth archiving in a more accessible place than here. Do we have a thread on serialisation?me wrote:BTW should this sub-thread be moved to some other thread than "What did you accomplish today?"? Like the Conlangs Q&A Thread? Or perhaps split to its own thread?