Micamo's Magnificent Mithara Blog!

A forum for all topics related to constructed languages
User avatar
Micamo
MVP
MVP
Posts: 5671
Joined: 05 Sep 2010 19:48
Contact:

Re: Micamo's Magnificent Mithara Blog!

Post by Micamo »

DesEsseintes wrote:Here we have a sentence with two explicit NPs and neither is marked for obviateness. Does that mean obviation marking is optional? If so, is it really obviation and not just a suffix meaning "other"? I'm asking in earnest, as I'm still learning how obviation works.
Obviation is not relative to the other participants in the clause, but a discourse or narrative-level phenomenon. Once a referent is introduced into a discourse its obviation level is established and doesn't change from sentence to sentence. Hence you can have a sentence where all participant NPs are proximate, or where all participant NPs are obviate, and have it be perfectly natural in the context of the narrative. Obviation status is chosen for complex pragmatic reasons, but I'm mostly interested in talking about its morphosyntactic effects here. Here's a short narrative to give an example:

ʔayłukkʷθ ʔanix̓ʷƛəłq̓ʷsax̓i:. šinełukk̓a:š łukx̱ wa x̓ʷƛi. šiłakq̓ʷsx̓i:q̓aʔł haʔp̓ašx̓ʷƛpaʔxk. x̓ʷƛx̱ ši:x̓ʷƛk̓a:š miwtełukq̓ʷsx̓e:.
a-i-zuk-kwth a-n-i-xw'd-z-qw'sa-x'ii | shi-n-i-zuk-k'aash zuk-xh wa xw'd-i | sh-i-zuk-qw's-x'ii-q'u'z ha'-p'e-sh-xw'd-pa'xk | xw'd-xh shi-i-xw'd-k'aash miw-tu-i-zuk-qw's-x'ii
DIR-REAL-fish-hold DIR-SS-REAL-knife-APPL:INST-head-cut | 1s.P-SS-REAL-fish-give fish-OBV and knife-POSS | 1s.A-REAL-fish-head-cut-try CONTR-BISEC-1s.A-knife-break | knife-OBV 1s.P-REAL-knife-give SUCC-INV-REAL-fish-head-cut
He picked up a fish and cut off its head with a knife. Then he handed me another fish and his knife. I tried to cut off the fish's head, but the knife broke. He gave me another knife, and it cut off the fish's head successfully.

In that last clause, both the knife and the fish are obviate, having been established as so earlier in the discourse and just so happening to both be involved in the same clause now. One of the participants doesn't stop being obviate just because it's being used in a sentence with another obviate referent.
My pronouns are <xe> [ziː] / <xym> [zɪm] / <xys> [zɪz]

My shitty twitter
User avatar
DesEsseintes
mongolian
mongolian
Posts: 4331
Joined: 31 Mar 2013 13:16

Re: Micamo's Magnificent Mithara Blog!

Post by DesEsseintes »

I have no issue with two obviate arguments appearing in the same phrase, as this seems common in langs with a proximate/obviate distinction. It's the presence of two proximate arguments that I haven't seen before. This doesn't seem to occur in the langs I've studied, so I would be interested to see counterexamples in natlangs.
Marianne Mithun wrote:In languages with this distinction, one third person is categorized as the proximate and all others as obviatives.
(Languages of Native North America, pg. 76)

That's not to say Mithara couldn't be different. I'm just interested whether this is an innovation or based on natlang precedent.
User avatar
Micamo
MVP
MVP
Posts: 5671
Joined: 05 Sep 2010 19:48
Contact:

Re: Micamo's Magnificent Mithara Blog!

Post by Micamo »

DesEsseintes wrote:I have no issue with two obviate arguments appearing in the same phrase, as this seems common in langs with a proximate/obviate distinction. It's the presence of two proximate arguments that I haven't seen before. This doesn't seem to occur in the langs I've studied, so I would be interested to see counterexamples in natlangs.
Marianne Mithun wrote:In languages with this distinction, one third person is categorized as the proximate and all others as obviatives.
(Languages of Native North America, pg. 76)

That's not to say Mithara couldn't be different. I'm just interested whether this is an innovation or based on natlang precedent.
An innovation; Proximate-obviate status in Mithara is tracked per class of object, and not across all third person participants; There can only be one proximate fish at a time, and one proximate knife at a time, but you can have a proximate fish and a proximate knife. Sorry, should have been more explicit on that fact.

(Mithara also lacks the rule from Algonquian languages that possessed objects must be obviate.)

Maybe I should call it something other than "Obviation", but that's what I started calling it to myself ages ago and the name sorta stuck. Also, once upon a time obviate forms were null-marked; The choice of direct or obviate marker was the only indication, but this proved too confusing for me to follow when working on longer translations.

Any suggestions on my next post? I know shimo wanted me to talk about evidentials, but those are a little up in the air right now. (Technically all of the examples I've shown so far are ungrammatical because they eschew the evidential suffixes.)
My pronouns are <xe> [ziː] / <xym> [zɪm] / <xys> [zɪz]

My shitty twitter
Post Reply