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Obduction Backer |
Joined: Tue Sep 03, 2013 11:04 pm Posts: 516 Location: A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away.
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Talashar wrote: stuff about tso and okh This is interesting, and I want to try to answer some of the questions you raise. Disclaimer: this post is full of linguistics jargon. Don't read if you have allergies.
Let's tackle the usage of tso. Looking through the list of examples, it's striking that almost every single one involves a -tahv abstract noun or -tahn agent noun. The two exceptions are rezu tso dovah met "the end of this world" and the slightly obscure t'khoytahg zu tsoshem, both of which involve the noun zu. Setting these two examples aside for now, let's consider these two classes of deverbal noun separately.
Quote: rekesotahn tso dovahtee "the changer of worlds" remahrntahn gre’ahreeutahn tso dovaho[t] "the creator and protector of our world" bahreltahn tso dovahtee "maker of worlds" What these all have in common is that the verb as the root of the agent noun is transitive, and the complement of tso denotes the object of the verb, the agent noun by definition denoting the subject. All nice and straightforward.
Quote: remishtahtahv robot tso rebishtah "the actual construction of the tunnel" remishtahtahv tso sheegah bretahleeo "the construction of (a) [way] to the surface" r’inaltahv tso donetsoet relem "the [opportunity(?)] of us producing the ink" r’rinaltahv tso donetsoet rekortee "the [privilege(?)] of us producing the books" remahnshootahv tso erthsev "the death of an Age" oolintahv tso D’nee "[control] of D’ni" totee rahnahl tso mahrntahvom "various places of your creation" Examples 3 and 4 are obscure, due to the verbs at the root of the abstract nouns being hapax, and of the others, we see that we can have both transitive and intransitive verbs. In the Xtahv tso Y construction (i.e. all but the last, which I think still fits under this heading) we see that the complement of tso is the subject of an intransitive verb, and the object of a transitive one. The last example matches this analysis in all details except that it's Y tso Xtahv. But this inversion is motivated by the need to make totee the complement of be, which is only possible if totee is made the head of the phrase, which ultimately allows us to analyse it as underlyingly an Xtahv tso Y construction like the others.
Summing up tso, then, it is used in a set construction with deverbal nouns to introduce:
the object* of an agent noun the absolutive argument (i.e. intransitive subject and transitive object) of abstract nouns with inversion possible when the complement is needed to be the head of the phrase instead.
This leaves us with our two other examples of tso which do not fall under this construction. However, only rezu tso dovah met can really be analysed, since the other contains the hapax khoytahg, and the syntax of the whole clause isn't clear enough to indicate what the head of tso is. The key word in the phrase is zu, translated as "end", although this seems like a word that would be expressed with the abstract noun to a verb "to end". It occurs both in the two phrases under discussion here, and also in lerochay zuoy "I have [met] my end". I'm not too sure what exactly to make of this, other than suspecting that zu means something related to, yet more specific than "end". Of course, it's possible that zu is functionally equivalent to a -tahv abstract noun, making this an example of the Xtahv tso Y construction after all. It would certainly be tidy.
Skimming over the examples of okh, it's a lot more varied in semantics, which pretty much proves it to be the neutral way of translating "of". I won't attempt to work through all these usages in this post, since this one's already long enough, but maybe another post!
*Technically we can call this the absolutive argument as well, since the agent noun to an intransitive verb will never be in this construction, as its sole argument is already expressed
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