I thought that one of the virtues of Lojban was that it g= ot away from these variously described cases and such and put everything on= as level a field as you can get in a linear system.

<= div style=3D"font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: = 12pt;">

From: tijlan <jbotijlan@gmail.com>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com<= br>Sent: Sun, April 11, 20= 10 12:06:45 PM
Subject:= [lojban] Active-stative?

2010/4/11 Jorge Llamb=EDas <jjllambias@gmail.com>

On Sat, Apr 10, 2010 at 10:06 PM, tijlan <jbotijlan@gmail.com> wrote:
> Also worth
> noting is that, unlike Esperanto, Lojban isn't overtly specific=20 about its
> morphosyntactic alignment; while Esperanto is explicitly
> nominative-accusative, Lojban is not. (In fact, I'm not sure which=20 Lojban
> belongs to. Could it be the active-stative?)

I agree with your other points, but why do you say Lojban is not
nominative-accusative? It seems to me that it is exactly that: the
single case of intransitive predicates (the x1-case) is treated
exactly like one of the cases of transitive predicates (the x1-case
again)

For instance:

senci=20 has only one argument, so it's an intransitive predicate with a subject. sumne has two arguments, one of which is defined as=20 "experiencer" and as the x1, but it's not unambiguously the agent (the=20 participant in a situation=20 that carries out the action in this situation) so long as the x2 can be=20 considered as the primary cause of the experience of smelling but yet=20 not unambiguously as the agent either from a common viewpoint. According to Wikipedia, the linguist David Dowty suggests (http://en.wikipedia.o= rg/wiki/Agent_%28grammar%29) that, in

His energy surprised everyone.

, His energy = is the agent, "even though it does not have most of the typical agent-like qualities=20 such as perception, movement, or volition". From that viewpoint, it=20 would be reasonable to say sumne's x2 is the agent. In fact, the=20 gimste offers varying definitions in terms of the arguments' roles:

a. x1 smells/scents x2
b. x2 smells/has odor/s= cent to observer x1

And the interpretation of cases starts to appear even more undecided/speaker-dependent when we take into account the=20 following situation.

If native English speakers see da sumne de, they would=20 probably generally take the definition (a) and consider the x1=20 nominative:

[NOMINATIVE] [verb] [ACCUSATIVE]
=
The same for native Japanese speakers, despite their different word order:

[NOMINATIVE] [ACCUSATIVE] [verb]

But what if native= =20 Basque speakers see da de sumne? It syntactically corresponds to=20 the Basque ergative allignment:

[ERGATIVE] [ABSOLUTIVE]=20 [verb]

That is, they would by tendency see de (sumne's x2) in the same way that they see an intransitive predicate's subject like the x1 of blabi; da blabi syntactically corresponds in Basque to

[ABSOLUTIVE] [verb]

And it's the same for predicate= s=20 the x1 of which appears in the English version of the gimste as=20 nominative and the x2 as accusative, such as viska:

&nb= sp;x1 sees/views/perceives visually x2 under conditions x3

For Basque speakers, this x2 would naturally appear as=20 absolutive and they would treat it in the same way as they would treat=20 an intransitive predicate's x1 and describe it as such if they ever make a Lojban-Basque dictionary. Wikipedia has a Basque example of The=20 man saw the boy. (h= ttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergative%E2%80%93absolutive_language#Morphologi= cal_ergativity):

Gizonak mutila ikusi du.
[gizon-ak] [mutil-a] [ikusi = du]
[man-ERG] [boy-ABS] [saw]

, which naturally corresponds to

<= i>[lo nanmu] [lo nanla] [pu viska]

Unlike Esperanto, Lojban does=20 not morphologically (and syntactically, for that matter) mark cases, so=20 the interpretation is usefully up to the listener/reader.

=

> and for transitive predicates the x1-case is the one that
> usually corresponds to the agent, just like the subject case in
> nominative-accusative.

Whether or not a transitive=20 predicate's x1 is the agent does not at least in the above examples=20 affect Basque speakers' interpretation of the x2-case; gizonak is the agent, but it's of ergative case, and mutila of absolutive=20 case. And there is nothing which would prohibit them from interpreting l= o nanmu lo nanla pu viska in the same native scheme of theirs. Even=20 if lo nanmu is explicitly marked as the agent with gau,=20 they would associate it with their native eargative marker -ak,=20 while native Japanese speakers would associate it with their nominative=20 marker -ga.

Active-stative would require that some intransitive verbs have an
x1-case only while others have an x2-case only, which is never the
case (unless you are thinking of things like "zi'o broda", but I doubt
it's fair to use such unusual cases for the classification).

For one thing, Lojban has certain characteristics of fluid-S, a subtype of=20 active-stative. Wikipedia defines fluid-S (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acti= ve_stative) as:

[...] the marking of the=20 intransitive argument is decided by the speaker based on semantic considerations. That is, for any given intransitive=20 verb the speaker may choose whether to mark=20 the subject as agentive or patientive, with agentive marking implying a=20 degree of volition or control, and patientive=20 implying lack of volition or control, suffering, or sympathy on the part of the speaker.

Consider single-argument intransitive=20 predicates like sipna. In da sipna, da, unmarked,=20 is either agentive or patientive: when da ri'a sipna, it's=20 patientive; when da segau sipna, it's agentive.

It's the same for multiple-argument intransitive predicates like sak= li. In da sakli de, da, unmarked, is again either agentive or patientive: when da ri'a sakli de, it's patientive; when da=20 segau sakli de, it's agentive.

Also, tu'a and jai can make the intransitive argument=20 either the agent or the object of a transitive verb -- the arbitrary=20 marking of which is what is commonly defined as the main feature of=20 active-stative.

> There are more to the similarity between Lojban and Japanese, but=20 I'm having
> difficulty putting it into English. For one thing, briefly, the=20 distinction
> between the subject, object, and complement in Japanese is not as=20 important
> as in English, which has led some notable Japanese linguists to=20 suggest that
> every verb argument in this language is basically a complement of=20 equal
> significance in its relation to the predicate, which sounds like=20 what terbri
> are to its selbri in Lojban.

I would agree that the distinction is less important than in=20 English,
but there is still a distinction. The x1-case especially has very
distinct properties compared with the other cases, and the x2-case to
a lesser extent also has some special properties with respect to the
rest.

They may have distinct properties,=20 but the point is that one argument is not more significant than the=20 others. viska's x1 is not more important than its x2, while in=20 English see's x1 (the subject) is more important than its x2 as=20 evidenced by such facts as that I see that. can be reduced to I see. but not formally to See that. In Lojban and Japanese, m= i viska | watasi-wa miru, viska ra | sore-o miru and viska | miru are equally valid. (Such ellipsis is also possible in some=20 European languages like Spanish and Polish, but they differ from the=20 pair in question in that their arguments inflect.) English prioritises=20 the subject and formally requires its presence in an indicative=20 sentence, as in It rains., which cannot formally be Rains.
Also: as I attempted to explain above, the x1-case as well as the=20 x2-case in Lojban are by default indefinite, user-dependent. So I don't=20 think one can objectively prescribe the properties of the x1/x2 as a=20 definite representation of one grammatical case.

I'm not an expert, so I might have said some stupid things, in=20 which case I would be happy=20 to be corrected and educated.

mu'o mi'e tijlan

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