(no subject)

I'm still sick and a bit dizzy. It wasn't quite as cold last night -- I didn't have to hike out to IHOP, although I was prepared to actually buy soup if necessary. It was sunny this afternoon, so I dozed in my car a bit to partially catch up on sleep.

They threw a Valentine's Day party at the "club" today. Unfortunately I had a headache, so couldn't fully enjoy the Hispanic music.

Next, I have to figure out how to explain project Delta's syntax.

project Delta: some Syntax

I'm trying to eliminate the use of "subject" and "object" as syntactical terms and will use P-argument and S-argument instead (for prefix and suffix, respectively).

Word forms within a clause are related using the "within clause" actants and are matched up by having the same gender and number. Sometimes, additional mechanisms (which I've forgotten) will be used to differentiate between matches that are not the same, but have the same gender and number. The 3rd person actants are used for inter-clause coreferences. Other anaphora (such as definite phrases) must be used for inter-sentence coreferences.

Time and place words normally use "within clause" coreference and must be marked specially to be used as non-adverbs. The same is true for other adverbial words, such as those for instrument and manner.

Verb forms functioning as auxiliaries aren't distinguished. Instead, complement clauses are introduced by the conjunction |pe|. Complement clause verbs may take the infinitive (= indirect reflexive) actant |z(o)| to coreference the auxiliary verb's P-argument.

Possibly, Delta is Split-S or Fluid-S.

txaa u z-maama Hwaan. "Juan sees his mother."
ko-txaa pe suna u perru. "I see that the dog is sleeping."
Hwaan u to-guu pe z-txaa u perru. "It's Juan who wants to see the dog." or "Juan's the one who wants to see the dog."

Verb forms acting in a restrictive manner (i.e. syntactical adjectives) don't take any special marking. They must be preceded in the phrase by a noun at some point.

Definite phrases take a Def proclitic (|u|) on the first word. There is also a Ser proclitic for words acting as serial verbs (assuming that's what they are).

I still haven't finished abverbial words and usages, or covered comparatives and probably some other things.

Clause Types

There will be three kinds of clauses:

Identity:	Definite Predicate + Definite Subject
Definition:	Indefinite Predicate + Definite Subject + any serial Predicates
Existential:	Indefinite Predicate and Subject

Verb forms and noun forms are more or less indistinguishable, although there are differences between lexical verbs and lexical nouns as to which inflections apply (e.g. lexical nouns usually don't take tense or aspect).

Word Agreement Classes

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Last Edited: 2006.Apr.04 Tue
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