Rho: Grammatical Voice

[qiihoskeh]

Here's another pending issue for project rho.

For each grammatical voice, there's an implied subject case and an implied object case (this grammatical voice is marked only on divalent and trivalent verbstems). The subject also may agree in gender. For trivalent verbstems, this is reasonably straightforward:
Act- subject is -Agt, object is -Pat if it's animate and -Thm otherwise
PsA- subject is -Pat, object is -Agt if it's animate and -Thm otherwise
PsI- subject is -Thm, object is -Agt or -Pat (this is ambiguous!)

For divalent verbstems denoting actions, it's also reasonably straightforward:
Act- subject is -Agt, object is -Pat
PsA- subject is -Pat used if it's animate, object is -Agt
PsI- subject is -Pat used if it's inanimate, object is -Agt

But for verbstems denoting perceptions, I'm undecided. What I have currently is:
Act- subject is -Pat, object is -Thm
PsA- subject is -Thm used if it's animate, object is -Pat
PsI- subject is -Thm used if it's inanimate, object is -Pat

For verbforms, the implied subject is the current topic if no explicit subject taking the implied subject case appears. Example:

"As for John, he gave the dog water."
John-Top, Act-give-Pst-Ind Def-dog-Pat water-Thm

This evaluates (ignoring topicality concerns) to:
"John gave the dog water."
John-Agt Act-give-Pst-Ind Def-dog-Pat water-Thm