Re: [Ladekwa] translate - Latejami messages

Consider 'study', a verb that I do agree is an activity verb. When you say, 'the student studied', the Agent and the Patient of the sentence are not only the student, but it seems that they never stop being the student throughout the different semantic transformations. For example, if you were going to say, 'The student studied French', then this would be an AP/F-s verb, with the Agent and Patient both being the student. I frankly can't think of any other case structure that a word like 'study' could have. What would the word become if you tried to make it A/P-s, for example? The most that I can think of is that the Agent and the Patient would continue to be the student, so that the verb would amount to saying that the student made tonti attempt to learn, or something like that. According to the Reflexive Suffix section of the monograph, reflexivity is inherent in the AP form. This relationship would then be made explicit by separating the A and P in the sentence and using the reflexive pronoun tonti to represent the student the second time.

Now consider trying to use 'translate' as an activity verb. In the sentence 'the translator translated', the Agent and the Patient do still seem to be the translator. But the second you separate the two cases, then suddenly the Patient stops being the translator and starts being the thing to be translated, as in the A/P-s sentence 'the translator translated the report'.

In other words, the referent of the Patient across transformations is inconsistent between the two so-called activity verbs. If you are happy with this inconsistency, then fair enough. But it seems to openly contradict what you say in section 2.5.1, that "A suffix changes the syntax and semantics of a word in a precise (i.e., totally predictable) way." After all, you cannot predict the way that the A/P-s suffix will change the semantics of an AP-s word, because sometimes the Patient remains the same as the Agent, and sometimes it does not.

On 19/11/05, Rick Morneau <ram@hidden.email> wrote:

Geoff Hacker <geoff.hacker@hidden.email> wrote:
>
> OK, I've now had more time to think about this:
>  'Translate' is indeed an exchange/transfer verb. Its case structure is
> A/P/F/2F-d. Hence, Agent translates Patient into target language Focus from
> source language Secondary Focus. Hence, the Secondary Focus in this case is
> the "from" case, and the verb once again adequately indicates the direction
> of transfer.
>  I think that this should be revised accordingly in the dictionary.
>

Absolutely not!  You're thinking metaphorically, and Ladekwa classifiers
are never metaphorical.

Translation is an activity - not a transfer verb - since no transfer of
possession is involved at all.  If you want to say "He translated the
French report into English", then use the A/P/F-d form, where "the
French report" is the patient and "English" is the focus.

If you want to say "He translated the report from French into English",
then use the A/P-d verb, and the state case tags "jucawmbume" = 'from'
and "cawmbume" = 'to'.

Regards,

Rick Morneau
http://www.eskimo.com/~ram

------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~-->
Fair play? Video games influencing politics. Click and talk back!
http://us.click.yahoo.com/u8TY5A/tzNLAA/yQLSAA/GSaulB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~->

Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
   http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Ladekwa/

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
   Ladekwa-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
   http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/