In general, there are often passages in Classical texts that are unintelligibly ambiguous if taken at face value. These ambiguities were the driving force behind scholarly debates for centuries. This issue also gets tends to get more severe the older the text is.

Phonological research has led us to be confident of the existence of derivational affixes in Old Chinese, which are often not reflected in character forms. I.e. words get written as roots and the derivation is not encoded, leaving the reader to have to figure things out by context. What if we take this further and posit that there were not only derivational affixes, but also inflectional affixes?

Modern Tibetan languages have inflectional affixes marking case on nouns that behave phonologically similarly to the way Old Chinese derivational affixes behaved. If we assume that the ambiguous Classical texts in fact had case markers on nouns which were completely left out in writing, then the ambiguous phrasing is justified. The actual speech they were recording would not have been ambiguous with the case markers. The ancients weren't just trying to troll us.

The distribution of pronouns in Old and Classical Chinese shows that different pronouns for the same person have clear biases towards certain cases/functions (吾 is almost always nominative, 予 is never genitive). However, the distribution isn't clear cut enough to actually come up with a concrete case system (我 appears basically everywhere), at least not within the nominative-accusative system observed in modern Chinese languages.

(Aldridge) refutes the notion that Standard Mandarin has split-ergative alignment on the basis of animacy for unaccusative verbs. They note, however, that subject of unaccusative verbs can take two forms, either appearing after the verb, appearing a) "accusative" or before the verb b), appearing "ergative".

>a) 来了客人。 = Some guests arrived.
>b) 客人来了。 = The guests arrived.

These two forms express a difference of definiteness, which is what Aldridge uses to refute the argument that, because personal pronouns can only take construction b), they exhibit ergative alignment. Rather, pronouns take construction b) because they are inherently definite. That about sums up the linked article.

Looking again at the examples given though, coul

I understand S-O-V vs S-V-O vs ..., Nom-Acc vs Erg-Abs vs tripartite, and the difference between active and stative verbs. It seems like you could easily distinguish active and stative in Nom-Acc or some other alignment, maybe by different markings or changing word order.

How would you have an active-stative alignment, though? The Wikipedia page makes this seem like it should be a completely separate and unrelated alignment, but it uses English's nominative and accusative pronouns throughout.

Active stative alignment (aka split intransitive) is when the subject of an intransitive sentence gets handled differently depending on either some semantic category of the verb or the context the verb is used in. Basically that means that if the subject is agentitive/has volition then it gets marked the same way as the subject of a transitive verb. If the subject is patientive/lacks volition then it gets marked like the object of a transitive verb.

This would look something like "she speaks" vs "cries him" or, if the volitionality of the verb depends on context, like "I fell" and "fell me"

Since free word order involves a lot of case marking, and this split intransitivity seems to involve the subject changing cases, could an active stative language ever become a free word order language? Or would it need to develop some kind of tripartite alignment with two slightly different nominative cases?

For example: would a clause centered around a more patientive verb such as "to burn" pivot on the P argument while a clause using a more agentive verb like "to eat" would pivot on the A argument?

Morphosyntactic alignment

• three cases: nominative, accusative and partitive
• two verbal types, active and stative
• active verbs always take their subject in the nominative case, object can be partitive or accusative depending on telicity.
• stative verbs, including copulative verbs always take all their arguments in the partitive case.
• active verbs as a rule describe the execution of some action like walking (intransitive), seeing (object is partial), killing (object is total), shooting (object can be partial or total depending if the action is completed or not (shoot at someone vs shoot someone down))
• stative verbs describe properties or the state something is in instead of actions like sleeping (intransitive), being (both arguments are partitive), smelling like (both argumetns are partitive).

nominal declensions:

• two broad types of nominals, animate and inanimate.

• a lot of nominals can be declined in either but declining something as animate personifies it.

• inanimate can further be subdivided in concrete and abstract

• inanimate declension does not have a nominative case

• animate nouns destinguish between singular and plural numbers, inanimate nouns do not

• adjectives agree with the noun they govern in case, number and animacy (concreteness versus abstractness too)

• adpositionals like 'of', 'though', 'behind', 'to' etc can function as either adjectives or adverbs and always govern the accusative case

• thereofre 'I shot the man behind the tree' is not ambiguous depending on if 'behind' is inflected as an adjective or adverb

• animate nouns can carry a personal suffix denoting first or second person ('I, the king'), absense of such is third person

• destinction between proximal, distal and indexal suffixes where distal also functions as a stressed definite article.

• there are no personal pronouns of any form, such information is carried by verbal conjugation and personal suffixes.

• where third person inanimate pronouns would stand, they are for the most part simply omitted altogether

• there are two different cases of numerals, those used in the animate declension function as determines and influence the number of their argument and are placed before the noun

• those used in the inanimate declension function as an adpositional, are placed behind what they govern and require it to always be in accusative case. In effect simply being adpositionals. They are inflected for case themselves.

verbal conjugation:

• four per

Hello! This is the first language I'm making a post about so I hope it good. This is a naturalistic language spoken by Flyers which is my sooo original name for humanoid species with wings who live in caves on Anberreable Mountains on South. It uses a split-S system (with some fluid-S stuff) of active-stative. It's agglutinative, but it once was fusional Latin-style language so today some stuff is fusional and some are agglutinative.

Phonology

Here are consonant and vowel tables (only sounds that use non-IPA letters are romanised):

/j/ can geminate all consonants, most of them just get longer, but some have different forms:

l > j; w > ph; r > rr; ø > y (short y was lost and long one shortened)

Phonotactics are CVC, but only nasal + others and others + resonants clusters are allowed, word can also end in sonorant. Clusters /nɾ/, /nj/, /nl/ and /nw/ all turn into /t/.

Two open syllables or one closed syllable make foot (if there is unfooted open syllable before closed one, they make one foot), stress falls on first syllable of the rightest foot. there are no true diphtongs because of this, but in speech they do appear.

Intonation is falling from start to end of sentence. In interrogative sentences, intonation falls, but on end it rises a little and then falls again.

Nouns

Nouns have two genders (masculine and feminine), two numbers (singular and plural) and four cases (agentative, patientive, genitive and dative). Agentative is used to mark agent and sometimes subject of an intransitive verb, patientative is used to mark patient and sometimes subject of an intransitive verb, it's also used with prepositions with, by and some others, genitive is used to mark possession and with some prepositions (mostly ones that show movement), dative is used to mark an indirect object and with some prepositions (mostly ones that show location).

Most masculine nouns end in -ka, -kra, -kla or -kka and most feminine end in -en or -n. Some frequently used nouns don't end in any of these endings. Here are declensions:

||K- declention|N- declention|En- declention|A- declention|Sonorant declent

Active-Stative Syntax in an OSV Conlang With Inflected Pronouns

Howdy y'all,

I've been working on a new conglang called Sheña and I'm trying to resolve two separate goals I had in its design:

1. Having inflected pronouns a la Wolof or informal English (the active set of person markers are basically all contractions of personal pronouns and tense-aspect-moody adverbial things)
2. Employing an active-stative alignment that splits along volition

I've crafted a table of inflected pronouns and they're all pretty transparent, but I think I'm ok with them morphologically. For agents and agent-like subjects, it appears that the contractions of pronoun and TAM particle regularized in a pretty predictable way, yielding what is pragmatically a set of prefixes that attach onto tam markers. For patients and patient-like subjects, full pronouns are used. I'm not sure how to utilize this strategy to create a distinction between sentences with patient-like subjects and agent-like subjects when tense or aspect is important. I've been using the verb "to sleep" to experiment with being able to use this active-stative alignment to encode the difference between "going to sleep" and "falling asleep." The problem arises when I try to locate the sleeping in time. As the language is presently, this means "I went to sleep (I intended to do so)":

>A-ma thema
>
>1sg-PERF sleep
>
>"I went to sleep."

The full first person singular pronoun for patients and patient-like subjects is "ta," as demonstrated in this transitive sentence:

>Ta qwatla xe-ma qeqwe
>
>1sg bear ANI-PERF hug
>
>"The bear hugged me."

It seems kind of boring and not correct to render "I fell asleep" like this though:

>Ta ma thema
>
>1sg PERF sleep
>
>"I fell asleep."

Perhaps I fix this syntacticly by zero deriving a noun form of sleep and saying something like "Sleep befell me"? But then I'm concerned that such a construction wouldn't really be analyzable as a split intransitive alignment.

Maybe I'm overthinking this? I'd like to be able to elegantly utilize both of these features in the same language though if it is possible. Anybody have any thoughts?

Oh, also, here is the pronoun table for reference:

For my current conlang in the works, I'm trying out an active-stative morphosyntactic alignment, with a lean towards a fluid-S system, in which the marking the subject as an agent or patient is semantically determined, rather than lexically as in a split-S system. I also wanted to use a (relatively large) number of valency-changing operations to enable to extract even more semantic content out of each verb!

However, in doing a little bit of research into how voices 'work' in active-stative languages, I was disheartened when I stumbled across the following quotation from a paper entitled Semantic Agent in Tibeto-Burman Languages (2010):

>Fluid-S languages lack valency-reducing operations such as passive and antipassive.

But I see no reason why such operations can't exist! - I seek an explanation for why the above holds (or not!), and why the system I've come up with might not work, or if it in fact does, whether it is still naturalistic! (which is my goal).

Anyway, here's my proposed system:

(mur- is the stem of the verb 'see', -ka / -ak mark a 1S agent/patient resp., similarly for -sa / -as, but for 2S.)

Transitive verbs take the prefix o- indicating passive voice. For the most part, due to the unagentive nature of subjects of intransitive verbs resulting from passivised transitives, the subject will be marked with the patientive personal suffixes:

murka 'I see', muraska 'I see you', omuras 'You are seen', ( omursa 'You are seen (on purpose, intentionally)' )

Here's another potential 'voice' I might add, though it might not be naturalistic as I can't find anything like in natlangs (though I doubt that's really the case - it never is with these things!) so I'd be interested to hear people's thoughts on it. It also lacks a name (so ideas for that would be appreciated too!), but currently the placeholder name is 'Passive II':

The prefix is tu-, and it promotes the indirect object of a ditransitive verb to the object (which itself would be demoted to an oblique). Below, note -n indicates a 3P recipient, and s- is the verb stem for 'give':

s-ak-sa-n 'you give me to them', tu-s-an-sa 'you gave-to them', with might be translated more literally as 'rewarded', or 'burdened', depending on the context. This also leads to the possibility of otusan 'They were given-to (given away?)' - It's the subtle semantic changes (effectively, deriving new verbs) imparted by these voices, that I really love about this conlang, but I'd li

Non-linguist here with a pretty shoddy grasp on the topic as a whole, so I apologize in advance if I'm way off on all this. Please correct me if I'm wrong!

My rough understanding of the function of the passive voice in voice in English is that it allows you to "promote" the object of the sentence to the nominative case, and "demotes" the former subject to the objective case, making it optional. And because there is no patient/predicate for intransitive verbs, the passive voice is defective for intransitives?

• Active Transitive: I ^[a/nom] punched him. ^[p/obj]
• Active Intransitive: He ^[a/nom] ran.
• Passive Transitive: He ^[p/nom] was punched (by me. ^[a/obj] )

Ergative languages, from what I understand, favor the antipassive voice? Which, as its name suggests, seems to be the opposite of the passive voice: It promotes the active agent to the absolutive case. I can't find any examples, but perhaps the word that was previously in the absolutive would become optional like in English? And since there's no agent in the active intransitive, it's defective as well?

• Active Transitive: I ^[a/erg] punched him. ^[p/abs]
• Active Intransitive: He ^[p/abs] ran.
• Antipassive Transitive: Punching was done by me ^[a/abs] (toward him. ^[p/erg?] )

Assuming all that is more or less correct …

What sort of voices are typically found in active-stative languages? For fluid-S languages, could either passive or antipassive be used depending on the on degree of volition? Or perhaps a mediopassive voice is used?

I've been looking for information on the topic, but all I seem to be able to find are vague Wikipedia articles and stubs. If anyone could point me in the right direction or has any examples/information to share, I'd be really grateful. Thanks!

For technical reasons, this post has been divided into two posts: Part 1 and Part 2. We hope this doesn’t inconvenience you.

This course was written by /u/LegendarySwag. It and all other CCC posts are also on the wiki at: https://www.reddit.com/r/conlangs/wiki/events/crashcourse/posts.

Part 2: Active-stative Alignment

Active-stative languages, also called split-intransitive, are a bit more complex than the alignments previously covered, as they have some nuance in how they treat the arguments of their verbs. Broadly speaking, these languages treat intransitive subjects differently based on the verb in question. Volitional actions, that is, actions we choose to do, take agentive subjects, similar to nominative-accusative languages. Conversely, non-volitional actions take patientive subjects, much in the same vein as Ergative-Absolutive languages. >It’s important that “volition” is not the best word to describe this relationship, as we shall soon see, but it is the easiest way to imagine the Active-Stative alignment at first.

Active-stative Parameters

While it may initially seem simple, how a language defines which verbs use which cases can be complicated and vary considerably. One can break down this into three categories with an optional fourth. These are control, perform-effect-instigate (P/E/I), event, and optionally, affect. Let’s define these categories and how they relate to verbs.

Control is simple, it is what we would ordinarily consider volition. If a verb is listed as +control, it was done intentionally. Contrast to look, a +control verb, with to see a -control verb.

P/E/I covers whether or not a verb was performed, effected, or initiated by the subject, not whether or not the action was volitional. to sneeze is an example of a -control +P/E/I, while to jump is both +control and +P/E/I.

Event is whether or not a predicate is an action or a state. to be hungry is a -event verb while all previous examples are +event.

Affect this shows whether or not the subject was significantly affected by the action. This usually manifests in the distinction between temporary and permanent states. to be hot is a +affect verb, while to be tall is -affect. This distinction can be used to indicate sympathy is the subject is significantly affected as well, more on that later.

Here are some exa

A direct object of verb receives the action from the verb. So no action = no object (proof: linking verbs doesn't take object for the same reason.)

On the other hand, stative verbs don't convey any Action. if that's true then stative verbs also shouldn't have any object as there is no action going on.

but the problem is, i bought an English grammar course from Udemy (which is a ripoff), which has a reference sentence of gerund, being the object of a sentence:

I enjoy swimming. here enjoy is a stative verb because it's expressing a sense. no action is going on in here. right? So it shouldn't take an object. then why swimming is an object here?

for your info, I just did a google search and couldn't find any answer except the one on the Wordreference's site where they didn't go to any conclusion.

For technical reasons, this post has been divided into two posts: Part 1 and Part 2. We hope this doesn’t inconvenience you.

This course was written by /u/LegendarySwag. It and all other CCC posts are also on the wiki at: https://www.reddit.com/r/conlangs/wiki/events/crashcourse/posts.

Introduction

Hello and welcome to CCC (24/4/2016):INT06. My name is u/LegendarySwag, and today I will discuss both Tripartite and Active-Stative Languages. For some background on myself, I am an avid conlanger and worldbuilder. I am not formally trained in linguistics, but rather biology. Still, I have always had a fascination with languages ever since my first Spanish class in middle school. My main language as of now is Pàḥbala /pɑx.ˈβɑ.lɑ/, which I will be using to illustrate the tripartite alignment. Despite my lack of formal training, I hope you all find this foray into these more exotic alignments informative and accessible. Without further ado, let us begin with the more simple of the two:

Tripartite Alignment

As the name suggests, tripartite languages make a three-way distinction in the arguments of its verbs. If you recall from the previous course on Nominative and Ergative languages, BAS09, we learned that languages can treat these arguments (ie, subjects and objects) differently based on transitivity. In nominative languages, subjects of transitive verbs (denoted as agent or A) and subjects of intransitive verbs (subject or S) are treated as the same. In Ergative languages, the intransitive subject and the object of a transitive verb (object or O) are treated as the same.

Tripartite languages have no overlap in this regard, the agent, object, and subject are all treated separately.

This image compares the three alignments

The scheme of marking in tripartite languages is as follows:

• Agent-Ergative case, ᴇʀɢ

• Object-Accusative case, ᴀᴄᴄ

• Subject- Absolutive case, ᴀʙs

>If you have difficulty memorizing this new pattern perhaps the way I learned them will help: the agent and the ergative both have a g in their names, when you accuse someone, they are the object of the accusation, and when one does an intransitive action, they do it alone, they are absolute.

Now let us take a look at the sentences: I eat the apple and He slept in Nominative, Ergative and Tripartite f

I'm talking about Guarani, btw, if anyone has an opinion on the matter.

I swear if enemy desntity isn't just the amount of enemies we have in override + the amount of enemies in Astral, all that times three, the activity will be a trigger for my narcolepsy.

After finishing the new seals I decided to go and clean up old quests on my alt characters.

I'm working on the Season of the Splicer questline and ended up playing Override and Expunge. Man, those missions are fun. You forget that after not playing them for a while.

As with many activities, playing them nonstop can get old. But what if we rotated between the seasonal activities so that you keep them fresh?

I am working on a conlang that uses logographic characters and which has no tense. It also has no helping verbs. It does have aspect particles that follow the verb.

• Dynamic
• Stative
• Perfective
• Habitual

Examples:

1. Habitual: She walks everyday. -> She foot-habitual everyday.
2. Transitive/Dynamic/Imperfective: She walks the dog. -> She foot-dynamic the dog.
3. Transitive/Dynamic/Perfective: She has walked the dog -> She foot-dynamic-perfective the dog.
4. Intransitive/Dynamic/Imperfective: She walks. -> She foot-dynamic.
5. Intransitive/Dynamic/Perfective: She has walked. -> She foot-dynamic-perfective.
6. Intransitive/Stative/Imperfective: She is thinking about the dog. -> She be-braining-stative about the dog.
7. Intransitive/Stative/Perfective: She has thought about the dog. -> She has-brained-stative-perfective about the dog.

My problem is in forming passive sentences where the object takes the subjects place:

• The dog is being walked (by someone). -> The dog foot-dynamic.
  • (But this is the same as the dog walks.)
• The dog has been walked (by someone). -> The dog foot-dynamic-perfective.
  • (But this is the same as the dog has walked.)
• The house is burning. -> The house be-firing-stative.
  • Are stative verbs always passive?
• The house is burnt. -> The house be-fired-stative-perfective.
  • Is this really the resultative aspect?

I was thinking about adding an agent particle to the subject of the transitive sentences. This would make it an Ergative/Absolutive conlang.

I then thought that if I added the agent particle to the intransitive dynamic subjects then I would be able to tell the difference between the dynamic passive and the dynamic non-passive sentences:

• The dog-agent foot-dynamic. (The dog walks.)
• The dog foot-dynamic. (The dog is being walked.)

I think the above would make my conlang have Active Alignment but not sure.

Would mental stative verbs then also require an agent marker? I'm not sure this is correct:

• She-agent be-braining-stative of the dog. (She is thinking of the dog.)
• She be-braining-stative about. (She is being thought about.)

I want to be able to move the object to the subject position to form passives so what passive marking choices do I have?

1. Add a passive particle after or before the verb (trying to unburden the verb with additional particles.
2. Add a object marker to the object (trying to avoid this).
3. Add a mandatory subject

Recently, while reading a book on BH(Biblical Hebrew), I started to learn about how stative verbs work. The stative was explained as a way of describing of "being". For example, the BH verb "כָּבֵר" is translated as "he is heavy" and the BH verb "יָרֵא" as "he is fearful". However, you can also describe things in Hebrew by adding the predicate and subject, in agreement, which translates into English as "to be". For example, "טוֹב הָסּוּס " translates as "the horse(male) is good". What I don't understand is what exactly is the difference between the predicate & subject in agreement and the stative verb in BH if they both translate into English as a linking verb use of "to be"? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks - Codwell

P.S I'm new to this sub-reddit and to reddit in general, so I hope I didn't commit any taboos or Faux pas :)

EDIT: I want to clarify that when I say "the difference" I mean when is one used vs the other, and are there any overlaps? Like could there be a stative verb, let's say hypothetically one that means "be angry" that describes a state, but also an adjective, hypothetically one that translates to "angry", that can be used with the whole subject & predicate agreement that can be used to express the same thing?

Hey all, I'm a HS senior and recently at my internship I had a question and was not able to word it properly so my PT didn't really understand what I was asking.

My question is this: How does doing exercises with a certain muscle help pull bones and joints back into alignment while the patient is just sitting there. I don't understand how essentially being able to push more weight with X,Y, and Z muscles helps stabilize it while you're sitting there doing nothing. This also obviously applies the other way, why do weak muscles and in turn muscle strength imbalances cause alignment issues.

Take scapular wringing for example. How does working the serratus and other scapular stabilizers actually pull that scapula back to where it is supposed to be?

Title. With Eye of Another World only the real boss will be highlighted red, so just find him and burn him down.

EDIT: I've had this asked enough times that I feel the need to add this: No, this doesn't work on Atraks, you're still going to need someone with scanner.

EDIT 2: Some people don't seem to realise, this is about the Warlock exotic helmet Eye of Another World, not the Deep Stone Crypt raid exotic Eyes of Tomorrow.

https://twitter.com/DestinyTheGame/status/1437883505858408448?s=19

What alignment would you say this action reflects?

Edit: This post is completely hypothetical.

Edit2: Lawful didn’t make the cut because the poll is limited to 6 options.

Edit3: Downvoting people for not agreeing with you is so dumb I can’t even put words to it.

View Poll

It isn't full sprint speed because of the movement nerf, but you can make it all the way to where you need to dunk the ball without dropping it.

EDIT: This no longer works as of this Tuesday reset (9/7/21).

Almost all the grammar books I’ve come across say that stative verbs aren’t often used in the progressive form yet I always hear native speakers use the verb” want “ in the progressive form ( I have been wanting to visit this city for many years)

The dynamic verb + 下来 is easy enough to grasp (落下来，走下来） but when it comes to states, that's where I'm at in terms of comprehension. A few examples are 买下来，活下来。 I've sought explanations from friends and even my teacher but none can really put it into words for me.

https://imgur.com/gallery/GtsZ59l

These were taken at 1440p

Feel free to use these however you may like!