Talk:Conlang/Advanced/Grammar/Alignment

Untitled
This page is too terse to be much use, I think. I'm going to expand it, in tandem with a lesser expansion of the Conlang/Intermediate/Grammar/Nouns section on case, since the latter will need to have forward-references to this section. Probably David Peterson's article on ergativity would be a good see-also reference to link. --Jim Henry (talk) 04:14, 2 July 2009 (UTC)


 * When we rearranged the Advanced outline a few months back (discussed here), there was a wish list of stuff that should be included in Grammar/Alignment; that list also appears on the previous page. No new Advanced content was written during the rearrangement, beyond a few wish lists like that; old content was just shifted around into slots in the new outline.  --Pi zero (talk) 11:37, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Explain transitivity
The alignment of a language defines how nouns are changed, based on the way they are related to the action/verb being discussed in the sentence. The possible ways an object is related to the verb is based on the transitivity of the verb. I can't find a text about the possible transitivities/valencies and their applications in the book. I think it would not be bad to include it here, because without an understanding of transitivity alignment is difficult to grasp. --Columbus240 (discuss • contribs) 19:47, 2 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I agree, it should be covered. Imo it feels like core terminology, the sort of thing that should be explained by the intermediate level.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 23:04, 2 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I expanded the Intermediate/Verbs page a little on transitivity and valency. It is important to make a difference between the two terms. Transitivity acts on alignment, valency does not. Valency does not recognize the difference between a direct and an indirect object. Columbus240 (discuss • contribs) 10:29, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

The Blue Bird of Ergativity
A fascinating paper I learned about through iirc the Conlangery Podcast (which imho ought itself to be added to external links for the book). The author's position as I understand it is that Ergativity isn't a "thing"; it's not fundamental, just a coincidence of superficial appearance. Surely worth working into our treatment. Compare the suggestion here that trigger languages aren't a thing. From the paper:
 * [...] there is a question whether a workshop on "ergativity" is analogous to an effort to collect, say, birds with talons -- an important taxonomic criterion --, birds that swim -- which is taxonomically only marginally relevant, but a very significant functional pattern --, or, say, birds that are blue, which will turn out to be pretty much a useless criterion for any biological purpose.

--Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 01:18, 3 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Turns out I'd already woven a mention of it into /Intermediate. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 19:25, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Rethink
Typically, this stuff is explained in terms of cases for subject/direct object/indirect object, identifying simple arrangements (accusative, ergative, tripartite, perhaps moster raving loony), moving into variants (active, split-ergative, whatever), then more outre variants (trigger, animacy-based). I'd like to find an entirely different way to organize the material. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 23:47, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
 * As a candidate approach, how about this: rather that discussing voicing and relative clauses and whatnot within subsections arranged primarily by (inevitably oversimplified) alignment strategy, have a discussion of alignment strategies and then, separately, a discussion of voicing and then a discussion of relative clauses.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 14:41, 12 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm pulling the ergativity and trigger sections out of the book outline (navlist) for now, anticipating they'll probably be merged into this one (and their talk pages to this talk page). There isn't all that much content in them, so I doubt this should be much of a problem.  To avoid losing track of them once removed from the outline, here are links to them:
 * /Advanced/Grammar/Alignment/Ergative
 * /Advanced/Grammar/Alignment/Trigger
 * I'm thinking of adding sections on voice and clauses, or something like that, as siblings after alignment (rather than children), but I'm holding off a bit while considering how to draw the line between an advanced section on clauses and the intermediate one. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 17:54, 12 December 2015 (UTC)


 * There's a notable lack of examples in the text I'm writing here. I don't have those at my fingertips, though I'm also really not sure how one would work those in without losing track of the overview.  I like having this all on one page for the overall sense it provides, but on the other hand it's getting quite long (and I haven't even filled out the last several sections of the outline, not forgetting one of those is trigger languages which already have their own nontrivial page). As I try to set out the basics of the big picture on this stuff, it's coming out as even more of a confused mess than I'd expected, enough though atm I'm only writing stuff I already more-or-less know about, and I'd already been exposed to ideas like the blue-bird-of-ergativity thing.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 15:01, 18 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Austronesian alignment and trigger languages are a deeply confusing subject (my sense is that for conlanging purposes they ought to be treated together). I believe I actually do understand how trigger languages work, but how Austronesian alignment works I've not yet figured out &mdash; I've yet to find a good explanation of it anywhere, so it would seem extremely valuable to give a good explanation of it here &mdash; and distributing the information between here and the page on voicing looks to be an interesting problem.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 13:55, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I seem to be sinking into the same quagmire others have reported: the more I study this stuff, the less I understand.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 22:12, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I think I've finally got some handle on Austronesian alignment, but what I'm getting is that what distinguishes it is its voices, which I've pointedly moved out of this section. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 11:49, 22 March 2018 (UTC)