Reduplication types

I've discussed (at least) four different types of reduplication in Koa over the years, but never written them down in one place or really thoroughly explored/documented what they should mean. Here are the types I've talked about so far:

1) Whole-word reduplication, normal stress on first element

kuma > kúmakuma
loe > lóeloe
ake > ákeake

Meaning: intensifier (very hot, very cold, very sharp)
Notes: We talked about this here near the bottom, only written as two separate words without clear intentions about stress...though I have to admit that when I read Ni loha loha se aloud I stress the second. Hm.

2) Reduplication minus onset, stress on second element

kuma > kumaúma
loe > loeóe
ake > akeláke (note L-insertion)

Meaning: affective/minimizing diminutive, "ish." (warmish, chilly, ...pointy? dunno). Minaína "gal."
Questions: (1) How is loeóe different from lóeki? (2) Is this too similar to the first type given the fact that they kind of have the opposite meaning? (3) Is that L-insertion -- the only thing saving the opposite of ákeake from basically and laughably being akeáke -- too ad-hoc?

3) First syllable, stress on full word

kuma > kukúma
loe > lolóe
ake > aáke (aháke?)

Meaning: unknown

4) Reduplicate medial consonant with -a, stress on reduplicand

kuma > kumáma
loe > loáe
ake > akáke

Meaning: From here, "I was thinking this might serve to make the noun more euphemistic, more gentle, less objectionable, or something. So a pragmatic rather than semantic value."

Just for reference, here are the three sample words with each reduplication type in turn for comparison:

kúmakuma, kumaúma, kukúma, kumáma
lóeloe, loeóe, lolóe, loáe
ákeake, akeláke, aháke, akáke

This is going to require some thought, and maybe some study of what reduplication tends to be used for cross-linguistically. Just impressionistically, though:

* I don't like type 1 at all; as I alluded to before, my instinct is that these should sort of be separate words with the stress on the second one. Then, maybe weirdly, I feel like type 3 might be synonymous with type 1.

* If type 1 becomes separate words with stress on the second as I just suggested, type 2 kind of gets sabotaged. I always liked this one, though! Loeóe for "chilly" seems perfect...but on the other hand maybe lóeki really is enough here.

* Type 4 is really great for certain things (like luái) and I think it's valuable for a living language, though at the moment I'm not thinking of a lot of specific uses for it other than euphemisms. Could it also take on the meanings of type 2? I'm not sure. Thinking just of getting it on, I feel like there's an important difference between lúiki and luái!

Another thought I'm having here is that, just because a particular reduplication type technically has to be available for every word doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be equally common with every word...so for example if mina mina means "a real woman" or whatever, and minaína means "gal," that doesn't have to entail that that type-2 strategy is now going to be used ALL the time and confuse everything.

Experiencer vs agent in verbs of perception

Just a note: I had said in a previous entry that the difference between "I see" and "I look at" is essentially aspectual, i.e. ni nae vs ni ma nae. I've realized since that the core semantics of a statement like "I see" require some reanalysis of the corresponding Koa structures.

A primary thing that makes "I see you" and "I'm looking at you" different is agency, of course, and therefore the semantic role of the subject. Koa doesn't mark agents and experiencers differently, but one could easily reframe this in terms of ability, which Koa does mark. In other words, "I see you" has approximately the same semantic content as "I can see you." The emphasis may be different, but that's the core idea.

I would now therefore list the basic and embellished possibilities for this phrase like this:

ni nae se
1SG see 2SG
"I see you" or "I looked at you" or (weakly) "I can see you"

ni ma nae se
1SG IMPF see 2SG
"I am/was looking at you"

ni te nae se
1SG ABIL see 2SG
"I can see you" or just emphasizing the experiencer interpretation "I see you"

ni voi nae se
1SG can see 2SG
"I can see you," emphasizing the abilitative interpretation

And to clarify, this isn't actually a change: it's just me getting clear on what my Koa words must actually mean.

On a somewhat different topic, I just want to mention that I made an error in that same entry with my glosses involving ipo sahi. I failed to notice that, because the object is incorporated in these VP's, they've just become intransitive and more like states in terms of Aktionsart category. Therefore:

ni na ipo sahi
1SG NEG drink wine
trad "I don't drink wine"
wrong "I didn't drink wine" or "I'm not drinking wine," depending

right "I don't drink wine" or "I am not a wine drinker"

ni na si ipo sahi
1SG NEG ANT drink wine
trad "I didn't drink wine"
wrong "I hadn't drunk wine"

right "I didn't drink wine" or "I wasn't a wine drinker"

To get the incorrect interpretations from above, you would need an article on "wine," thus:

ni na ipo hu sahi
1SG NEG drink EXIST wine

"I didn't drink (any) wine"

ni na si ipo hu sahi

1SG NEG ANT drink EXIST wine

"I hadn't drunk (any) wine"

Comparison again

I'd honestly really like a comparative particle. I'm just not pleased with taha despite the typological motivation:

iso taha
big surpass
"bigger"

iso i taha ni
big FIN surpass 1SG
"bigger than me"

What about:

iu iso
COMP big
"bigger"

iu iso ____ ni
COMP big [THAN] 1SG
"bigger than me"

The question is what kind of mechanism for "than" can be derived from first principles. Iu iso o ni looks like an IE calque and is an arbitrary convention that has to be memorized: not what we want, even though (or especially because) it's familiar to me as an IE person.

iu iso taha ni
COMP big surpass 1SG
"bigger than me"

What if iu means "to such a degree?" iu iso taha, iu iso kase -- "big to such a degree it surpasses/meets" > "bigger, as big"

Do we have a way of saying "less?" Hm.

ai se halu ___ pi lele?
Q 2SG want [more] QUANT milk
"do you want more milk?"

Oh my...should there actually be a "more" word? That certainly shouldn't be taha in a sentence like that. Vese pi lele -- much better than taha pi lele. Quantity and comparison are not the same thing, clearly don't need the same structures.

asi iu vaka
asi vaka taha
asi vaha i taha
asi iu vaha i taha
"a more important matter" *sigh*

I don't know what to do here, but more work is needed.

Discourse deixis

Ti/to for discourse deixis: ti is cataphoric (subsequent discourse), to is anaphoric (prior discourse).

[Neat, though I don't know where this came from...maybe Nahuatl?]

Exploring the possible scope of quoting

I need to look up a bunch of Bislama examples to do this properly, but basically, the idea is that le could expand its usefulness beyond just marking proper names. I think we can generalize to say that it could be used to mark anything that’s being mentioned rather than used. So maybe

kea sa le iuna?
"what's a train?"

But more than that, it could potentially also be used as an alternate strategy to mark clauses that are currently just being nominalized. So

ta sano le ni loha le Keoni
"she said that she loves John"
literally "she said, 'I love John'"

Apparently the above is (amazingly) the normal strategy for this kind of sentence in Quechua. Now I’m getting confused, though, because I was starting to think of it like Bislama se, in which case the sentence above should appear as

ta sano le ta loha le Keoni
i.e. hem i talem se hem i lavem John
“She said that she loves John”

More work is needed here. Probably for this usage, either ko or ve ought to be adequate, since the meaning would be identical [and the difference between ko and ve in this usage is...what?]. If we really are mentioning rather than using, I suspect direct quotation is the use we most need.

One final thought: trying to translate “mean,” as in “what does that mean?” Which of these is correct?

1. Kea sa le toa?
2. Le kea sa toa?

Ugh...I’m having trouble mustering an argument either way. Let’s think about it.

Nominalized possessive phrases

We can say ka pasúo ka kunu "the dog's food," so logically ka ka kunu must be"the dog's one, the dog's," etc. It's kind of weird because essentially ka ka ends up being a compound particle introducing definite possessives, but you can't argue with the sense of it.

Ka ni i iso i taha ka se "mine is bigger than yours." I suppose there could be some minimal word requirements that would give us ka nii, ka sei, etc...maybe. But anyway you get the point.

Note from 2016 as I'm posting this thing I just unearthed: just because ka ka kunu is logical and has to be admissible, that doesn't mean it's the best way to express this in Koa or that there couldn't be other ways. Using asi as a potential candidate, we could do something like ka asi ka kunu "the dog's (one/thing)," ka asi ni i iso i taha ka asi se "my one/thing is bigger than your one/thing" if needed. Actually I don't dislike my original renderings of these at all, but I can see how the embedding could continue ad absurdum and I just wanted to insert some sanity...

Verbal focus with arguments

Okay, check this out: when the verb is the focus, we've had an insoluble issue with how to manage other sentence arguments. For example:

ni ma suo ka sumo
1SG IMPF eat DEF squash
"I'm eating the squash"

becomes, when the verb is in focus, what exactly?

suo sa ni pe ka sumo...ma?
eat FOC 1SG REL DEF squash IMPF
"I'm eating the squash" (stranded particle)

ma suo sa ni pe ka sumo?
IMPF eat FOC 1SG REL DEF squash
"I'm eating the squash" (just how much of the VP do I have to front?)

In this case pe becomes effectively a kind of accusative marker (literally "with respect to") for some pretty strange, not-very-Koa-like syntax. Yuck. But, so I just read, Basque (similarly sensitive to topic/focus) accomplishes this by focusing an unconjugated verb, then using a dummy verb in the usual spot with the usual inflection. Here's how that could look in Koa, with ete, possibly set to replace teke for "do":

suo sa ni ma ete
eat FOC 1SG IMPF do
"I'm eating," i.e. "it's eating that I'm doing"

Done: easy, elegant, totally normal-looking Koa. Note: this would logically require that ete suo be an acceptable usage. Maybe some kind of blanching or euphemistic force when not focusing?

Next up: how to handle topic. We've never figured this out.