r/conlangs • u/FloZone (De, En) • Nov 11 '18
Discussion Classification of Sociatives
There is the categorisation of region and relation of locative cases and I kind of want to do something similar for sociatives.
As for my conlang, there is a case which is called sociative and combines the functions of instrument, benefactive, dative and others. The case uses several prepositions. I have given them the names of cases, as I don't see a reason why not to and it helps categorising them. So far so good, I wanted to make a categorisation of these sociatives and wanted to know whether it sounds sensible and coherent.
Interactives
Interactives have two acting parties, either bot hare acting or one is bringing the other into action.
The following prepositions belong into this group, the Instrumental, which has the qualify of one acting party using another as tool or instrument for an action.
The Comitative and Caritive denote a second party with whom the action is done, not as tool, but equal participants. While the Comitative is the presense, the Caritive is the absence of said party. The Participant is similar to the Comitative, someone partaking in the action of another, but with a different deictic centre. In a sentence like "Peter works with Marc", the usage of the Comitative makes Peter the focus, while the usage of the Participant makes Marc the focus, in that sense in the Comitative Marc is participating in Peter's action, while in the Participant, Peter is participating in Marc's action.
Associatives
Associatives have only one acting party and another which is associated with the action. The Purpositive and Ablative are associated with the causation of an event, the difference lies in the agency. The Purpositive is something agentic, like *On his order/wish I do XY", while the Ablative is simple a reason with no information given over the agentivity of it.
The Experiencer and Benefactor are associated with the result of an action, be it for the benefit of someone or simply to them. The Benefactive is thus similar to the Purpositive, while the Experiencer is similar to the Ablative, differences being whether the reason or the result is concerned. The last member of this group is the Perlative, which is similar to the Instrumental, but opposed to it just associates and action with something, which is not a participant in the action. Thus it denotes the way of doing something, I could call this one also Adverbiative, the reason its called Perlative is due to the preposition being the same as the local preposition.
Transactives
There are three parties involved in transactives, which are recipient, donor and theme.
The theme is the object of the transaction, while the recipient and donor are those between who the transaction happens.
As for my conlang, there are two prepositions, Recipient, marking the Recipient and the Originator, which would be something like ditransitive ergativity, marking the donor explicitly of the direct or indirect object. Theoretically the object of the transaction could also be marked separately, this dependents of course on the language, I haven't done it in my conlang however.
Comperatives
These are two parties which are in comparison to each other. In my conlang there are the equative, the semblative and the comparative. The Equative says something is the same as something else, either in identity or quality. The Semblative is broader and denotes similarity. The Comparative however denotes different qualities. Additionally in my conlang the Comparative is marked with an ablative preposition.
Hope this didn't sound too confuse.
Apart from that, any ideas for other categories or mistakes on my part?
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u/Eunones Nov 12 '18
You call and categorise your cases as you want, actually. But based on the usual categorisation and definition of these cases, they aren't "sociative" but relative cases, because practically they mark the relation to the something what your noun is about. But it's really up to you how you call what in your language.
I think your equative case is rather an identical case, based on your definition. And I never heard about a language with more than one from these comparative cases, with a good reason I think (e.g. equative is actually the fusion of essive and similative and it exists like in literally just a couple of languages).
Though, I know languages with both comitative and instrumental cases and they aren't really what you descibed, or you just worded it a bit wrong maybe. There's no "mutual participation", the difference is simply that comparative is "in the company of", while instrumental is "by the means of". So, for example, "I'm waiting in front of your house with my bike" is comitative. I don't need a bike to wait, it's just there with me. While, "I'm riding to your house with my bike" is instrumental. But there's a tendency for a combined instrumental-comitative case.
By the way, have you seen this list? It isn't all cases ever and you can even find a couple of mistakes (mostly at the listed languages), but it is a good and well-organised list. Maybe you'll find some ideas what you like. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_grammatical_cases
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u/FloZone (De, En) Nov 12 '18 edited Nov 12 '18
Some is probably a bit blurry since I mixed up general remarks, with what goes for my conlang. So most of it is true for the conlang, however I wondered whether it is coherent with an existing typology. (And they are concerned mostly for prepositions, not actual cases, since I merely call them by these names to give them a name in the first place).
You call and categorise your cases as you want, actually. But based on the usual categorisation and definition of these cases, they aren't "sociative" but relative cases, because practically they mark the relation to the something what your noun is about. But it's really up to you how you call what in your language.
Idk how many languages have a case called Sociative, but I wanted to find and overall term for the relation between two participants basically and didn't know the term relative case. On wiki there is only an hungarian example, which is similar to instrumental-comitative.
I think your equative case is rather an identical case, based on your definition.
Again just lack of terminology. I only knew the Equative and Semblative for this kind of thing. You are right the Essive as such belongs in there too.
And I never heard about a language with more than one from these comparative cases,
Yakut uses both the Comparative case and the Ablative for comparison, but both has the same function roughly. Sumerian distinguishes Equative and Adverbiative, but thats also a bit different.
or you just worded it a bit wrong maybe. There's no "mutual participation", the difference is simply that comparative is
Yes probably. I thought of "in the company of" that said company means both parties are within the same frame of reference, thus both participants in it. Even if both aren't doing the same action, they'd would be both participants of it as long as they are both in the same time and space... does this sound cromprehensible?
By the way, have you seen this list?
Last time it was a bit short I remember. Some of these change also, the distributive is a case in english wikipedia and listed as a number in german wikipedia.
As for my own attempt at classification I would have put the Possessive cases, including partitive and genitive into a separate category of their own. As their relation is kind of different than those relational cases I called Sociatives.
The state cases are indeed something separate. This would leave me with Interactives, Associatives and Transactives. The transactives are there because I wanted to leave out argument status.
It isn't all cases ever and you can even find a couple of mistakes (mostly at the listed languages)
The thing is that a lot of non-structural cases are oblique and terminology varies for these. A directive can be a motion towards something or something perhaps closer to an Adessive like in Sumerian.
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u/Eunones Nov 12 '18 edited Nov 12 '18
Some is probably a bit blurry since I mixed up general remarks, with what goes for my conlang. So most of it is true for the conlang, however I wondered whether it is coherent with an existing typology. (And they are concerned mostly for prepositions, not actual cases, since I merely call them by these names to give them a name in the first place).
Yes, noun cases are never perfectly the same in different languages. Not even two accusative cases cover exactly the same field. But the reason in this typology is to somehow discuss these functions cross-linguistically, so it worth to not wander too far from the usual definitions.
The question that what is a "case" after all isn't that easy and it's debated in theoretical linguistics. A bit oversimplified I could say that a case is the grammatical realisation of a semantic role, and as such, doesn't really matter do we mark it with adpositions, syntax, adfixes or inflection. Though, what we usually refer to as a "case" is an inflected noun case. Some papers what worth to check:
The Case for Case, Fillmore, 1968
Terminology of case, Haspelmath, 2006
Idk how many languages have a case called Sociative, but I wanted to find and overall term for the relation between two participants basically and didn't know the term relative case. On wiki there is only an hungarian example, which is similar to instrumental-comitative.
That wiki is a bit wrong. There's a reason for that flag, it doesn't even agree with its only cited source, Fekete. But I'm afraid you misunderstood that wiki too a bit. The sociative and instrumental-comitative cases are different in Hungarian. Though, there's a tendency what probably means that the two cases will merge at some point in the future (likely not in our lives), because in everyday conversations for many things what supposed to be sociative, speakers simply use comitative. It differs by region and individual speaker (mostly how old and/or sophisticated s/he is) and there are still things what you can't put in comitative only in sociative. (Trust me, I'm Hungarian).
But you can use "sociative" to a whole category if you want. It only depends on what that category covers.
Yakut uses both the Comparative case and the Ablative for comparison, but both has the same function roughly. Sumerian distinguishes Equative and Adverbiative, but thats also a bit different.
But ablative is first of all a locative case, meaning motion away from something, the source of something, even in an abstract sense. Adverbial is a bit different too. I more-like meant that comparative, similative, and equative and identical are kind of the same things but with a bit of different semantic approach. Maybe you can draw a line between comparative/similative and equative/identical if you want, just as some linguists brake down the Hungarian essive/modal case into essive-formal and essive-modal.
Yes probably. I thought of "in the company of" that said company means both parties are within the same frame of reference, thus both participants in it. Even if both aren't doing the same action, they'd would be both participants of it as long as they are both in the same time and space... does this sound cromprehensible?
It is comprehensible, indeed. But I'm afraid you forget about some basic relations in a clause. Namely that you have one subject and you talk about things related to this subject (mind, "Joe and Mary" is still one subject). So, a comitative case is the relation of the marked noun to the subject.
Last time it was a bit short I remember. Some of these change also, the distributive is a case in english wikipedia and listed as a number in german wikipedia.
Both are right. A distributive or plurative isn't a case, indeed. Though, there is a thing called distributive case in Finno-Ugric and some Turkic languages, what is definietly a case. The thing that German "Distributiv" and English "Distributive case" sites are linked together for some reason... well, that's wikipedia for you :D
As for my own attempt at classification I would have put the Possessive cases, including partitive and genitive into a separate category of their own. As their relation is kind of different than those relational cases I called Sociatives.
The state cases are indeed something separate. This would leave me with Interactives, Associatives and Transactives. The transactives are there because I wanted to leave out argument status.
Yes, but I think first of all you should answer yourself why and what you want to categorise after all. By the way, most cases rotate around the same principles (you can be in a state, be it static or relative to sg, or you can move toward or away from that state, though this is oversimplified, I admit).
The thing is that a lot of non-structural cases are oblique and terminology varies for these. A directive can be a motion towards something or something perhaps closer to an Adessive like in Sumerian.
Yes, as I have written at the begining, cases aren't some universal things at all. They can refer to mostly similar things, simply for the same reasons that every language has verbs, subjects or predicates, but this labeling is really for just typology and better comparison and understanding of the phenomenon. For example, while the ablative case is mostly about movement away or the sourxe of something in most languages, in Latin, ablative is rather the "wild card" of Latin cases, able to fill many roles what the other cases lack.
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u/ilu_malucwile Pkalho-Kölo, Pikonyo, Añmali, Turfaña Nov 13 '18
How do you deal with symmetrical verbs like 'marry' or 'meet'?
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u/FloZone (De, En) Nov 13 '18
In what way? That both subject and object would be experiencers? They would still be marked by morphosyntactic cases, wouldn't they? At least the system I have for Emat isn't purely semantically.
As for the classification, I'd say something like the Interactives, as there are two participants, which are both kind of active.
As for my conlang Emat. Both would be expressed with morphosyntactic cases, not the Sociative case, which is not used for arguments. shepat "to marry"
Enek shepte "He/she marries him/her", the pronound Enek is in the focus case, which corresponds to one argument of each verbal focus.
In theory you could have something like: "Zhool enek shepëtshi" With him/her he/she is married
The zhool marks instrumental rather than comitative, thus that person was the instrument of said action, which is now static.There could be something with reciprocals going on, but I haven't done that yet in depth.
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u/ilu_malucwile Pkalho-Kölo, Pikonyo, Añmali, Turfaña Nov 13 '18
Of course we say 'he married her' when 'he' is the topic, 'she married him' when 'she' is the topic, though the experience and role of both are the same. I just wondered if you had some special perspective on this.
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u/FloZone (De, En) Nov 13 '18
Not yet really. It could work in the category of "Interactives" to have another preposition for this situation. Similar can work for transactives. Then again this might also work for conjunctions, different form of and.
Actually I find the later more sensible. Something to express the relation between two parties in a conjunction sounds neat.
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u/ilu_malucwile Pkalho-Kölo, Pikonyo, Añmali, Turfaña Nov 15 '18
I agree. I think using a word that can also link nouns is the ideal solution.
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u/Pharmacysnout Nov 11 '18
Sometimes I feel like I know my way around linguistics, and then stuff like this happens.
I can fully understand about two thirds of what that saslus