Paiodd Discourse Continued

To continue my discussion of Paiodd discourse, I thought we could examine alternative word orders that are still grammatical. Again, the typical word order is OSV, which means that, generally, the information in the Object slot or complement is the new information. See example (1):

(1)   Rodd lodd az. 'The man sees a woman.'

The chief rule of Paiodd word order is that the S and V must be directly adjacent at all times. This gives the alternative word orders of VSO, OVS, or SVO. As mentioned in the previous post, VSO often occurs in sentence-final clauses. If, however, it were the only clause, the effect is to emphasize the action itself, as in (2):

(2)   Az lodd rodd. 'The man sees a woman.'

A context in which this might occur is shown in (3):

(3)   Fazrir lodd fuian arioé rodd şopía. Oz lodd rodd. Dur sem izío asía xíamir.

'A man was working in the fields when a beautiful woman walked by. The man saw the woman. He felt love rising in his heart.'

OVS and SVO both appear to emphasize the post-verbal element. This can be tricky, as one must rely on context to know which is actually the subject. Sentences (4) and (5) show these two word orders.

(4)   Rodd az lodd. 'A man sees the woman.'

(5)   Lodd az rodd. 'The man sees a woman.'

To provide contexts where (4) might be a plausible sentence, consider (6):

(6)   Fazilía rebir rodd ario. Serss şopía ó alía, ai peað ðaiyo, þunlugér yiap dir ó ðimir. Cemuí, rodd oz lodd.

'A woman was walking near a field. It was a beautiful day, (as) the birds were singing, and butterflies darting to and fro. Suddenly, a man saw the woman.

In (6), the man is highlighted as important new information by being placed at the end of the clause.

            In (7), however, it is the woman who is highlighted as new information, even though she is in fact the object of the sentence. This highlighting takes place by post-posing the woman to the end of the clause.

(7)   Fazrir lodd fuianía. Serss şopía ó alía, ai peað ðaiyo, þunlugér yiap dir ó ðimir. Cemuí, lodd oz rodd.

'A man was working in his fields. It was a beautiful day, (as) the birds were singing and the butterflies darting to and fro. Suddenly, the man saw a woman.'

Now, the same focus on rodd could be accomplished by using the default word order, but perhaps with a slight loss of emphasis. For example, (8)

(8)   Fazrir lodd fuianía. Serss şopía ó alía, ai peað ðaiyo, þunlugér yiap dir ó ðimir. Cemuí, rodd lodd oz.

'A man was working in his fields. It was a beautiful day, (as) the birds were singing and the butterflies darting to and fro. Suddenly, the man saw a woman.'

In this case, the woman is still new information, and even retains a high degree of importance, but the default word order is not as striking or out of the ordinary, thus rendering the woman slightly less emphatic. Perhaps the author will elaborate on her importance later, or perhaps the woman was not particularly noticeable in this case. For instance, perhaps the woman was the worker's mother or someone else that would not attract particular notice. On the other hand, post-posing the object to final position in (7) implies that the woman stood out in some way, likely by being especially attractive, and probably someone the worker does not know.

Promoting Focus

One use of the deictic suffix -en 'this' is to promote a just introduced focus to the topic of the next sentence. For example:

(9)   Cemuí, rodd lodd oz. Roten vişopía cíazzené íasem. 'Suddenly, the man saw a woman. This woman was the most beautiful he had ever seen.'

In contrast, the suffix -an 'that' can be used to bring an item back into focus, as in (10), or to make a statement about a general category, as in (11).

(10)                       [continuing from (8) and (9)] Sersan visenía siepé. 'That day was the greatest in his life.'

Sentence (10) is recalling the 'day' introduced in (8), in order to make a further comment on it.

(11)                       Ladan az şopía rodd, filan sem ía. 'That man who sees a beautiful woman knows desire.'

In (11), ladan 'that man' refers to any man who finds himself in the stated situation, and thus does not have a particular referent, but merely states a category.

Paiodd Discourse

Currently taking a Discourse Analysis class. It's got me thinking about how some of these things work in Paiodd. Normal word-order for Paiodd is OSV, though there is some wiggle room, so long as the S and V are directly adjacent (a weird quirk left-over from my pre-linguist days, when it seemed like the subject had a much more important connection to the verb than any objects; in other words, before I understood properly what a linguistic predicate was). Anyway, given that this is the standard, default word-order, it would suggest that generally, the comment, or new information is part of the predicate, the O, while the known information is the S, and perhaps the V as well. Yet I'm not sure that's necessarily the case, as I think it is possible to translate the following with indefinites:

(1)   Selor pivar weloun. 'A king commands a soldier.'

Actually, seeing it now, I don't think it does work. This sentence would normally be interpreted as 'The king commands a soldier', though 'The king commands the soldier' is also possible. So it would seem that my intuition is probably correct. New information CAN go into the O slot, though it is possible that it may be old information as well.

            If we consider the other logically possible orders, given the strict rule for SV adjacency, we have: VSO, OVS, and SVO. VSO is almost always the word-order for dependent clauses, as in (2):

(2)   Guír pivar oz eusé selor zir. 'The king saw his wife when the soldier entered the hall.'

In this case, the VSO clause is the second clause. It is possible to reverse the order, however, so that the dependent clause comes first, while the main clause is postposed to second position, as in (3):

(3)   Zir selor eusé oz pivar guír.

The meaning is roughly the same, though it sounds to me as though the wife is the soldier's, not the kings now. That's pretty interesting! To specify that it was the king's wife, I would simply use the possessive pronoun:

(4)   Zir selor eusé oz pivar íasem guír.

Well, I've just discovered something about Paiodd discourse, even though I can't entirely understand why that is. It does seem, however, that in the case of (3), the focus (comment, or new information) is on the wife, connecting her to the initial topic (known information) of selor 'the soldier'. In (2), however, both the king and his wife are the known entities (part of the topic), while the entry of the soldier is the comment/focus/new information, and there is an implication that the wife had a noticeable reaction to this new event. In (3), however, the implication is that the king was impressed by the soldier's wife.

This is an excellent example of how conlangs take on a life of their own, as well, since I did not intentionally think these things through, but I find them to be true in the language nonetheless. It certainly may be due to some influence from my native language or others that I'm familiar with, but it was not a conscious decision. I will no doubt continue to think through these things, and I hope to either update this post later or write another focusing on the use of other possible word orders and their effect on discourse.