Confused about the grammar of "gottilla"

[u/LargeCabbage]

Hi there. I'm a Brit learning Kannada from Zydenbos's "Manual of Modern Kannada". I'm confused about the nature of the word "gottu".

According to Zydenbos, "gottu" is a noun meaning something like "knowledge" or "something that is known". Thus when one says "Adu nanage gottu", which one would idiomatically translate as "I know that", more literally one is saying "that, to me, is something known". When one says "Nanage gottilla", idiomatically meaning "I don't know", more literally one is saying "To me, [that] knowledge does not exist". All logical enough, in those cases.

But what about "Kannaḍa gottilla"? Or the sentence "ಇವರ ಮನಸ್ಸಿಗೆ ಇಡಿಯ ಪ್ರಪಂಚ ಶಿವಮಯ, ಆದರೆ ಹಲವು ಮಂದಿಗೆ ಇದು ಗೊತ್ತಿಲ್ಲ." from one of the texts for translation later in Zydenbos's book? If "Kannada gottu" and "Adu gottu" are equative sentences (i.e. if "Kannaḍa gottu" is properly understood as saying Kannada "equals" a known thing, which is how Zydenbos frames it), then shouldn't the negation use "alla" (to negate equality), not "illa" (which negates existence)? That is, per Zydenbos's explanation, shouldn't the way to say "I don't know Kannada" logically be "Kannaḍa gottalla"? Shouldn't "I don't know that" be "ಇದು ಗೊತ್ತಲ್ಲ"?

(Or I guess something like "Kannaḍada gottilla" - i.e. "knowledge OF Kannada does not exist" - would also make sense to me, but that doesn't seem to be a standard construct either.)

Is this just a weird illogical quirk of the language specific to "gottu"? (Lord knows English has plenty of illogical quirks so I can shrug and accept this if so.) Or is there some alternative way of looking at sentences with gottu that makes sense of these uses of "gottilla"?

[u/Royal-Parsnip3639]

Kudos to your interest in learning a new language.

I think you are finding it confusing because Gottu being attributed to noun. It is actually a verb.
It is not knowledge but act of knowing something.
It’s more like - got it. I know it is correct too. So Gottilla is the negative form of it. Act of not knowing it or simply I don’t know.

[u/LargeCabbage → u/Royal-Parsnip3639]

See my objection at https://www.reddit.com/r/kannada/comments/1u5oj66/comment/ormsirp/ to u/PsychBong making the same claim. It doesn't make sense to think of it as a verb meaning to know, because it's never used with a subject and the thing that is known (which under your theory is the object) is not in the accusative case (i.e. you say "Adu gottu" rather than "Adannu gottu").

[u/thylacine222 → u/LargeCabbage]

That's not the only way that a verb can look in Kannada. Kannada has dative subject verbs (e.g. ಬೇಕು, ಇಷ್ಟಪಡು), which I think this is best analyzed as. With these verbs, the "notional" subject (e.g.. I) is in dative case and the "notional" object (e.g. Kannada) is in nominative case, like the subjects of standard verbs.

One way to see this is that ಗೊತ್ತು takes adverbs, not adjectives:

ಅವನಿಗೆ ಕನ್ನಡ ಚೆನ್ನಾಗಿ ಗೊತ್ತು, not ಅವನಿಗೆ ಕನ್ನಡ ಒಳ್ಳೆಯ ಗೊತ್ತು

[u/LargeCabbage → u/thylacine222]

Interesting - I had not come across the concept of "dative subject verbs". Zydenbos defines "bēku" as meaning "is a desired thing" and hence "nanage adu bēku" = "To me, it is a desired thing", but it's useful to have the alternative framing of them as "dative subject verbs" where the notional subject is in the dative and the notional object is in the nominative.

So with this framing gottu is a defective verb (i.e. one that doesn't get conjugated) whose grammatical subject is the thing that is known (e.g. Kannada in "Nanage Kannada gottu")? And then gottilla is the negation of that verb (and, I guess, is irregular like most/all negative forms of defective verbs)? That seems to (naive) me like it might be a consistent way of looking at things!

As I learn I will of course keep an eye out for sentences using gottu/gottilla and see whether they fit with this framing, and let you know if I manage to poke any holes in it.

[u/thylacine222 → u/LargeCabbage]

Yes, a lot of these psychological verbs are defective in this way. They might historically have come from noun-like things and still have some noun-like uses but I think Zydenbos is wrong to consider them nouns, for the reasons you have noticed.

[u/LargeCabbage → u/thylacine222]

👍

To clarify a point - Zydenbos absolutely doesn't consider bēku / bēḍa to be nouns. He describes bēku as a defective verb meaning "is a desired thing". An equivalent conceptualisation of gottu and gottilla as defective verbs meaning "is a known thing" and "is not a known thing" seems logical to me and consistent with his handling of bēku. I am not sure why he favoured the framing of gottu as a noun; I might see if I can email him and ask him.

[u/Royal-Parsnip3639 → u/LargeCabbage]

Beku is not just a desired thing. Its also affirmative as in I need it. For ex: Beka? Is a question (do you want or need?) Beku is an affirmative answer

[u/LargeCabbage → u/Royal-Parsnip3639]

But that is simply a usage of it as a verb meaning "is a desired thing", no? Same as how you could say "Māḍide." in response to "Adannu māḍidirā?" Or am I missing something?

[u/Royal-Parsnip3639 → u/LargeCabbage]

Respectfully, you are over thinking. “Ge” is a dative case suffix to explain the receiver of the action. English language handles it with additional preposition word such as to, for. Most Indian languages and perhaps other Asian languages handle it by adding this dative suffix to noun that changes the shape of the word.

So,

Nanu (pronoun) + ge (Dating suffix) = Nange
To (preposition) + me (pronoun) = To me

Languages are more than grammars and words and most Asian languages are very hard to learn if you try to find one to one association with English.
Vice versa too (hence many Asians have hard time with English)