Re: here is some stuff i want all of ya'll to look at even though you have better things to do.

Joshua wrote:

<< but i have no idea what a interlinear gloss is so no you acnt have any
untill ifind out what that means or you could always tell me>>

All right, here you are:

This is an example of what you've been posting to the list, using one of
my languages:

Ka kavaka ipe eine i ikavaka i nawa ti feitia.

This is from my language Kamakawi, and it actually means something.
But, if I were to simply post it to the list and say, "This is an example of
my language", everyone would ignore it.   This is because, first of all,
nobody would know what it meant.   Thus, one *might* think that this
would be sufficient:

Ka kavaka ipe eine i ikavaka i nawa ti feitia.
"That woman wrote a letter to a fish with a pencil."

However, it's not.   This is because there's no way to tell which English
word goes with which Kamakawi word.   If you try to line them up,
one to one, you'll discover there's one more English word than there is
Kamakawi words.   Thus, one is at a loss, and this message will be ignored,
just like the first.   This is because the information above is not
informative
enough.   One can take on faith that the English phrase and the Kamakawi
phrase mean the same thing, and were Kamakawi spoken somewhere,
perhaps one could memorize the phrase for future use (well, provided one
knew how they letters above were pronounced).   But, there is no such
place (yet), so one can't really say anything about a post like the above.

One thing one could ask is, "Could you provide an interlinear gloss?"--which,
in fact, is what someone asked you.   An "interlinear gloss" is the line that
goes in between those two lines that tells the reader exactly how the two
lines fit together.   So, here's how a complete gloss of the Kamakawi
sentence
would look:

Ka kavaka ipe eine i ikavaka i nawa ti feitia.
/PAST-NEW.SUBJECT write that woman PREDICATE.MARKER letter BENEFICIARY fish
INSTRUMENTAL pencil/
"That woman wrote a letter to a fish with a pencil."

Let me explain the interlinear gloss above.   First, it's pretty long.
This is because I spelled everything out.   Ordinarily, people can
figure out most of them.   So for PAST I might write PST, and for
PREDICATE.MARKER I might write PRED.MARK., and for
BENEFICIARY I'd write BEN., and for INSTRUMENTAL I'd write
INST.   I would definitely write out NEW.SUBJECT, though, and
perhaps explain it, because no one would be able to figure out
N.S., unless I explained the abbreviation (well, I might write NEW.
SBJ.).

Anyway, now with the interlinear gloss, people can figure out how
the sentence works.   The first word is simply a tense marker that
also has "new subject" written next to it.   Now, seeing just this, someone
might write in, "What do you mean by 'new subject'?"   To that I'd reply
that, "The marker 'ka' is used in the past tense when the subject of the
sentence is new to the discourse.   If the subject were already understood,
then you'd use 'ke' in the past tense."   Then maybe from there someone
might write, "My language does something like that, but it's slightly
different", and they'd go on to explain.   That's how threads get started
on this list.

Anyway, now that there's an interlinear gloss, everyone can see how
the sentence works, and now there are lots of things to talk about.   Next
time you post, try including an interlinear gloss.   If you don't know a
term for something, either make one up, or look it up on the web.   If we
don't understand what it means, someone will ask what it means, or perhaps
supply you with a better term.   Eventually you'll get the hang of it.

-David
*******************************************************************
"sunly eleSkarez ygralleryf ydZZixelje je ox2mejze."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."

-Jim Morrison

http://dedalvs.free.fr/