Re: cases

On Mon, Dec 02, 2002 at 09:42:14AM +0800, Florian Rivoal wrote:
> >Mmmm. Have you taken a look at Ebisedian's case system yet? If you want
> >something original, that is. I believe Ebisedian's case system is quite
> >unique...
>
> Yes i had a look at it. It thought the system quite interesting. But i
> have one question. When i read it, i feel it can be interpreted, more
> than understood. I mean when I look at one sentence, I think "oh, it
> could mean that", or "this is an intersting way of explaining". But it
> is had for me to realy say i am sure of what you mean. Is it only
> because i am new and unused to this style, or do you consider ebisedian
> to rely heavily on context for a proper understanding?
I think it's because you're not used to the way Ebisedian works. But
perhaps it might be better for Jan or Philip, who have learned some
Ebisedian, to say how they feel, since I'm obviously biased. :-)

Many aspects of Ebisedian does rely on context; but the case system isn't
one of them. The "interesting ways" of explaining why cases are the way
they are, in the tutorial, are simply my effort to describe how Ebisedian
works to someone who is not familiar with it. Once you get used to how
Ebisedian works, I think it isn't very difficult to predict what cases
would be used with what verbs.

In (accusative) languages like English, the subject acts like the focus of
a sentence, and the predicate (verb + object + indirect object(s))
describes what the subject does or what is happening to it. In other
words, the subject is the primary, and the verb and object(s) are
auxilliaries. In Ebisedian, it is the *verb* that acts as the primary
focus; *all* the nouns hang around it as auxilliaries. What is important
in Ebisedian isn't any particular noun (the "subject"), but rather what
*happens* to a set of nouns, or what is the (semantic) role of each noun
relative to the verb.

(Of course, this doesn't cover the stative sentences; but stative
sentences are simply an outcome of the noun cases that must exist in order
for sentences to be unambiguous when the focus is on the verb.)


T

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