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Re: Predicate nominals in Piata (Andreas's Law of Freaks strikes again!)

From:Mike Ellis <nihilsum@...>
Date:Sunday, March 9, 2003, 20:50
daniel andreasson wrote:

>Then I thought I could express that as 'It is one cow'. But >how would I do that? There is no copula verb. > >So I thought, what if 'cow' got denominalized to 'to be a cow'? >I created the denominalizer _-chv_ (_v_ is /V/) and suddenly I >had the word _akachv_ 'to be a cow'.
It's been a couple of years since I looked at any Turkish grammar, but I think they do something similar with -tir, which harmonises with the previous vowel. But I may not be remembering that right.
>So I translated the sentence 'My father is a chief'. This came >out as: > >nu -ata fu -chahta-chv >3PAT-father 3PAT-chief -DENOM >'My father is a chief.' > >Literally, this means 'My father, he chiefs/is chiefing.' > >"Now, that's an odd way of expressing this construction," I thought. >"Aren't there any better or more sane ways of expressing it?" I looked >up copular expressions in my copy of "Describing morphosyntax" and >imagine my surprise when EXACTLY THIS CONSTRUCTION is found Bella >Coola. It's even a Native American language! Just like Piata! This >construction seemed so perfect for Piata, and it was even more perfect >than I could imagine. (Actually, it was *exactly* as perfect as I could >imagine. :)
When you say EXACTLY that construction, do you mean right down to the prefixed person/patient? 'Cause that would be quite the anadew.
>One more very weird thing happened to me today, which I have to tell >y'all about in a later mail.
Yeah I've just read that; pretty wild! M

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daniel andreasson <danielandreasson@...>