Re: The McGuffey Project in Minza

Herman Miller wrote:

> 9. The man has a hat.
>    Imera xazhlë terek. [i'mE4a 'xaZl@ 'tE4Ek]
>    i     -mer -a   xazhla-ë   terek-0
>    3s.ERG-have-IPF man   -ERG hat  -ABS
>
>    Ijulha xazhlë terek. [i'juKa 'xaZl@ 'tE4Ek]
>    i     -julh-a   xazhla-ë   terek-0
>    3s.ERG-own -IPF man   -ERG hat  -ABS
And this is already ungrammatical. I cleaned up the noun declensions in
an effort to regularize Minza, and decided that vowel-stem nouns would
take -lë as the ergative suffix. So the ergative of "man" is "xazhlalë".
Furthermore, a more idiomatic way to mark possession is with the
locative case.

xazhla-mu  terek-0
man   -LOC hat  -ABS

"At the man (there is) a hat", i.e., "the man has a hat".

I'm starting to put together a web page on Minza; not much there yet.
I'll eventually add things like the McGuffey translations once I get
enough of them and the grammar starts to stabilize a little.

http://www.io.com/~hmiller/lang/Minza.html

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