Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: Subordinate clauses

From:Aaron Grahn <aaron@...>
Date:Tuesday, June 15, 2004, 3:45
Is there a good way to introduce a subordinate clause without a
particle? For instance in

The dog with the man that I saw was green.

the relative clause is introduced with "that". This is probably a bad
example, because English doesn't really distinguish (except by word
order) which one I saw, and which one was with the one that I saw, but
assume I saw a dog, the dog was with a man, and the dog was green.

In German, I think you might say

Der Hund mit dem Mann, den ich gesehen habe, war grün.

The relative pronoun den, being accusative, refers to the accusative
element in "ich habe einen Hund mit einem Mann gesehen" (I saw a dog
with a man), so it refers to the dog, even though the dog appears as
nominative in the actual sentence. Needless to say, this practice
sometimes seems to me confusing.

My current solution, in an agglutinating language (currently called
Auton or Old Auton) with no particles (even pronouns end up with long
case, person, and number suffices) is something like

Dog+NOM man+DAT, animate+NOM+3rd see+1st+PRES-IND, be+3rd+PAST-IND
green+ACC.

Literally "Dog (with) man, (I) saw it, was green". But in this rendering
"it" is accusative.

(The pronoun can be sentient, animate, or inanimate.) (If I put the
pronoun in the dative case, it might translate "the dog that was with
the man that I saw was green".)

So the pronoun simply agrees in case with the element to which it
refers, as that element actually appears in the sentence, rather than
taking its own "natural" case as in German. Is there a reason why this
will not work? A place where it leads to ambiguity?

Input?

Sincerely,
Aaron Grahn

ROMANI
    ITE
DOMUM

Replies

Mark P. Line <mark@...>
Roger Mills <rfmilly@...>
Ph. D. <phild@...>
David Barrow <davidab@...>