Re: "To be" or not "to be"? (was Re: TRANS: something slightly more deep)

* Paul Bennett (paulnkathy@earthlink.net) [000207 00:52]:
> I can understand the lack of 'attributive' or 'essive' "to be" in terms of
> a zero-copula language (and variations thereof), but I'd have thought that
> any language needs a simple non-phrasal way of indicating whether something
> exists or not.  Are there a significant number of natlangs where there is
> no simple way to oppose (for example) "this chair exists" against "this
> chair does not exist"?
AFMCL, the things symbolized by words all implicitly exist; marking that
something doesn't exist is done by prefixing ë- "non, not", saying that
something lacks or is empty is done by prefixing aì- "no, no amount of".

ry bren
this car, this is a car

ry ëbren / ëry bren
this non-car, this isn't a car, not-this is a car
(This would also be used for an illusionary car or imaginary car.)

ry aìbren / aìry bren
this without-car, this is without a car, without this car

And what about double negation? Beats me. Negating a noun-phrase does
not affect an eventual negation of a verb-phrase, well I'm not 100% sure
whether you negate *words* or *phrases* yet... If it was the latter I'd
expect all words in the phrase to be explicitly negated, at least if
following the head, as they agree...


t.