Re: Telona grammar, part 1

On Sunday, February 3, 2002, at 01:12 , Jim Grossmann wrote:

> But how can a univocal word meaning "apple" function as anything other
> than
> a noun or an adjective/attributive noun?
>
> Conversely, how can univocal words meaning "in," "because of," or "and"
> refer to entities?
I'm not speaking for Jonathan, obviously, but I think loose answers to
these questions could be given. They may or may not satisfy you, but
conlanging is a personal art, after all. :)

For example, if a language had no copula, "apple" could be a verb meaning
"to be an apple". A previous conlang of mine, which never lasted long
enough to get a name, worked ("worked") like this:

     IS-A-GRANNY-SMITH IS-AN-APPLE TASTES IS-GOOD
     "The thing which granny-smiths, which apples, tastes good."

The basic plan was that everything is a predicate root, and complete ideas
were expressed as conjoined (or nested) simple predicates. Any non-simple
sentence would probably risk blowing the rather short stack of a human
mind, but oh well. This was my Lisp Era, as you can probably guess:

     (taste (good (apple (granny-smith))))

I was young and impressionable...


As for the prepositions and conjunctions, they all can be seen (perhaps
tenuously) as aspects of "verbish" and "nounly" meanings:

to: arrive, go to, goal
in: presence, present
because of: cause, fault, result
and: join, conjunction, two, togetherness


> a) Remains poison water.
> b) Water poison remains.
> c) Poison water remains.
> d) Water remains poison.
Great example, btw.


--
Chris : Luddite-technocrat