Re: Linguistic term for ease of changing word-class (was: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)
| From: | Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> |
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| Date: | Monday, August 18, 2008, 22:42 |
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The conflict is actually a civil war between secessionist star systems
and the Galactic Republic. The secessionists use robot soldiers
(battle droids), which have been outlawed by the Republic. But the
Republic has no standing army, either; the closest thing to a military
force is the small order of Jedi peacekeepers. So they turn to clone
soldiers (commanded by the Jedi).
Not sure how their ethical system works if battle droids are bad but
cloning soldiers is a-ok. I guess the idea is that robot soldiers
take away the deterrent factor of the horror of war (see also Eminiar
Seven). But since at least some droids are clearly sentient in the
Star Wars universe, I'm not sure the argument holds. Esp if there's a
risk that folks will treat the clones as throwaway cannon fodder, no
more "real people" than the droids. Though that doesn't seem to be
the case in the films.
Anyway, so the clone wars weren't *about* the clones, theoretically.
In actuality, of course, Palpatine/Sidious engineered the
seccessions to provide him an excuse to acquire the clone army, which
he then uses to sieze power in a military coup. So in that sense they
were the whole point of the conflict. But the name "clone wars" was
applied before that was revealed.
On 8/18/08, Jim Henry <jimhenry1973@...> wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 4:31 PM, Lars Finsen <lars.finsen@...> wrote:
>
>> You mean, you need to express whether the wars are against clones, between
>> clones, concerning clones, including clones or whatever?
>
> Yes, exactly.
>
>> Maybe a point worth considering for naturalistic artlangs as well. But no
>> natlang or naturalistic artlang will have much trouble expressing the
>> above,
>> with prepositions and/or case-endings. In Urianian, zirgi klonet = wars
>> against clones, with an accusative plural, zirgi klonan = wars between/of
>> clones, with the genitive plural, zirgi klonant = wars concerning/for
>> clones, with a dative plural, and zirgi klonit = wars including/with
>> clones,
>> with an instrumental plural.
>
> Cool.
>
> I think the relationship here is pretty much instrumental, but I haven't
> seen episodes I-III recently or often (maybe I've deliberately blocked
> things out :) and this latest movie dives in in media res without
> going into the causes of the war. It could be the use of clones
> is one of the issues the war is being fought over, but I don't
> remember for sure. I think the semantic relationship here
> is more like what we see in English "trench warfare", "nuclear
> warfare" etc. -- the war is named for its unusual feature of
> being fought with clone soldiers.
>
> --
> Jim Henry
>
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
>