Re: Some thoughts on T4 grammar (inspired by HT & HST)

Hi!

Jonathan Knibb <j_knibb@...> writes:
> Thanks to Henrik for a nice, simple set of translation exercises -
> exactly what I needed at this stage. The T4 translations proceed
> along an interestingly parallel path to the S11 ones. (I wonder if
> there’s any significance in the similarity of names between these
> two similar but independent conlangs...? :) )
Interesting that we once found so many similarities in Tyl Sjok
(that's S2, BTW), remember? :-)  Now more parallelism in S11?

>...
> T4 would say:
>
> Ë  ca  Jónë yethi.
> Tg R1k John butcher
>
>...
> S11> John-HEARSAY butcher-be REL 'John the butcher' (apposition)
>
> The R and T markers for this phrase would depend on context, but
> otherwise:
>
>         Jonë yethi
> (R) (T) John butcher
I now see that parallelism with S2: it is embedding its relative
clauses without markers, right.  S2 does exactly the same.  Further,
it's also a binary tree structure, but the structure is generally
unmarked (awful ambiguities arise!), while I do have a preliminary
marking by tone, too.  There are optional particles to do the marking
if the speaker feels it's necessary.

The parallelism between T4 and S11 currently escapes me a bit.
Especially since the main clause structure in S11 is a sequence of
noun-verb phrases linked by SVC, while T4's structure is a neat binary
tree.

**Henrik