Re: CHAT: Brainstorming! Relative clauses

I wrote:

>>>>>>
Christophe wrote:
>>>
Irina Rempt-Drijfhout wrote:
>
> On Wed, 6 Oct 1999, Paul Bennett wrote:
>
> > Please ignore what I wrote, and try to forgive me.
>
> Consider yourself forgiven.
>
> >  If anyone's interested in
> > the correct - and FAR easier to understand - versions, let me know.
>
> Of course I'm interested, and somehow I think I'm not the only one
> :-)
>
        Of course you're not the only one, I add my voice. :)
<<<

Well, thank y'all very much!

I'm going home early today (for once) so I may not be able to post them this
evening, but I've done most of the work.  I've sent the required info to myself
at home and I'll try and post from there.  If not, then it'll be some time
tomorrow. (Sorry).
<<<<<<

Well, it turned out to be harder than I thought.  I ended up sending it all
home, puzzling over it without doing much for a couple of hours and sending the
minor adjustments I'd made back to myself at work, where I finished it off
fairly quickly this morning.  Maybe I conlang better at work?

Here's what I ended up with:







The one thing I neglected to take notice of was in the Word Order section
of the Grammar, specifically section (d) under the definition of a "Word".
The whole section is reprinted here, in a form that reflects this
mornings "revelation"...


----->
Affixes and Word Order

Words have a basic structure of

Root+Particle+Flexion+Suffix

where

a. The root may be omitted.  Words that do not contain a root are also
sometimes referred to as "immediate"s, as they have an immediate (i.e.
direct) effect on the semantics of a sentence without "going via a root".
b. Several particles may be used in one word.
c. Flexion indicates the Gender of the root (if it's a noun), or of the
agent of the root (if it's a verb)
d. The relative or subordinate clauses that refer to a word will "break"
the word, and are inserted between the root and the particle.  When this
happens the structure becomes:
Root1+Flexion1 Root2+Particle2+Flexion2 Particle1+Flexion1
If Word1 would normally take no particle, the "neutral particle" of a-
(plus flexion) is used as a kind of "resumptive pronoun".
e. Suffixes are "flat", ie they take no other modifiers, eg "-khe" which
marks the meaning "and".  They always come right at the end of a word.


Particles have a basic structure of

Flexion+Position+Meaning

where

a. Flexion is in agreement with what the Particle refers to, not
necessarily the root of this word.
b. Position shows where in real or conceptual space the meaning takes
place (in relation to the Flexion).
c. Meaning is a syllable such as "ta" (attributive), or "ru"
(locational).
d. Any (or all) of the three parts of a Particle may be omitted if not
required.
<-----

I've also "de-gunked" a lot of the stuff that was cluttering up the nouns.

(I really don't know what got into me last night, I seem to have just been
"bitten by the bug" and charged off in top gear without much forethought.)

This then means that rebuilding the examples from scratch turns out like this...

(The same caveats about my using "incorrect" gender to clarify things still
apply, also all translations are in the present tense.  Verbs in Wenetaic
can take tenses relative to eachother, and the additional information
required is not present in the English forms)

0 is a "semi-empty" Position (see above).  Its usual meaning is "near",
but it's omitted when clear from context, and inserted when required for
euphony (to prevent a word-initial consonant cluster or prevent a word
that consists of a single consonant).

> rel. subject:
> "The dog that saw the cat was large."
kuni.t  kato.r  phithphe.r.yi.t  a.t   makhme.t
dog.g3  cat.g4  see.g4.to.g3     0.g3  be-big.g3

> rel. object:
> "The dog saw the cat that killed the mouse."
kuni.t  kato.r  musi.p    mortu.p.ru.r   a.r   phithphe.r.yi.t
dog.g3  cat.g4  mouse.g5  kill.g4.at.g4  0.g4  see.g4.to.g3

> nested:
> "The dog that saw the cat that killed the mouse that was large drank
> from the river that John put the poison in."
I had to break this down into its component parts to translate it, so
I'll show them here:
1) musip makhmep - the big mouse
2) kator 1 mortupyir ar - the cat that kills 1
3) kunit 2 phithpheryit at 4 phowpheprut - the dog that sees 2 drinks 4
4) purop Yonus patopayis ap - the river that John poisons

kuni.t, kato.r  musi.p    makhme.p   mortu.p.ru.r   a.r   phithphe.r.yi.t
dog.g3  cat.g4  mouse.g5  be-big.g5  kill.g5.at.g4  0.g4  see.g4.to.g3

a.t,  puro.p,   Yonu.s   pato.p.a.yi.s           a.p,  phowphe.p.ru.t
0.g3  river.g5  John.g2  sickness.g5.near.to.g2  0.g5  eat/drink.g5.at.g3


> rel. indirect object:
> "The dog that John gave the ball to."
Technically, this is:
kuni.t  para.t.yi.p    Yonu.s   inri.t.yi.s    a.p   (a.t)
dog.g3  ball.g3.to.g5  John.g2  move.g3.to.g2  0.g5  (0.g3)

Colloqiually, it would be
kuni.t  Yonu.s   para.t.yi.s    (a.t)
dog.g3  John.g2  ball.g3.to.g2  (0.g3)

The (0.g3) would only be included if this phrase was itself part of a Rel. Cl.

> rel. oblique:
> "The mouse that the cat chewed on." or,
musi.p    kato.r  phowphe.p.ru.r      (a.p)
mouse.g5  cat.g4  eat/drink.g5.at.g4  (0.g4)

> "The cat that the dog was bigger than."
kato.r  kuni.t  makhme.r.re.t         (a.r)
cat.g4  dog.g3  be-big.g4.REL-ATT.g3  (0.g4)

REL-ATT marks a relative attribute

> rel. posessor:
> "The dog saw the cat whose teeth were huge."
kuni.t  kato.r  thethni.r.a.ce.p    makhme.ta.p         a.r
dog.g3  cat.g4  teeth.g4.0.COMP.g5  be-big.EMPH-ATT.g5  0.g4

phithphe.yi.t
see.to.g3

EMPH-ATT is the "emphatic attributive"
COMP is the "component genetive", used for "part of" rather than "owned by"











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