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Implied prepositions

From:Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...>
Date:Wednesday, July 19, 2006, 19:46
It occured to me that a conlang could almost be made
preposition-free if the verbs absorbed the role
usually played by prepositions. For example, in
English we can say "go into" or we can say "enter"
which has a built-in, or implied prepositional
meaning. Likewise "go out of" can be "exit", or
"leave" and "go after" can be "pursue".

English has a few additional such verbs ("ascend",
"descend", "examine",...), but suppose a conlang had
the associated preposition built in to every verb. The
inventory of verbs would have to be much richer to
accomodate all the various possibilities like "go to",
"go into", "go out of", "go through", "go before (the
judge)", "go after (the thief)", "go around", "go up",
"go down", "go over", and so on.

Perhaps the preopsition could become a prefix to the
verb: "ingo", "outgo", "upgo", "downgo".

There would have to be more than one prefix for some
English preopsitions which can be ambiguous. "At", for
example: "He throws rocks at the park." could mean he
is at the park and throwing rocks (at nothing in
particular), or that he is outside the park throwing
rocks toward the park. But I wonder how much sense it
makes to attach a preposition giving the location of
the action to the verb. It seems like it belongs
attached to the sentence as a whole. "He is throwing
rocks (while at the park)." vs "Rocks, he is
throwing-at the park."

What would be a sensible word order if verbs all
contained implied prepositions? "He gave-to Mary the
book." "The book he gave-to Mary." "He book gave-to
Mary." "Gave-to he book Mary."

Just random ramblings.

--gary

Replies

Larry Sulky <larrysulky@...>
Elliott Lash <erelion12@...>
Damien Perrotin <erwan.arskoul@...>
David J. Peterson <dedalvs@...>
Sally Caves <scaves@...>
Chris Peters <beta_leonis@...>
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>