Re: Implied prepositions

This is like Old Irish:

 con-imthet  "to accompany"
 con- "with"
 imm- "around, among"
 -teit "go"  (with unstressed dependent form -tet,
with lenition after imm-: -thet)

 as-lui "to escape"
 as- "away, out, from"
 -lui "to move"

 do-cich "to advance"
 do- "to"
 -cichid (with stressed dependent form -cich)"to step"

 fo-loing "to suffer"
 fo- "under"
 -loingid (with stressed dependent form -loing), this
means "eat" or "banish", not sure how this compound
got its meaning.

This sort of conjugation makes really weird forms:

 foloing "he suffers"
 ni fulaing "he doesn't suffer"

 folil "he will suffer"
 ni foel "he will not suffer"

 folelacht "he suffered"
 ni foelacht "he did not suffer"

 focoemlacht "he has suffered"
 ni focoemlacht "he has not suffer"


 -elliot



--- Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...> wrote:

> 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
>

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