Re: Implied prepositions

I like this idea, Gary.  Teonaht has something of this plan with a few
verbs.  But I rather like its baroque deictic verbs!  It does get bogged
down, though, with give/send/go, etc., so I might adopt something like this.

For syntax, though, any of the suggestions you've made below might work.

Sally

----- Original Message -----
From: "Gary Shannon" <fiziwig@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Wednesday, July 19, 2006 3:46 PM
Subject: Implied prepositions


> 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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