Re: Cases in Banin

>H S Teoh wrote:
>>Lu?s Henrique wrote: [snip]
>>They think Banin nouns flect in tense, and that the
>>"subject" (this is not a concept of theirs, too) of the verb
>>must be past if the verb is past - the other verb arguments
>>do not "agree" with the verb. Take the following: [snip]
>> Does this make any sense?
>Awesome!!! I must say, this is a very very interesting way to >treat nouns.
Thanks...

>So you could think of a noun as the being the one in the past -->so when
you say, using your example, "Ada fell", it's like >you're saying "the Ada
who was in the past, fell" -- i.e., the >Ada who specifically was then,
not now.

This is an interesting idea, also, but I don't think Banin behaves like
this - I fear their nominal tense flections are purely sintatic, not semantical
- see below.

>(...)noun case markings in my conlang are very semantic,
This is an interesting concept, too (the degree in which some language feature
is semantical/sintatical). Looking back to Banin, I believe that their gender
flections are very highly semantic, and indeed can have strange meaning
modulations. Take:

corai (male dog) - cora (female dog)

But they may state explicitly that a "corai" is female:

isu corai ("female male dog")

This would mean that the dog is female, since the adjective isu means exactly
this. In such case, corai means that the dog is tamed.

isu corai - a tamed bitch
isu cora - an untamed bitch
elu cora (literally, "male female dog"...) - an untamed male dog
elu corai - a tamed male dog

If, besides, there is an adjective that states that the dog is tamed, then
the gender opposition would refer to "living animal" (feminine)/"the meat
of this animal" (masculine)...

It seems that there is no way that a gender atribuition could be meaningless
to them.

>I think I'll have one of the descendants from my conlang "pick >up" this
attribute. :-)
>(...)
>and the idea of encoding tense in a noun would not be at all a
>foreign idea to the Ebisedi, the speakers of the conlang.
Of course. It is nice to see how parallel universes can influence each other
in such misterious ways... :-)

Back to nouns tense inflection, I believe it is just sintatical, because
they refer to what they call "contextual" tense of the verb. They say their
verbs have two "layers" of tense, "textual" and "contextual" - that is the
reason their verbal tenses have always a double name:

Neutral (textual) on present (contextual): luazus - falls, uses to fall
Past on present: luazassu - fell
Present on present: luazuci - is falling
Future on present: luassen - will fall

Past on past: luazata - had fallen
etc...

Past on future: luaza - will have fallen
etc...

Perhaps they confuse the tense and aspect categories? They don't seem to
have a hint to the meaning of "aspect".

Luís Henrique



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