Re: Phenomena

On Thu, 2 Mar 2000, Barry Garcia wrote:

> I dont know a better term for this, but how do you all say things like
> "it's raining" or "it's dripping" without an actual specified agent to do
> that action?
Valdyan has an impersonal construction just for that sort of thing:

lea daysenat      "it's raining"
Imp rain-3s-PRS

The pronoun used (designated by "Imp") is nominally the third person
singular common-gender pronoun ("he/she", "singular they"), that's
also used for people whose gender is unknown or unimportant: "when
the doctor comes, tell him/her..."

For more information:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt/irina/valdyas/taal/grammar/verbs_overview.html

(our own domain is temporarily down because our &^%@$# cable ISP changed
our IP address without warning, grrr)

> In Saalangal I couldnt figure out a satisfactory way to do it with just
> what I had with the verbs, so I added an infix (-re) to express this.
> (regular forms in parentheses):
Nice!

> it was raining - iiresáw'an (iisáwan)
Would "iisáwan" with a subject mean "<whoever> was raining"?

   Irina

--
           Varsinen an laynynay, saraz no arlet rastynay.
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