Re: Phenomena

At 21:00 02/03/00 -0300, you wrote:
>Barry Garcia <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?
>
>
>Impersonal sentences, I think they're called. In Draseléq
>I do the same as in Spanish -- a verb in the third person
>singular, with no subject. (What does one do in French,
>use _il_?).
>
Exactly! We say 'il pleut', quite the same constructions as in English
(languages with mandatory subject, even a dummy one, I call them).

>I can think of several possibilities for "it's raining":
>
>- Do as Tagalog does (since it's kind of a model for
>  trigger languages, and Saalángal in particular, I
>  guess). What does it do?
Yes! Can anyone tell us what Tagalog do? I wonder how to do that in
Itakian, and it's a trigger language (at least for affirmative sentences ;) ).

                                                Christophe Grandsire
                                                |Sela Jemufan Atlinan C.G.

"Reality is just another point of view."

homepage : http://rainbow.conlang.org
(ou : http://www.bde.espci.fr/homepages/Christophe.Grandsire/index.html)