Re: TRANS: Happiness (& a question for Christophe)

En réponse à Yoon Ha Lee <yl112@...>:

> On Friday, October 26, 2001, at 05:02 , Henrik Theiling wrote:
>
> (Christophe, a question for you or other native French speakers is
> buried
> under "yna," below...)
>
Nice to feel needed :)) .

>
> yna:
> - could be used as "who?"
> - to address someone you're not familiar with (but not quite as
> obviously
>    rude as "hey, you over there...")
> - to refer to "peripheral" objects or events that come up in the course
> of
> the
>    conversation
> - to refer to people who aren't present (mostly equivalent to 3rd
> person,
> but
>    if you're giving generic directions, say in a cookbook or something,
> it
> might
>    be translated as a 2nd person--I think of this as similar to the
> French
> use
>    of the infinitive-as-imperative, if I remember
> correctly--Christophe?)
>
I think so. We also use it in warning panels ("ne pas fumer": no smoking*).
It's the normal way to mark written "advice" (written imperative forms look
much too familiar).

*Funny offtopic note: in French, "smoking" means: "tuxedo", so imagine the
surprise of a French man knowing no English and seeing the panel "no smoking"
on a wall :)) .

> na (the non-generic form):
> - to address someone you know
> - often to address people who are present
> - to refer to people who aren't present but who are the focus of
> conversation,
>    or about whom the speaker feels/thinks strongly
> - to give directions to specific people
>
> I know, it's horrendously fuzzy, but in a lot of ways this is a fuzzy
> sorta language.
>
My Astou also has a strange system of personal pronouns. It doesn't make the
difference between 1st, 2nd and 3rd person, but between "I", "non-I" and "non-
person", at least in singular. "non-I" can be both 2nd or 3rd person, as well
as "non-person". But the first one seems to refer to something/somebody
relevant to the discussion, while "non-person" doesn't necessarily. Still, I
don't know much about the difference. Astou is a dead language (even in its
history :)) ) like Latin and Sanskrit, and thus it's study depends on the
written materials about it. And they are not very numerous unfortunately.

> to guide the semantics.  Hence, for <ferun> it becomes
> ! invent, create
> ? search, quest
> . find, discovery
>
I like the semantic derivations it makes.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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