Re: conlang dreams

On Mon, 18 Nov 2002 09:23:00 -0500, John Cowan <jcowan@...>
wrote:

>Amanda Babcock scripsit:
>
>> I think the verb was throne-sitting.  I wanted the thing to be a throne,
>> and it wanted to *sit* on one :)
>
>This sort of reminds me of Voksigid noun generation.  In Voksigid, all
>roots are verbs, and you use a CVC suffix corresponding to a semantic case
>to create a noun meaning "thing which fits in that case of the verb".
>Thus "-tor" is the agent suffix, and "dona-tor" means "giver", because
>"dona" is the verb "give".  (Resemblance to Latin no coincidence.)
>
>The stative verb suffix is "-len", so given that "homo" means "to
>be human" or "to be a person" (I forget which), "homolen" = "a human
>being/a person".  But what does "homotor" mean?  That which plays the
>agentive role in personhood/humanity?
That's an interesting question. I'm hoping to see suggestions, since I'm
currently working on a prospective language where almost everything can
take 2 arguments (as you (=JOhn in this case) might have guessed from my
coverb query). So for conventionally* intransitive words, I have to come up
with a 2nd core case role, and for conventional* ditransitives, decide
which core case to make oblique.

(* My brain is glitching -- I originally wrote "conventual" which turns out
to be an actual word.)

Or maybe the answer will be revealed to me in a dream?

Jeff J

>--
>John Cowan  jcowan@reutershealth.com  www.reutershealth.com
www.ccil.org/~cowan