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Concerning My Signature...

From:David Peterson <digitalscream@...>
Date:Monday, September 2, 2002, 21:01
    So, I have this language called Zhyler [Zyler], which I posted on awhile
back.  It was influenced by Turkish, in that it's got lots of vowel harmony
and heavy suffixing, but it also has a large noun class system, and some
strange stuff that came from me.
    One of the things that developed naturally was double (or even triple)
case marking.  Here's what I mean:

1.) usTaz sajka.  /dining room(xi)-inessive die-PRES.-(i)/  "He dies in the
dining room."  (I don't know why I thought of this sentence.  Somet things to
note: the Roman numerals denote noun classes.  Class xi is places, and class
i is untitled humans.  You put the class marker in subject position in the
verb to denote the third person, since there are no third person pronouns or
forms.)

2.) pettir sajaska.  /king(v)-accusative die-causative-PRES.-(i)/  "He kills
the king."  (The causative is either /-Ms/, /-as/, /-us/ or /-os/ depending
on the preceding vowel.  Class v is titled humans.)

3.) sajastMr pettirez sajasasum.  /assassin(v)-ACC. king(v)-ACC.-ACC.
die-CAUS.-CAUS.-PRES.-1p.sg./  "I hire the assassin to kill the king."  (Now,
I could've maybe thrown a dative on "the king" in this sentence, but why?  I
like it the way it is.  The king is a direct object, but not so much of a
direct object as the assassin, so he gets two.  This works out rather
conviently since there's a rule in my language that the sequence /rVr/ >
[rVz], just like /lVl/ > [lVn].  So since the accusative marker is /-r/, it
comes out looking not weird.)

    Anyway, so that's one example.  You can pile any old cases you want on
there, though: accusative and genetive, accusative and dative, evening like
inessive and exlative...  I can think of situations.
    Anyway, so I came to this problem.  My sig below is "You can celebrate
anything you want" from the Beatles' "Dig a Pony".  When you break this
sentence down, it's really something like "You can celebrate anything that
you want to celebrate", with a COMP phrase.   So I was trying to figure out
how to do this, and I came up with three solutions:

1.) The most boring and straightforward: Write the sentence "You wish to
celebrate anything" with an "irrealis/conditional" marker, then append the
sentence "You can celebrate it".  It does the job, but it's boring and
long-winded.

2.) What I wanted to do: Since I've got double-case marking, I wanted to make
use of it.  I was thinking of putting a double accusative on "anything", and
then putting the verbs next to each other, so that you'd get
"Anything-ACC.-ACC. you-can-celebrate, you-want-to-celebrate".  Something
like that.  I couldn't get it straight in my mind or on paper at all, so I
abandoned it, and came to the third conclusion.

3.) Compromise (influenced by...Zapotec?  I can't remember the language that
does this, but there is one): Take the sentence "anything you wish to
celebrate" (which is two words--noun and verb), connect them with a
connector, make it into a noun by adding a class suffix (and I see I hadn't
done that; I'll have to fix my sig--I fixed it here now), then add an accu
sative, making the whole idea of "celebrating anything" the object, and then
proceed like a normal sentence, write the verb "You can celebrate".  However,
now that I think about it, that "anything" should be "something", shouldn't
it...?

    Anyway, my question was: Is there any way I can make 2 work?  I'm not
exactly happy with 3, and I can't think of anything to save 2.

-David

"imDeziZejDekp2wilDez ZejDekkinel..."
"You can celebrate anything you want..."
            -John Lennon

Replies

Arthaey Angosii <arthaey@...>
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>