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
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