Re: "In spite of"

On Wed, Aug 6, 2008 at 10:03 PM, John Quijada <jq_ithkuil@...> wrote:

> I would create a root whose meaning is "something (whose
> existence/state/manifestation is) contrary to expectation."
Hmm.  I have a root word for "expectation" in this sense,
{ĵrĭw}; {ĵrĭw-ja} is "according to expectation", and I suppose
{ĵrĭw-dô} would be "contrary to expectation" (or more exactly
"violating (one's) expectations or presuppositions").
"Something (whose existence/state/manifestation is) contrary
to expectation" would be a noun phrase, {gâ ĵrĭw-dô}.
But I could derive a postposition directly from
the adjective, {ĵrĭw-dô-i}.  That's probably workable, since
this postposition is likely to be relatively rare in the
corpus (seeing as how it took me ten years to get
around to coining it; although, after coining a word for
it a week or so ago for a translation, I've found use
for it two or three times in my journal, oddly enough,
much as one will notice a word being used several times
in the days after one has first learned it).

The meaning I'm after here is a bit more specific
-- I had glossed  {mĭl} as "unexpected noncausation",
but I think I should have said "unepexected non-prevention"
or "non-hindrance".   That is, there's an entity or event
that one would have have expected to prevent some
other entity or event, but which in fact had no significant
effect on it.  It seems to be related to the meanings
of the conjunctions "but, however, although, even though",
etc. -- which all involve a basic "and" conjunctive notion
plus +mirative marking of the preceding or following
clause -- and the particle "even" which Suzette
Haden Elgin writes about with such eloquent consternation.

Yet another possibility is to derive the postposition from
the mindstate root word meaning "surprise": {wlâ-i}.
I'm not sure that would be consistent with the other
semantic patterns in the mindstate area, though.
The only other postpositions I have derived from
mindstate roots so far are e.g. {fâ-i} "for the love of";
by analogy with that, {wlâ-i} would seem to mean
"motivated by surprise at", which doesn't work here.
I'm not sure why it couldn't mean "being surprised
by" which is a closer fit.

http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/gzb/semantic.htm#p21_7578276

Thanks (and thanks to all the people who posted conlang and natlang
examples of words similar in meaning).

--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/conlang/