Re: "the"

On Fri, 3 Mar 2000, Matt Pearson wrote:

> Your "titular article" appears to specify that the referent is not only
> uniquely identifiable, but is in fact unique, a one-of-a-kind entity.
That reminds me of my only "other" conlang, the Thunder Rock speech,
which had (I quote from my earlier message):

  nó - unique singular (the sun, the High Priestess, The Rock)

This is the "unique, one-of-a-kind entity". A word with this suffix
means there's only one of it, or at least only one that matters:

Matsunó "the Matt" (I can't do "gay Canadian", never made much of the
language) - this is either the only Matt in existence, or the
foremost Matt that has no peer. Note that I gave you the infix -su-,
assuming that you're male and human :-)

Ainó "She" - only a feminine specifier and the "article".

  vo - definite singular (the woman)

That is, a specific woman we already know, the woman we've been
talking about, or a woman that we hear more of in the rest of the
discourse.

  o  - indefinite singular (a woman)
  ve - definite plural (the women)
  e  - indefinite plural (women, some women)

This is "women in general" as well as "some unspecified group of
women".

   Irina

--
           Varsinen an laynynay, saraz no arlet rastynay.
irina@valdyas.org (myself) - http://valdyas.conlang.org (Valdyas)
          http://www.valdyas.org/irina/index.html (home)