Re: Adjectives, Particles, and This ( etc ), and Conjunctions...

Marcus Smith wrote:

>H. S. Teoh wrote:
>
>>On Mon, Jan 15, 2001 at 09:01:54PM -0500, Steg Belsky wrote:
>>
>> > you could have any number of distinctions ~ this/that; este/ese/aquel,
>> >
>> > _dhaz_ is only used for something immediately at hand.
>>
>>Or like Greek, which has *three* demonstratives: (1) _hode'_, which
>>corresponds to your _dhaz_; (2) _hou^tos_, which is somewhere between the
>>English "this" and "that"; (3) _ekei^nos_, which is "that".
>
>Some languages distinguish between currently visible or not instead of
>distance.
Ray wrote:

>Or like Latin which has (1) _hic_ corresponding to _dhaz_; (2) _is_ used
>much like Greek _houtos_ (or French _ce_, _cette_ etc); (3) _iste_ which is
>'that [near the person address, connecting with or pertaining to the person
>addressed (whether in speech or writing)]'; (3) _ille_ = 'that [remote in
>space or time from speaker and addressee]'
>
Then the full set of demonstratives would be:

- what is near
        - what is near me
        - what is near thou
    - what is within reach
        - what is within reach of me
        - what is within reach of thou
    - what is in sight
        - what is in sight of me
        - what is in sight of thou
- what is far
    - what is far from me
    - what is far from thou

Any other suggestions and corrections?

BTW, how it should be from etymologic point of view? We have these pronouns
and articles:
- Eng. this
- PIE tod, Eng. that, Germ. das, Sl. to
- Greek _hode'_
- Greek _hou^tos_
- Greek _ekei^nos_
- Latin _hic_
- Latin _is_, Espan. eso
- Latin _iste_, Espan. esto
- Latin _ille_, It. lo, Espan. lo, ello, Fr. le
- Arab. al-
- Espan. aquel,
- French _ce_, _cette_ etc
- Sl. so
- Eng. such
- Eng. it, Germ. es
- Sl. jo
- Sl. ono
------------------------------

>David Crystal defines 'particle' thus in his "A Dictionary of Linguistics
>and Phonetics":
>"particle (1) A term used in GRAMMATICAL description to refer to an
>INVARIABLE ITEM with grammatical FUNCTION, especially one which does not
>readily fit into a standard classification of PARTS OF SPEECH; often
>abbbreviated a _PRT_ or _part_.  In English, for example, the marker of the
>INFINITIVE, _to_, is often called a particle because, despite its surface
>similarity to a PREPOSITION, it really has nothing in common with it.
Why "nothing in common"? Compare:

I am going to the bedroom. (preposition)
I am going to sleep. (particle)

The function of "to" is essentially equal in both cases. The infinive with
"to" IMHO has the same meaning as dative (allative, illative) of abstract
noun derived from verb.
Instead of "to sleep" we could say "to the sleeping state".

>>= PARTICLES =====================================================
>>
>>Could someone give me an example a langauge without particles?
>
>Nope - I can't think of any.
For example my native language, Czech (and other Slavonic languages).

>>I don't know if I HAVE TO have them, for if not, I don't want them.
>
>I guess
>your language will have quite a few invariable words and my guess is that
>they will not all fall neatly in the traditional 'parts of speech'.
Unless it will be agglutinative or flexive language
and these morphemes will be attached to another word.

>>What uses do particles have?
>
>Many and various - and the pesky things have a habit of being among the
>most useful little words in any language  :)
Essentially, particles are prefixes that are not fixed.

        Pavel A. da Mek