Re: Opinions wanted: person of vocative

On Tue, Jul 01, 2003 at 11:42:59AM -0400, John Leland wrote:
> Strictly speaking, Rihana-ye does not have a vocative as such,
Well, there's no requirement that the language have a vocative *case* -
Methkaeki has no such thing.  I just meant vocative in the sense of
"noun of direct address".

> It does have status prefixes--ti-before higher status and ni- before lower
> status, which I have considered using in translations where the original
> has a vocative. E.g. in the rabbit poem "oh rabbit" I considered translating
> as "titejoba" where tejoba is rabbit and "ti" is the higher-status prefix,
> --since Rihana-ye is supposed (in some respects) to be like Japanese, one
> might translate it as "Honorable Rabbit."
Would one really use the higher-status prefix when addressing a rabbit,
though?  That seems odd.

> I have not translated the Lord's Prayer into Rihana-ye (as unlike Natece it
> has no conculture links to Christianity)
Well, neither does Methkaeki; just thought it would make a good
translation exercise.

> As for the following phrase "which art/who is in
> heaven, I would probably make that the equivalent of a participle phrase
> preceeding the expression "father", as is done in the Korean prayer, which
> literally begins "Heaven-dwelling father..." so the Rihana-ye would be
> Ta-me fo-mi (heaven-in living)Tivaba .....
Well, that certainly works. :)

> I did translate the Lord's Prayer into Natece years ago. There is no
> vocative or similar distinction there, and the language (especially by the
> time of the heavy Anglo-Christian influence which produced the prayer)
> was heavily influenced by English forms, so it began IIRC "Nahata acecen
> cenatec natecenna en Nhatlectecna" literally Father our who live in
> Heaven" One could say the use of cenatec (who) indicates a third-person
> construction, but it is not very well defined given the limitations of the
> language.
Thanks!

-Mark