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Implied verbs

From:Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...>
Date:Wednesday, September 20, 2006, 19:59
Do any natlangs make frequent use of implied verbs? I'm playing with an unnamed
sketch that revolves around the idea that prepositions take the form of
suffixes to the nouns they relate to. In general, words would end in a vowel
and suffixes would begin with a vowel. Otherwise, two vowels are never found
side by side, so the presence of adjacent vowels unambiguously marks the
attachment of a suffix.

Now suppose that "forest" is "bali" (I haven't actually begun coining words
yet, so this is just a random example), and that "-oso" means "out of, outward
from", "-anu" means "into, entering", and "-aja" means "within" then "balioso"
would mean "out of the forest", "balianu" would mean into the forest, and
"baliaja" would mean "within the forest". Now supposing "lion" were "ranju",
the sentence "Ranju balioso." ("The lion is coming out of the forest.") would
not require a verb since the action is implied by the prepositional suffix.
Likewise, the sentences "Ranju balianu." and "Ranju baliaja!" ("There is a lion
in the forest!") work well enough without any verb as long as they are implying
a present-tense state of affairs. Past tense could be marked by some word of
relative time, say "ante" for "before the present time". Then "Ranju balioso
ante." ("Lion forest-out-from before-now.") would mean "The lion CAME out of
the forest.", but still without any explicit verb.

Verbs would still exist, and be used in such statements as "I see the lion
coming out of the forest." (Perhaps something like: "Ma seso ranju balioso.")
but a reasonably large percentage of simple sentences would not have any
explicit verb.

--gary

Replies

H. S. Teoh <hsteoh@...>
Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>
Jim Henry <jimhenry1973@...>
Roger Mills <rfmilly@...>
Roger Mills <rfmilly@...>