Re: Implied verbs

On 9/20/06, Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...> wrote:
> 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
....

gzb does this kind of thing a lot -- not only for location, but existence
& predication & some simple causatives; but I don't know of any natlangs
that do it.

> "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.
I would expect the postpositionated noun would more likely
precede the noun it modifies, --   I.e. "balioso ranju".
That's the more common pattern if I understand correctly, though
the reverse occurs in some languages.

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