Re: Implied verbs

On Wed, Sep 20, 2006 at 12:59:43PM -0700, Gary Shannon wrote:
> Do any natlangs make frequent use of implied verbs?
In IE languages, the copula is frequently implied.


> 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.
Yay! Another postpositional language! :-) Tatari Faran also uses
postpositions, although they haven't fused with the noun yet (in fact,
adjectives tend to sit between the noun and the postposition, which may
later on lead to some interesting tail-marking syntax).


[...]
> 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".
Cool, this sounds quite close to what I have in mind for a descendent
lang of Tatari Faran.


> 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.
Not necessarily. It *could* be interpreted to mean "the lion is (the
one which) out from the forest." But of course, should you choose to
express this in another way, then your idea is quite plausible.


> 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.
And who says you can't inflect postpositions for tense? :-)

Hmm, in fact, inflecting postpositions is such a cool idea that I might
try to adopt that in a future conlang. :-)


> 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.
[...]

Sounds interesting, though after a certain point it seems that the
prepositions/postpositions would start taking on verb-like
characteristics, and may start being better analysed as verbs.


T

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