Re: Grammatical Summary of Kemata

On Thursday 13 December 2001 08:13, Christophe Grandsire wrote:
> En réponse à Rune Haugseng <haugrune@...>:
> > > Optative (though optative is more "I wish to").
> >
> > I thought subjunctive meant "wish" and optative "hope", or the other
> > way around.
>
> No, the subjunctive is more equivalent to "may" as it shows that there's no
> security about the reality of the process. That it's used with "wish" (for
> the little it's left in English) is only due to the fact that when you wish
> something, it normally means that the thing is not there yet, so it's not
> real, and thus you have to use the subjunctive. The optative is the proper
> mood (you find it in Old Greek) for wishes though.
Thanks for clearing that up, then.

> > > Maybe it's just a kind of copula (after all, all copulae don't
> > > need to be verbs, in some languages they are prepositions or
> > > pronouns). If you could use it with other adjectives, it would
> > > be a good indication of that.
> > I don't quite understand what you're saying here: what adjective are
> > you talking about?
>
> "Ankila", the passive participle of "kill". Or is it not an
> adjective?
No, that's just the past tense of ankil, kill. The past active
participle would be ankilta; the sentence might then be something like
"Anerle ahankilta.", but I'm not sure that's completely
grammatical. It could be another way to do passives, though - if I use
"wer" as a grammatical adverb meaning "cause", you could even
distinguish "I killed the animal" from "The animal was killed by me"
as

Ankilavai anerle.
ankil-ha-v-ai aner-le
kill-Pt-1p-M  animal-DSgN

vs.

Tal wervai anerle atankilat.
tal wer-v-ai   aner-le     a-t-ankil-(a)t
was cause-1p-M animal-DSgN 0-O-kill-PAP

You could even use different tenses for the copula and the participle
- could be interesting. I think I'll have to adopt this - thanks for
the (unintentional) idea.

> > I like the term null pronoun; I think I'll steal it. The null pronoun
> > would be used in a sentence like that,
> >
> > Beinuna aberis.
> > beinun-ha   a-beris.
> > man-DSgNNeg 0-red
> > The man isn't red.
> >
> > but I've no idea whether that makes it a copula. I've always
> > thought of it as a normal sentence with some form of "dal" left out at
> > the beginning.
>
> That's also possible. But considering the null pronoun as a copula too
> seems to fit nicely, isn't it? At least, it could be analysed this way.
> This doesn't mean that it has to be true :))) (I like making con-analyses
> of my languages by invented linguists in the worlds where they are spoken,
> but I even like them more when they are inaccurate :))) ).
I suppose it could be analysed like that - perhaps this could be a
dialectal or colloquial variation, with the null pronouns (and
proverb) taking over the function of the verb "dal".


-------------
Rune Haugseng

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