Re: Grammatical Summary of Kemata

On Wednesday 12 December 2001 03:37, Thomas R. Wier wrote:
> Quoting Yoon Ha Lee <yl112@...>:
> > > The unique articles denote that the noun as a unique specimen of its
> > > kind (or several of them). The unique form of a word sometimes has
> > > an idiomatic meaning, such as "raidole", the house, vs. "Raidoti",
> > > the world, or "nezerne", a lord, vs. "nezerpi", a king.
> >
> > This is just plain, plain cool.  I wish I'd thought of it myself!  :-)
> > I especially like the idiomatic meanings you've cited.  Any other
> > notable ones?
>
> Yeah, I think so too. It would allow you to disambiguate an
> English sentence like:
>
>   (1) Sally would like to marry a Norwegian
>
> In one rendering of this sentence, the NP "a Norwegian" is
> both nonidentifiable and nonreferential (any ol' Norwegian
> will do); in another, nonidentifiable but referential (she
> has a particular Norwegian in mind).  I've been trying to
> think up a way to make this kind of distinction in Phaleran,
> too.
I'm not quite sure I'd even noticed that before - that's definitely a
good use for them.

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Rune Haugseng