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Re: Grammatical Summary of Kemata

From:Rune Haugseng <haugrune@...>
Date:Wednesday, December 12, 2001, 20:04
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. ------------- Rune Haugseng