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Re: Neither here nor there.

From:Robert Hailman <robert@...>
Date:Saturday, June 2, 2001, 2:00
"H. S. Teoh" wrote:
> > On Fri, Jun 01, 2001 at 12:19:52PM -0700, jesse stephen bangs wrote: > > bjm10@CORNELL.EDU sikayal: > > > > > When puzzling over Praxian article endings (indefinite, definite, and > > > demonstrative), for the life of me, I could not figure out just HOW they > > > differentiated between local demonstrative "this thing" and distant > > > demonstrative "that thing"--then it hit me. Praxian does not distinguish > > > between local and distant! > > > > This is actually attested in real languages. Ancient Greek had one word > > "entautha" meaning "here" or "there," and words "erkhomai" and "eimi" > > meaning "to come" or "to go." And they weren't even nomadic ;-). > [snip] > > My conlang also has a single verb of motion that can mean either "come" or > "go", or even both. For example: > muu'j0 lyy's eb3' loo'ru > village(org) go/come I(cvy) countryside(rcp) > > This can be translated either as "I went out of the village into the > countryside", or as "I came out from the village into the countryside" > depending on where the listener is when he hears this. The verb here is, > in fact, acting as both "come" and "go". :-)
My conlang has this too, working in much the same way. I had the idea a while back for a general motion verb, that, as the name suggests, would encompass a very wide range of motions - "walk", "run", "stop", "wait", "come", "go", etc. - depending on the context it's used. One of my friends gave me the inspiration for this, he sometimes uses the English verb "tarry" in the same sense, albeit with a smaller range of meaning. He is aware of the "proper" meaning, also. -- Robert

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H. S. Teoh <hsteoh@...>