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Re: Relatives, interrogatives and other such particles

From:Roger Mills <rfmilly@...>
Date:Monday, April 24, 2006, 16:19
Peter Bleackley wrote:
> > >I'm considering an approach for my new language where the > >indefinite particle acts as an interrogative in question sentences. > >A yes/no question just has "ftu" before the verb; a more > >specific WH-question has "ftu" before the verb and "shti" after the > >questioned element. In non-question sentences, "shti" means > >"some, any". This makes it tricky to ask things like > >"Do you have any cats?" -- the most straightforward way would > >be ambiguous with "Which cats do you have?" This is > >probably too confusing and I may well drop it. Or maybe there > >is an alternate word for "some/any" that is used only in > >questions...? Or a circumlocution like "one or more"? > > How about, > > when shti is used as "some, any" in an interogative sentence, it is > reduplicated, eg > > ftu have cat shti? Which cat do you have? > ftu have cat shtishti? Do you have any cats? > > shtishti might then be phonologically reduced in some mannner, eg > ftu have cat shtiss? >
Now that I think of it, another way would be to differentiate the two uses with stress-- "which" sense is stressed, "any" sense unstressed ("cat" would be stressed in that case). In a declarative sentence, the "any" sense would be default, of course, since "which" wouldn't make sense-- "I don't have any cats" A problem might arise in the situation where one is expressing surprise-- "Do you have _any_ cheese(cats/money, etc)?"-- that might call for the reduplicated form. The some/any distinction has yet to be worked out satisfactorily in Kash..... On the general question, it's possible that Malay/Indonesian fits here, though with difficulty-- apa 'what?' -- apa-apa 'something', apa-apa saja 'anything at all' (apa is also the marker for yes-no questions) siapa 'who?' -- siapa saja 'anyone' (saja means 'just, only'); and the legalistic _barang siapa_ 'whoever' mana 'which' has no such uses, AFAIK-- but it's odd that it's the formant in directionals kemana 'to where?', dimana 'at where?', darimana 'from where?'