Re: Syntactic Differentiation of Adverbial vs. Adjectival Adpositions

--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Logan Kearsley <chronosurfer@...>
wrote:
>
> Consider the sentence "I ate the fruit on the table."
> In English, this is structurally ambiguous, because the
prepositional
> phrase can apply to the verb or a noun- did I eat fruit which was on
> the table, or did I eat the fruit while I was on the table?
> I think someone mentioned a conlang that has a semantic distinction
> between adverbial and adjectival prepositions; that would be
> interesting to investigate. But what about using different syntax to
> distinguish the two cases? Say, prepositions as noun-modifiers, and
> postpositions as verb-modifiers (or vice-versa)?
>
> Then the case where the fruit was on the table before I ate it would
> be "I ate the fruit on the table", whereas the case where I ate the
> fruit while I was on the table would be "I ate the fruit the table
on"
> / "I the table on ate the fruit".
Word order is very strict in Senjecas.  All modifiers are placed
before
that which they modify.

mus edhleeposyo epi vruugom per eda.
I table on fruit past eat.

This can only mean that the fruit was on the table. But:

edhleeposyo epi mus vruugom per eda.
table on I fruit past eat.

mus vruugom edhleeposyo epi per eda.
I fruit table on past eat.

Both of these mean that I was on the table while eating the fruit.
The first emphasizes that it was I, not someone else, who was on the
table.  The second emphasizes that the eating took place ON the
table, not AT the table.

No ambiguity, at least here, in Senjecas.

Charlie

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