Re: Speaker Relative Adjectives

The equivalent of that system would be the following:
seng: parent-child relationship
sengkU: someone in the same position in a parent-child relationship.
Therefore in a conversation in which the speaker considers him/herself a
parent, they would refer to Jane's father as Jane-I sengkU.  A child would
refer to someone else's children as a sengkU
sengvIp and senghoch would both mean whatever part of a parent-child
relationship that they do not within context represent.

the major problem with the system is speakers who are in transition or canot
find a point of view from which to speak which would indicate which member of
a binary system  they were, such as, in this example, a person whose children
and parents are both major topics of a dialogue.  there would be large
problems with the word sengkU when referring to others, for example, when
talking about someone else's sengkU, would it be their parent or child?
similar problems arise with senghoch and sengvIp, but in this example they can
sort of be split up so that senghoch would be the speaker's parent and sengvIp
would be the speaker's child (because presumably the speaker's children don't
have children of their own and therefore could only be someone's children.
The whole system is both tentative and prone, and will probably be revised
repeatedly.  Your example was a great help with extension of lines of thought,
thnak you
pacs precs
Joe Mondello

Shaul Vardi writes
>
>  Joe Mondello wrote:
>  >
>  > I have been toying with the idea of putting the following system in my
>  > conconlang: adjectives whose meaning changes based on the traits of the
>  > speaker.  e.g:
>  > wer-age
>  > werkU-in the same age group as the  speaker.  when a  child says 'werkU'
> it
>  > would mean 'young'.  from an adult speaker it would be 'old' or adult,
>  > depending on context.
>  > wervIp-not belonging to the same age group.  again with a child saying
> this it
>  > would mean not young or (usually) old. from someone of middle age this
> term
>  > could refer to all of those who are not middle aged, including children
> and
>  > the elderly
>  > werhoch-the percieved opposite of the trait.  from a child this would
>  > absolutely mean old or perhaps very old.  from someone of middle age,
> however,
>  > the context would have to explain whether the speaker is relatively young
> or
>  > old.
>  >
>  > perhaps this system will not work out as well as I have planned, but I
> also
>  > plan to forbid it in speaker-unknown situations.  does any such system
> already
>  > exist in a natlang?
>  > pacs precs
>  > Joe Mondello
>
>
>  Well, maybe I can mention a kind of related phenomenon from spoken
>  Arabic (I think I mentioned it once before on the list).  It's not an
>  adjective, and it's not quite as generic as your examples.  But maybe it
>  will do:
>
>  In spoken Arabic (I'm familiar with Palestinian, but I believe this
>  phenomenon is general), the expressions "yabba" ("O Dad" - the vocative
>  ya and the word baba = dad), and yamma (the equivalent for "O Mom") are
>  used by *parents* to refer to their children.  The choice is according
>  to the gender of the *speaker*, not the child.
>
>  To illustrate:
>  Ahmad, a father, turns to his 4 year-old daughter and says:
>  yabba, biddik booza? (honey, do you want ice-cream?).
>  - where "honey" is literally "oh father" as explained.
>
>
>  Fatima, a mother, says to her 3 year-old son:
>  yamma, lesh za'alan? (darling, why are you angry?)
>  - where "darling" is literally "oh mother."
>
>  Get the idea?  OK.  But the relevance to your point is that the children
>  in these examples could use the same expressions in their literal
>  sense.  In other words, the 3 year-old son in the second example above
>  could reply:
>  yamma, darabuni! (mom, they hit me!)
>
>
>  Thus the word "yamma" means "my child," when used by a parent talking to
>  their young child of either sex, and "my mother" when used by a child to
>  his/her mother. The gender complication here makes the symmetry
>  imperfect, but I hope you like the example and it encourages you in your
>  fascinating conlanging.
>
>
>          Shaul Vardi
>
>