Re: A question and introduction

On Thu, Jun 13, 2002 at 12:12:46PM -0400, Andy Canivet wrote:
> >different aspects of motion. (Did I put that right, H.S.?)
Well, it's not quite physical motion per se, but thinking of it that way
certainly helps to understand how it works :-)

> > Besides, apart from the usual singular and plural, Ebisedian also has
> > a "nullar".
[snip]
> Nullar?  Is that like a "grammaticisation" for situations where the object
> is not present - e.g. if I said "cow" or "cows" then in Ebisedian there
> would be an inflection for "no cow(s)"?
[snip]

That's right. The nullar number of a noun indicates its absence.

For example, the sentence "I don't see a house" would be translated as:
        ebu' fww't3 my'julir.

ebu'     - receptive 1st person pronoun
fww't3   - physical verb, "to see"
my'julir - nullar form of _juli'r_, "house".

So literally, this reads "I see no-house."

Another example:
1) ekaa's3    juli'r.
   (singular)
   "Ekasi (masc. name) is in the house."

2) emy'kasi juli'r.
   (nullar)
   "Ekasi is not in the house."

The prefix e- is the masculine proper name prefix, which you could think
of as "Mr.". So, (1) can be read as "Mr. Ekasi is in the house", and (2)
can be read as "Mr. no-Ekasi is in the house."


T

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