Re: A question and introduction

>From: "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@...>
>
>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
Wow - took me a minute to wrap my head around it but that sounds very
interesting - I'm so used to negating verbs instead of nouns.

You reminded me of a thought experiment in my Cogsci class:
Bill not being in the room looks exactly the same as a big purple elephant
not being in the room.  We generally tend to think of space as independent
from objects (although this may be, admittedly, a result of our worldview
and heavily reinforced by Cartesian dualism) - the room is the same and is
always the same, regardless of whether it contains Bill, an elephant, or
nothing at all (granted the mystic and physicist in me disagree with this to
a point, but...)

When I say something like "I see no-house," it almost implies that there is
a house shaped hole in the universe, because I see "no-house" and I don't
see "no-elephant"... Similarly, some other object could be implied instead -
although the same argument works in English to a lesser extent.  If I don't
see a cat, then it is possible that I do see a dog - but if I see a no-cat,
it almost implies that I see *something* but it just isn't a cat.  I guess
this is all just implicit in any language anyway, but its interesting in
your example how the normal emphasis has been shifted.

This brings me to another idea - natlang verbs seem (at least to me) to mark
intentionality - an elephant "not-being" in the room somehow implies that
the elephant is doing it intentionally.  Ah... being, not-being, doing,
not-doing... (and especially do or do not with not-trying, LOL)  The fact
that we utter a phrase at all implies that the something we're talking about
exists, even if it doesn't and we need to talk about it not-existing.
Where's Chuang-Tzu to sort this all out when you need him?

My anthropology prof told me about the Warnindilyagwa - a group living on an
island in north-western Australia.  Their particular view of the universe -
the dreamtime (similar to other Australian peoples) - was basically like
looking at the spaces between things.  Indeed, as much as there is a chair
in a room, there is a "no-chair" surrounding it...

This confusing and paradoxical stuff really screws with the Cartesian mind.
Having a nullar numerical noun inflection in your language suggests that
it's speakers must have a *fundamentally* different way of looking at the
world... Cool!

Andy




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