Re: Nouns with arguments, verbs without arguments

On Fri, 11 Apr 2003 00:25:36 -0400, Roger Mills <romilly@...> wrote:

>> Note that the English word "of" is untranslated. In itself, this isn't
>> necessarily unexpected; Dutch for instance has "vele soorten gerbils",
>> where English speakers would say "many kinds _of_ gerbils". But in
>Lindiga,
>> with ordinary nouns, "of" would be translated by putting the following
>noun
>> in the genitive case.
>>
>> vesetl michi nako  -t
>> side   east  forest-GEN
>> "the eastern side of the forest"
>
>Presumably because the "side" of X is a more inherent part of X?  Whereas
>"...kinds of X" is simply descriptive?
Well, that's comparing Lindiga with Dutch, but come to think of it, {taevu}
"kind/sort" is probably one of those Lindiga nouns with obligatory
arguments (in contrast, the Tirelat equivalent "sif" doesn't have
obligatory possession).

Lindiga                         Tirelat
nøki taevu-k  ziemi             vahu sif  u   zilva
many kind -PL gerbil-ABS        many kind GEN gerbil

(not:)
*nøki taevu-k  ziemi -k -a      *zilva-dai vahu v   -sif
many  kind -PL gerbil-PL-GEN    gerbil-PL  many 3.PL-kind

--
languages of Azir------> ---<http://www.io.com/~hmiller/lang/index.html>---
hmiller (Herman Miller)   "If all Printers were determin'd not to print any
@io.com  email password: thing till they were sure it would offend no body,
\ "Subject: teamouse" /  there would be very little printed." -Ben Franklin