Re: Nouns with arguments, verbs without arguments

Oops! This mail was unintentionally sent to Iain only. I send it again now so
that the whole list can benefit from it :)) .
_____________________________________________________________________________
En réponse à "Iain E. Davis" <feaelin@...>:

>
> Interesting.  To use a morbid example, If I'm walking down a street and
> find
> some random body part, I couldn't say:
>
> I found a leg in the street today.
>         ^^^^^
> I'd have to say something like:
>
> I found someone's leg in the stree today.
>         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> Correct?
>
Exactly!

Although the details vary from language to language as for how to do when we
don't want to precise or don't know who the possessor of the mandatory
possessed noun is. Chasmäöcho uses the third person plural possessor for that.
Some other language may use indeed a form meaning "someone's". Other languages
have actually two different nouns: one which is mandatorily possessed, and
another which is used only when the possessor is unknown (those nouns needn't
be etymologically related!!!). Like everything in language, there are plenty of
different strategies to obtain the same result :)) .

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

It takes a straight mind to create a twisted conlang.