Re: New lang (got bored)

On Tue, 15 Feb 2000, Raymond Brown wrote:

> At 9:28 pm -0800 14/2/00, Keolah Kedaire wrote:
> >On Mon, 14 Feb 2000, Roger Mills wrote:
> >
> >> In a message dated 2/14/2000 2:03:38 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> >> keolah@APN.DHS.ORG writes:
> >>
> >> << Here's one sentence, written three ways..
> >> (1) azaru ka nu zari na mibi - "Sing a song did the gnome"
> >> (2) azari vu zaru ka na mibi - "The song is sung by the gnome"
> >> (3) amibi va zaru ka nu zari - "The gnome sings a song"
> >>
> >>  zar - root for 'sing'
> >>  mib - root for 'gnome'
> >>  ka - present tense
> >>  na - this noun is performing the action
> >>  nu - the action is performed upon this noun
> >>  va - the noun performs this action
> >>  vu - this action is performed upon the noun >>
> >>
> >> Very interesting.  It seems to be a variant of a "trigger system" that
> >>others
> >> have been discussing (I tend to call this "focus system" but the terms seem
> >> equivalent).  So would it be correct that (1) is the neutral, unmarked word
> >> order? (2) shows focus on "song" object focus, or passive in English terms?,
> >> and (3) shows agent/actor focus?
>
> Sorry - I'm confused.
>
> I thought - tho I may be wrong - that trigger systems were to do with
> fronting the 'topic' (or 'theme') as in, e.g. Japanese, Samoan and, closer
> to home, German.  The English passive is surely an example of
> topicalization, not focus.
I don't know what it is myself, I've never studied linguistics, it just
struck me as something to try.

> Welsh is a focus fronting language; but such languages seem to be much less
> common than topic fronting ones.
Don't know anything about Welsh. What's it like?

> Of course from Keolah's three sentences taken out of context, it's not
> possible to tell whether we have focus fronting or topic fronting.  But the
> English translations suggested the latter to me.
>
> >Hmm, not sure what you mean about (1),
>
> The 'normal' sentence order when there is no marked emphasis upon either
> topic and/or focus.
I wouldn't call any of them more normal than the rest. If anything, it is
more common to begin with a noun unless the verb is somehow more
important (and it is more versitile)

> [snip]
>
> >Now, if a noun is the focus, it can have a string of verbs after it
> >listing any actions it is performing and being performed on it, and
>
> [snip]
>
> Sounds more like topic + comment (theme + rheme) to me - not focussing.
>
> [...]
> >they are doing or being done to them. Even then it could get confusing...
>
> Yep  :)
>
> >eg. amibi ka va zaru vu saku - "The gnome sings and gets shot" ;)
(note: this should have been: amibi va zaru ka vu saku ka)

> Surely topic and comment.
Perhaps, but I don't really understand it myself. What's the difference?
What if it is neither?

Okay, here's something else I was toying with with it:
akali va penu ka nu atana ke na kiri zai itana ke na kiri
"God said, Let there be light, and there was light"

kal - root for god (that kal sure gets around, it was originally Zarhain
meaning "silver-blue light" refering to the light of the blue star
Shazmar, and was adopted into Rivertongue meaning "the light of God" and
hence "God" and was re-borrowed into Zarhain to mean the Christian God.
pen - root for say
tan - actually the root for person, but as a verb it means 'to be alive'
kir - root for light
zai - imperative
i- - what follows resulted from the previous statement

note: i'm confused, and still trying to work things out, so this might not
be entirely correct.

-- Keolah the Seeker --