Re: The Noli proverb.
| From: | Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...> |
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| Date: | Monday, May 3, 1999, 8:01 |
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At 14:37 30/04/99 -0400, you wrote:
>Ah, more on Notya! I will understand this language yet!
>
>>Pon tjomu mem, yam Nomu wam.
>>/'pon 'domumem, 'yam 'nomuwam/
>>
>> Now a small interlinearization of this sentence, with the followings
>>abreviations:
>>EX: existential form
>>PR: processive form
>>TE: terminal function
>>CO: conjunctive function
>>
>>Pon tjomu mem, yam Nomu wam.
>>other-EX-TE way-PR-CO time-PR-TE, you-PR-TE No-PR-CO refuse-PR-TE.
>
>
>OK, one thing I'm not really clear on yet, in Notya, is how words and phrases
>combine with each other. I've got the idea that a word in conjunctive form
>links together with the following word, and that the grammatical function of
>the phrase is determined by the second word, but by what rule does "pon"
>modify "tjomu"? (Perhaps this is something simple I missed from your first
>post; I don't have it handy while I'm writing this.)
>
It's only the fact that a terminal function (and we say also conjunctive
function, as forms are other things in the grammar of Notya) can have a
determining function, the first word determining here the second one, with
a lexical meaning (in this kind of determination, the meaning of the
following word is narrowed, not the grammatical function of the phrase). I
know that without context, using the same form to end phrases and to make
lexical determinants is often unclear, but context solves much of the
problems. In this case, it is almost obvious that 'pon' couldn't stand
alone (the sentence wouldn't have any meaning), so it had to determine the
following word. Hence 'pon tjo' means "other way, other manner".
It is true that very often, it's difficult to understand how words combine
with each other without context, but Notya was designed so. This language
very much resort to context to disambiguate phrases, and I must confess I
like that :) .
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>