Two Ebisedian negatives (Was: Re: New to the List and New Languages)

On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 12:54:54PM +0000, Jan van Steenbergen wrote:
[snip]
> Anyway, by all means start posting about your languages. It's more interesting
> than discussions about the pronuciation of certain phonemes in certain English
> dialects.
Do I smell an opportunity to post something about Ebisedian? ;-)

In Ebisedian, there are two kinds of negatives. One is the negative of
*absence*, the other is the negative of *opposition*.

The negative of absence manifests itself in the nullar number and in the
various adverbial particles. It usually employs the morpheme _my_, which
is cognate with the noun _myy'i_ ["my:?i], "absence". E.g., the nullar
number is marked by, among other things, the nullar prefix _my-_. So you
have _my'julir_ ["mydZulir`], "zero houses", and the adverbial particle
_my'e_ ["my?&] "it is not so that ...". There is also the negative-loaded
interrogative, _my'ne_ ["myn&] "is it so? [leaning towards a 'no']", the
negative subjunctive _myna_ [myna], "if indeed (but probably not)".

The negative of opposition, OTOH, employs the morpheme _khe_ [x&]. It is
cognate with the noun _khe'i_, "opposition" (derivatively, "revolt"), and
occurs in such words as _kheka'ji_, "back of the head" (_kaji'_ is the
word for "head"); khe't3mi, "falsehood", or "word of disagreement/dispute"
(an "anti-word"). The conjunction _khero_ means "on the contrary". The
in-position _okhe'o_ is used for indicating opposites:
        kipii'z3di okhe'o cupii'z3di.
        "The man is opposed to the other man."


T

--
Why can't you just be a nonconformist like everyone else? -- YHL