Re: i'm sure there some wacky technical term for this but i have no idea what it is...

En réponse à nicole dobrowolski <fuzzybluemonkeys@...>:

>
> "i see the monkey"
>
> to thare muhnki dkai keto
>
> to (the) thare (indicates possession sort of like 's in english but
> in this instance a little more complicated) muhnki (monkey) dkai (my)
> keto (vision)
>
> translated literally: "the monkey possesses my vision"
>
> i'm worried however that this could get confusing in a case like:
> "he sees your monkey"  (note: other than "dkai"(my) all possessives
> are denoted by "thare" preceding the word that owns whatever is in
> question)
>
> thare tiot thare muhnki thare sokra keto
>
> thare tiot ("your" with "tiot"=you and "thare" indicating that it is
> possessive) thare muhnki (monkey that is possessing something) thare
> sokra ("his/hers/its" with "sokra"=he/she/it and "thare" indicating
> possession) keto (vision which is what the monkey from a while back
> is supposed to be possessing)
>
> literal translation:"your monkey possesses his vision"
>
> does this make sense?  questions, comments, and suggestions would be
> very welcome...
>
It looks like a great feature to me! (though the repetition of thare is maybe a
problem. It's always like that with grammatical marks of more than one
syllable :(( ) As for making sense, There are languages (Inuktitut? Not sure,
but I'm sure they exist :) ) that mark direct object of the verb with the
genitive case. So it's not that unknown.

As for the way the sentence "he sees your monkey" is rendered, don't be afraid.
Some languages translate verbal sentences like "I go home" like "I (am) to
home" with nominal sentences, so why not with perception (which doesn't sound
very active to me, thus it could very well be thought as a state in your
language, and thus rendered as a nominal sentence). The little booklet I have
about the structure of languages has an extensive discussion about the basic
structure of sentences, and how different languages use different structures
sometimes to render the same idea. If people want, I'll try to make a
translated summary of it to the list. It's quite interesting for sentence
syntax.

Christophe, who really has to think of the translation of "Monkey" in his
languages.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

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