Bi-objective Prepositions & betweeness.
From: | Caleb Hines <cph9fa@...> |
Date: | Friday, January 2, 2004, 15:35 |
> Like a flower
> Born again
> Each morning
> Between the sky
> And the sea
> Oh my country!
As I was thinking about translating that into Akathanu, I realized
something which I find to be rather odd. While most prepositions take a
single object ('to the car', 'from him', 'for you', 'of me', etc...),
'between' apparently can take _two_ objects ('between X and Y'). Of course,
it can also take one (plural) object ('between the houses'). It seems very
odd to me that this preposition can have two objects, while most only have
one.
Akathanu (an agglutinating lang) normally treats prep. phrases as a single
word, so for example:
'busahua' /bu.sA.wA/
= 'bu'+'sahua' = above + water = Above the water.
I'm not sure how to translate "between+X+and+Y" though, because I only want
one main noun per word. For the moment, I'm using "below+X, above+Y" but
this isn't universally applicable (*"below a rock, above a hard place"?).
What I'll probably do is repeat the conjunction twice: "between+X,
between+Y".
Anyone have any insights on this technique, know a better way to do it, or
know of other prepositions that behave like this ('amongst' would probably
be one). Also, are there any natlangs that might have a funny way to
express 'between-ness'.
Thanks,
~Caleb
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