Re: Bi-objective Prepositions & betweeness.

--- Caleb Hines <cph9fa@...> wrote:

> > 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.
I'm not sure I quite understand. Any preposition
can take multiple objects: "the gift is from
Marty and me"; "we've got to go to the store and
the library".

> 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.
Can you concatenate the preposition with more
than one noun? How does Akathanu handle the
examples I gave above?

> For the moment, I'm
> using "below+X, above+Y" but
> this isn't universally applicable (*"below a
> rock, above a hard place"?).
How about "to right of rock, to left of hard
place"? "Between" can have any orientation, not
just up and down.

> 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'.
I always like the way Latin, with its freeish
word order can say "Insulam inter templum", i.e.,
'flats between temple' = between the flats and
the temple.

Padraic.


=====
la cieurgeourea provoer mal trasfu ast meiyoer ke 'l andrext ben trasfu.


--

Ill Bethisad --
<http://www.geocities.com/elemtilas/ill_bethisad>


Come visit The World! --
<http://www.geocities.com/hawessos/>







.