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Re: going without "without"

From:John Cowan <cowan@...>
Date:Tuesday, August 17, 1999, 15:13
Matt Pearson wrote:

> The comitative case (marked by the suffix "-a" or "-ia" on the > noun) is used to indicate a participant who is accompanying > another participant in an action, or an instrument which is > aiding in the performance of an action. For example:
Sounds good.
> A second option would be to express "without" by negating > the noun phrase in the comitative case, thusly: > > Na luiha tun ypena ietoti > the.Erg old.woman Neg stick-Com walk-Neg > "The woman doesn't walk with a stick" > "It's not with a stick that the woman walks" > > However, this seems to convey the wrong meaning: The sentence > seems to imply that the woman walks with SOMETHING, but that > this something happens not to be a stick. (My instinct is that > "without" means something slightly different from "with" + "not", > or "not" + "with"... Is that right?)
It's a matter of scope of negation. You might want to read (in lieu of plowing through all of Horn's _Natural History of Negation_) the negation chapter in the Lojban grammar, which pretty clearly lays out the issues.
> The only other thing I've been able to think of is to express > "without" periphrastically, using a noun or a verb. For instance: > > Na luiha eta itak kloha ypen > the.Erg old.woman walk the.Com lack-Com stick > lit. "The old woman walks with the lack of a stick"
I like this one.
> Anybody know how such languages express "without"? How do > people express "without" in their conlangs?
In Lojban it's a predicate: x1 lacks x2. -- John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis um dies! / Schliesst euer Aug vor heiliger Schau, Denn er genoss vom Honig-Tau / Und trank die Milch vom Paradies. -- Coleridge / Politzer