Re: DISCUSSION, QUESTION: Verb conjugation by location

On Monday 27 May 2002 13:27, Karapcik, Mike wrote:
>         And so, the $64 question: Does anyone know of any natural languages
> or conlangs in which location is an inherent element in verb conjugations?
> How does this work the language?
        Enamyn does not mark location, but rather direction. The Russian verbs of
motion may be partly responsible for this feature, since I have been quite
taken with their enormous power and flexibility. However, in an effort to
distinguish Enamyn a bit, I've considered several schemes, some of which (to
the best of my knowledge) are not found in Russian. Namely, distinguishing
to/from based on person--to/from me, to/from you, to/from him--with single
affixes. Thus, "I sent him a letter" would be rendered (roughly) as "I to-him
from-me.sent letter."
        The fun with such a system is the range of nuance that it permits. For
instance, it could be conceivable to say "I to-him from-him.sent letter."
That could either mean that I passed on a letter from person B to person A,
or that I returned the letter to person A, context disambiguating.
        I'm still trying to decide what I want to communicate. I like how Russian
has a affix for "up to" or "until" (do-). Some possibilities:
        -to
        -from
        -until
        -through
        -just short of
        -far short of
        -just past
        -far past
        -arriving at
        -departing from

        I'll have to review Russian to mine it for more good ideas. :)
        Oh, yes, and "Describing Morphosyntax" is, IMO, a requirement for any
conlanger. I had a brief exchange of emails with Thomas Payne a couple of
years back, and while I could sense that he found conlanging something of a
baffling phenomenon, he remained polite. :)

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