Re: Random questions about "not" and "and"

On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 3:19 PM, Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...> wrote:
> While parsing some sentences, it occurred to me that the sentence: "The ball is
> not blue." can be interpreted two different ways:
>
> the ball is-not blue.
> the ball is not-blue.
>
> "is-not" can be treated as a verb (or "not" taken as an adverb), or "not-blue" can be
> treated as an adjective.
......

> Which way do your conlangs handle this?
gzb has no copula verb per se, but the state or
comment postposition serves a vaguely similar
function.  And the negator particle always
negates what immediately precedes it.

hyrŋ heŋ ŋĭn-i mâw.
blue not CMT-at ball

hyrŋ ŋĭn-i heŋ mâw.
blue CMT-at not ball

would both be grammatical, but I think the first
one is more assertive: I comment that the ball
is not blue.  The second one means something
more like: I don't say the ball is blue.   I'm
not sure what the pragmatics of that would be,
why you would say that or what the implicature
would be.

> But in the following case, that doesn't work because the two separate commands
> do not convey the intention of the original compound sentence:
>
> "Do not open the cage and let the tiger out."
>
> "Do not open the cage."
> "Let the tiger out."
>
> This implies that "Do not" must be distributed to all the verbs:
>
> "Do not [open the cage and let the tiger out]." =>
> "Do not open the cage."
> "Do not let the tiger out."
Hmm, I'll have to think about how to limit or expand the
scope of the negator across two clauses.  The obvious
way is to require you to repeat the imperative negator
after the main verb of each clause.  Alternatively, I could
have multiple negative particles with different scopes, but
I am disinclined to make a change like that in a language
as stable as gzb.

Or maybe it would help to use a stronger conjunction
than "and"; maybe some equivalent of

"Don't open the cage so that the tiger doesn't get out."
or
"Don't open the cage lest the tiger get out."

kyl-ħĭn ĥy-i jĭlm-ť-zô źǒ, kujm-šar ħĭn jâ-ř źǒ pěnθĭr syrm-ža.
box-unfreedom PAT-at open-2-V.ACT IMP.NEG
purpose-CONJ unfreedom state-from IMP.NEG Pantherinae stripe-having

(Here's an example of the taxonomy we were discussing
elsethread: {pěnθĭr} is the word (just now borrowed) for
cats of subfamily Pantherinae, and "tiger" is described
with said root word plus the adjective {syrm-ža}, having
stipes.   Not sure yet what adjectives will specify lions,
leopards, and jaguars.)

--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/