Re: affective pronouns

>
> So it's like English "it" in "it rains", or French
> "ce" in "ce que je veux
> dire...": "what I want to say...", a pronoun
> necessary for grammatical purposes
> (since English verbs have to have a subject, except
> in the imperative mood, and
> French relative pronouns have to have an antecedent
> in the sentence), but
> without meaning by itself.
can't say i was oblivious to these uses ! but yep, the
use here is analogous

> Its use as a case holder
> (in the case of uninflected
> borrowings) is quite interesting. Have you thought
> that you could use the same
> construction by replacing the borrowing with a
> quote? (which, since it features
> more than one word, cannot be easily inflected) It
> would be a neat way to
> introduce some subclauses, like the ones used in
> indirect speech, or some
> circumstantial subclauses (add |tat| in the
> causative case - or if you don't
> have a causative case, just add to it the
> preposition/postposition/affix needed
> to mark cause by nouns - in front of a clause and
> you give it the
> meaning "because"). Well, it's probably a little
> further from what you have
> thought about, but the "meaning" of this pronoun
> makes it a good candidate for
> such a job.
i like that idea. i'd already started using 'tat' as a
relative pronoun :

gnola TNAT shot lhic Bawnc Per golhic rakot
(the woman)-[apposition] (the [tat]) {\I \s/he (was
talking)} IS (his/her mother) \friend-me
The woman I was talking with is my friend's mother
(\ marks the oblique case in the interlinear. topics
of subordinate clauses are always in the oblique )

but i'ld definitely consider expanding it to other
types of clause. i want to avoid ad hoc words for
conjunctions on the grounds i want to stick to three
word classes : (pro)nouns, (pro)verbs and affixes. i'm
beginning to think 'tat' could be very productive.

> > now, i was thinking today about the use in english
> of
> > words like 'f uck'. an extreme example being the
> > phrase 'the f ucking f ucker's f ucking f ucked',
> > which could, eg, be expleted when a computer
> crashes
> >
>
> Why do you write the word with a space after the
> 'f'?
just in case anyone's on a dodgy email monitoring
system . . . wouldn't like to get anyone into trouble
!

[snip snap snop]

> appear also with pro-verbs, but why not? And what
> about an interrogative
> pronoun that directly means "what the hell...?"?
> :)))))
>
i like !

> As I said, I find the idea pretty nice, and it
> strikes me as quite
> naturalistic, and although I don't any language that
> has this feature as
> dominant (although as you've seen it exists in many
> languages as secondary
> feature), I wouldn't be surprised if there is a
> language somewhere that
> considers it dominant.
will need some work, but i'm glad it makes sense.

as i tried to say, and you confirmed, it's not
anything new, but it would be interesting to codify it
as part of the language. am also considering the
possibility of using it as an equivalent of german
affective particles such as doch, schon, ja, &c

more when i've figured this out !

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