Re: genitive

Well, just to stir the pot, Tan`ala - and of course its still extant ancestor
'Erava (`the | ` | in front of the vowel indicates a descending tone, while
| ' | indicates a rising tone - the tone shift also occurs where the stress
is) incorporates into its verbal structure former adjectives.  And
incorporates into the nominal structure the resulting verbs.

Eg, in the name of one very special person 'E:fer`iane there is the
passive/stative ending r`iane meaning "To be filled", used with mass nouns
such as water, grain, light, mind - 'E:fer`iane is a poetical phraseword
meaning "to be filled with an enquiring mind", e: - mind, thought, etc; fer,
feri, fera - search, look for; r`iane - as above; the entire word being a
two-word compound `e:fer qualified by the ending - there's a word for this in
Sanskrit and Pali, I just can't think of it at the moment.

One of 'E:fer`iane's favorite pupils happens to be named Ke:n`arant, and ke:-
is a verbal prefix for emotional states; nara means "to love"; ke:nara - to
be loved; -ant (-a is elided when the first syllable is long) is a stative
ending derived from a word meaning "to be worthy", antein, I think it was,
the whole word meaning the same as Amanda - "Worthy to be loved", and yes I
did take the name from her.  The whole word being a passive verb compounded
with an adjectival ending derived from a stative verb.

"Look on my wor[dk]s, ye mighty and - despair?  Laugh?"

Wesley Parish

On Thu, 02 May 2002 09:21, you wrote:
> Nik Taylor wrote:
> >ebera wrote:
> > > In the way they work, adjectives are nouns.
> >
> >In European languages, yes, but not in all languages.  Japanese, among
> >many others, treats certain adjectives as verbs, complete with past
> >tense, negative inflections (Japanese verbs inflect for
> >positive/negative), polite forms (altho for adjectives that consists
> >merely of adding _desu_), and so on.  There are other languages that
> >treat *all* adjectives as verbs.
> >
> >FWIW, Uatakassi (my conlang) treats adjectives like nouns when they're
> >used descriptively (e.g., "old woman"), but as verbs when they're used
> >as predicates (e.g., "the woman is old")
>
> AFMCL, Kalini Sapak treats adjectives as verbs when used as predicates, but
> as a category of their own when used descriptively. Then, Kalini Sapak is
> the language that marks gender on verbs and adjectives, but not on nouns.
>
>                                                 Andreas
>
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--
Mau e ki, "He aha to mea nui?"
You ask, "What is the most important thing?"
Maku e ki, "He tangata, he tangata, he tangata."
I reply, "It is people, it is people, it is people."