Re: personal enclitics

Jim Grossmann wrote:

> 1.    Love the way you conjugate prepositions.  You obviate possessive
> pronouns in an elegant way.
> Wish I'd thought of this.   :-)
Inspired by Tolkien, I'm afraid (well noticed BP!) only I took it a little
further than Quenya. The "cabor rho Arhyn" construction was inspired by
Telerin, in fact, not Quenya, as in cava ria Olue "Olwe's house", although,
come to think of it, I think Quenya does  something similar.

> 2.    If you use "to" to identify both patients and destinations, you may
> need to make sure that transitive and intransitive verbs are always
> distinct.   Otherwise, "I'll walk to the dog" and "I'll walk the dog" will
> look too similar.   This is not really a problem;   you could
> just have two
> verbs for the two senses of "walk."   In general, your intransitive verbs
> should have only intransitive readings, and transitive verbs should only
> have transitive ones.   IIRC, natlangs vary when it comes to whether any
> given verb can or cannot have both transitive and intransitive readings.
> IIRC, in some languages, every verb can have both transitive and
> intransitive senses;  in others, no verb does.
Hmm, a tricky one. Bulyth doesn't use verbs as transitive AND intransitive
like English so often does. Verbs are transitivised by using aa similar
construction to the make X Y, only using the verb noun: I walk the dog > I
make walk to the dog (cf. I make her queen > I make queen to her).

> 3.    Also, you'll have to assign meaning to verbs in non-English ways.
> "run" for example won't have the idiomatic English sense of "govern."
>
> I'm running this outfit.
> I'm running to this outfit.
Uh-huh. It's a good way of not reinventing English idiom.

> 4.    There are examples where the verb has the same sense in
> both readings.
> This is not a big problem;  you could just have an affix that makes a
> transitive verb intransitive, thus eliminating the ambiguity without
> creating distinct markers for patient and destination.
Bulyth doesn't really agglutinise all that much (and I have nothing in Kansu
to derive any such affix from!). The above constructions have been
generalised and we get sentances which make little sense in English when
directly translated. However, by not using Enlgish idiom, we can easily
disambiguate the following sentances:

> I'm driving the car.
su pulen dela la bochen
I make-imp travel to cart

> I'm driving to the car.
su delen la bochen
I travel-imp to cart.
(everyone knows that you don't drive vehicles! you drive cattle!)

> I'm riding the elephant.
su boren an rochon·at
I ride-imp on horse-the (no word for elephant!)

> I'm riding to the elephant.
su boren la rochon·at
I ride-imp to horse-the

Word order disabiguates this one:
> I'm throwing Herbert.
su goden Herbert
I throw-imp Herbert

> I'm throwing (something) to Herbert.
su goden (something) la Herbert
I throw-imp (something) to Herbert

However, when a pronoun is used (I'm throwing him/I'm throwing something to
him), this is one case where the enclitic goes on the verb:

I throw him
su godenys rho
I throw-imp-1s he

I throw something to him
su goden aegor lar.
I throw-imp something to-3s.


> 5.    How would you write "I followed Herbert to the car."?    What would
> make it different from "I followed the car to Herbert."?
Word order. In pronominal situations (ooh, goody! I can have a "pronominal
situation") you would add the subject enclitic to the verb, use the pronoun
as the object and the "la" and the indirect object:

I followed him to the cart.
su cydaseus rho la bochon
I follow-pt-1s he to cart.

I followed the cart to him.
su cydaseu bochon·at lar
I follow-pt-1s cart-the to-3s.

> 6.    Your "make X Y" constructions recall English constructions with
> "change...to" as in "Herbert changed Sally to a frog."   I don't see any
> problems with this offhand.
Thanks! I needed an English analogy to put in the updated webpage about my
new pet and couldn't think of one!

Then Fabian wrote:
> Perhaps you
> reinvenrted the semitic family?
Yuk! Not a chance under the sun! I can't stand their consonants! I tried
teaching myself Arabic once but didn't get past the pronunciation guide. I
saw the "voiced pharyngeal fricative" and ran screaming! I didn't actually
look at the grammar. I was totally unaware of this. Maybe it influenced
Tolkien?

Dan

-------------------------------------------------------------
Lo deu nu preca êl'aisún necoui.  God prays at noone's altar.

Dan Jones: www.geocities.com/yl_ruil/
-------------------------------------------------------------