Re: Looking for interesting ways to handle relative clauses.
From: | Remi Villatel <maxilys@...> |
Date: | Saturday, October 23, 2004, 3:22 |
Sally Caves wrote:
> There are a variety of relative clause structures, so you have to be
> specific here. There's the one that expresses opinion or thought, as Remi's
> "emotional case" does: "I thought that the boy was your son." "I feel that
> it's time to go." But there are similarly structured relative clauses that
> don't involve emotion, usually of the stating, writing, saying, observing
> variety: "I said that I had sold the book" (a statement of fact). "The
> article says that the man died." "The time clock registers that he departed
> early." How would Remi construe that?
I fooled myself with the word "emotional" and didn't give exemples like
speech, written words, sight, earing, affirmation, confirmation, and so one.
You can virtually apply the emotional case to anything even if it doesn't
imply an emotion.
My(EMOTIONAL) (PAST)-speech: I had sold the book.
The(EMOTIONAL) article's content: the man died.
The(EMOTIONAL) clock's reality: he departed early.
The emotional case doesn't even need to apply to a possessive kind of clause.
One(EMOTIONAL) speech: ... = It is said that...
The(EMOTIONAL) Law: ... = The law states that...
> Then there's that ornery distinction
> made between "proper" and "improper" relative clauses with who/whom/whose,
> etc, so often set out in Welsh grammars: "I saw the boy who kicked the
> ball." "I saw the boy whose cup was full." [these examples; I'm not making
> them up!] "I like the girl whom you hate."
These one would use resumptive postpositions.
I saw the boy *and* he kicked the ball.
I saw the boy *and* his cup was full.
I like this girl *and* you hate her.
In fact, the resumptive proposition isn't absolutely necessary here. In
Shaquelingua, I'd just cut the sentence in two with the equivalent of a
semi-colon.
I saw the boy *;* he kicked the ball.
Even an emotional case is possible with "to see".
My(EMOTIONAL) (PAST)-vision: the boy kicked the ball.
> Proper relatives are so called
> because the who/whom refer back to either the nominative or the accusative.
> Improper relatives refer back to referents in the oblique case: "The boy
> whose aunt had died came to see me." "I know the book to which you are
> referring." "I saw the man to whom you spoke."
Apparently, "whose" was such a big problem that I created a postposition for
it. Without it, all I managed to say was that the boy brought the corpse of
his aunt to see me. ;-) So...
taji të-raçtesa tadekju frë, kyó'zeçke sublu xili te'va jisso.
His (PAST)-dead aunt whose, (DESCRIPTOR)'our meeting upto PAST'the boy.
(Shaquelingua doesn't allow embedded clauses.) The two other ones are easy
with a resumptive pronoun.
You are referring to this book *;* I know it.
You spoke to this man *;* I know him.
> How would you distinguish between "I
> thought that it was blue" and "it is a matter of fact that the boy is blue"?
> Or: "I kissed the boy who was blue," and "I saw to whom the blue boy blew a
> kiss"? :) :)
My(EMOTIONAL) (PAST)-thoughts: the boy was blue.
The(EMOTIONAL) reality: the boy is blue.
The blue boy blew a kiss to someone *;* I saw them.
In Shaquelingua "them" would be an epicene resumptive pronoun representing
"someone".
[---CUT---] A lot of interesting things about Teonaht... I wish I could be
able to describe Shaquelingua's grammar this way.
Any way, I'm going to give a deep thinking to all this.
ji kaçtólu soe, [ji: ka.CtO4u so^e] (one soon until)
--
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Remi Villatel
maxilys_@_tele2.fr
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