Re: TRANS: Happiness

Muke Tever wrote
>"To find happiness, one should not seek it."
Well, tentative Tairezazh version:

Keitener eits, tsek azg esh gez sener.

"To find joy, one should not search for it."

keit -en -er eit -s , tsek azg    esh gez sen    -er.
find INF DAT joy ACC, one* search NEG **  PP-3rd DAT.

* Tairezazh grammarians'd insist that _tsek_ is a noun meaning "(a) person",
but it is frequently used as an indefinite pronoun.

** _Gez_ is a modal adverb, which modifies the the preceeding verb (in this
case _azg_ "search") in much the same way as the English auxiliary "should"
does. I don't know the technical term for it.

Since the verb _azg_ takes the thing sought for in the dative, and
infinitives denoting a goal or purpose likewise is put into the dative, we
get two dative things in the sentence. I'm not entirely happy about that,
but it seems like I'll have to live with it unless I change well-established
rules. At any rate, it can't reasonably cause confusion here (unless you
think that "In order to it, one should not search for to find joy." is a
reasonable sentence).

                                            Andreas

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