Re: tonal languages?

   I'm not sure I was completely clear in saying the
tone of a word would say one thing and the grammar
another.
   I'll try and explain what I was thinking.  Suppose
you were in a dark room and you said, "I can't see.  I
need light."  Now I was thinking that using my tonal
language you might have the noun "light" and the verb
"to see" as the same word with different tones.  I
want to make my language inflecting too.  So you might
be able to say, "I can't see.  I need light/to see,"
because you would use the infinitive form of the verb
"to see" but with the tone that says that the word is
actually "light".
   I'm not sure I can explain any better because my
language doesn't have any words yet.  I'm playing
around with ideas more than anything and wondering if
they would actually work in practice.
---Etak


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