Obligatives? (Was: Re: Optatives...)

H. S. Teoh <hsteoh@...> writes:

> Hmm, interesting. I think I should add *obligatives* to Ebisedian to
> complement the optatives and subjunctives.
I'm having some trouble figuring out things like these in my new
language. Last night my head almost exploded when I got myself
into a discussion about the semantics of "must", "have to",
"should", and their Spanish (my L1) counterpart. I decided that
Bokuchi Khai will make explicit what these auxilliares hide, by
using plain nouns or adjectives instead of members of a closed
"modal" class.

"We have to tell the truth" =
|Ematri  deu   tuipde         likai|
 telling truth inescapable-be for-us

"(He) should not come in here" =
|Alalailri  gor       seakade|
 not-coming to-inside moral-be    ({seak-} (adj) moral ; (n) moral duty

etc. In any case, the Bokuchi language has no verb-like verbal
auxilliaries, or stative verbs, so adjectives take up a lot of
modal functions.


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Bokuchi Phrase of the Day:
     {Etiari azaguirde!}   "Resistance is futile!"
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--Pablo Flores
  http://www.angelfire.com/ego/pdf/ng/index.html