Re: Terminilogy-help needed

* Adam Parrish said on 2007-01-26 03:10:52 +0100
> First off: Taruven has always been one of my favorite conlangs
> on the web. It's just really great work, from both an
> aesthetic and linguistic perspective.
You know, that just might be (IIRC) the first time anyone's said
that, thanks.

> On Jan 24, 2007, at 8:36 AM, taliesin the storyteller wrote:
> > The page concerns the word class/part of speech that I call
> > "frontwords": a closed class of uninflectable words that go
> > at the beginning/front of a clause/sentence. I'm looking for
> > a better term.
>
> I think "frontword" is fine, clever repartees about
> "backwords" be damned.  Otherwise, you'll likely have to do
> with some kind of circumlocution, such as "sentence initial
> particle." You might also  consider appropriating a more
> traditional term, like "adverb" (as others have suggested),
> taking care in your documentation of the word class to note
> that they're always clause-initial.
I want to avoid the term "adverb" since it is a badly defined
catchall-class wherever it's used. + it doesn't fit with Taruven
linguistic tradition :)

Inflectable adverbs and adjectives are already in their own
class, statives (stative verbs). Research have shown that just
about all other inflectable words (except experiencer verbs,
which also really ought to have a better term) eventually derive
from statives. Frontwords derive from sentences though.

> That said, it seems unusual to me to find a part of speech
> classified entirely on its order in the clause and not by its
> semantic/syntactic distribution.
(Inflecting) verbs can be solely/suffciently classified as "what
preferrably comes in second position" in several languages ;)

All other Taruven words can go just about anywhere, which is why
"only goes first" is sufficient to categorize them.

> You might be able to side-step the terminology issue
> altogether by including a section in your grammar called, say,
> "other constructions,"
How klingon, how 1996, when I did have that category...

> which includes subsections for imperatives (oah, vren, jil),
> questions (vris, ei, etc.), and evidentiality (leneth).
>
> ... unless there's some other theoretical/intrafictional
> motivation for the frontword analysis, in which case, of
> course, all bets are off. :)
They originate from a bad habit I have, prestating what type of
sentence the sentence will be. So I sometimes say (yes, *say*,
out loud, with my mouth, though usually in Norwegian):

Question: blabalbala?
Yes? No? Blablblal...
Observation: balabalaa...
Idea! Blablabbala
Cause? Effect? Blablabla...
Hmmm... blablablb
Huh? Blblablbal
Do this: blablbalabl
Lets do this: Blbalbala
Methinks blablabla
You know, blablblabla
Doh, blablabla...

etc. where blblabla is an independent, full, normal sentence.


t.