Re: The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.

Still working on Trebor's sentence:

 > The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away
 > small stones.

Now I thought about how to translate this sentence into
Ayeri, and here are my results, straight from Ye Blue Booke
O'Notes a.k.a. The Ringbinder:

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* Here is some kind of instrumental involved.
* The main difficulty for me is how to translate "begins by
  carrying away".
  -> The whole phrase is instrumental, because here, the
     away-carrying is the instrument (not a noun!)
  -> The verb "to begin" needs a second verb as argument.

To make the relative clause easier to translate, we can put
it last and have to move things a bit:

  ?By carrying away small stones the man who removes a
  mountian begins.

"the man who removes _a mountain_"
ayonang siang le {remove}iyà me{mountain}in
man.AGT REL.AGT TRG=PAT remove.3sg a(PAT).mountain.TRG
-> there are 3 different indefinite articles: one for a noun
   in the agent case, one for the patient case and one for
   all other cases.

"by carrying away small stones"
Aris {carry}eri {stone}iein ecivoye
TRG=PAT carry.INST stone.pl.TRG PAT.small.PL
-> Must the verb be conjugated somehow?
-> Adjectives agree with their noun in case and number

And now I have to make up some words ...

to begin:
     ciunao [kiu"nao]
to carry sth away (also in the sense of remove):
     pahao [pa"hao]
to (re)move sth:
     manganao < mangan (movement) [mANga"nao]
mountain:
     rivan ["4ivAn]
stone:
     yelan ["jelAn]
     -> could this also mean "piece" as a 2nd meaning?

Aris paheri yelaniein ecivoye, ayonan siang rivanin le
manganiyà ciuniyâng. (Explanation above)
["a4Is pa"heri je"lanjein eki"voj@ "ajonAn siAN "4ivanin le
mAN"gania kiuni"a:N]

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The good thing: - I have five new words for the dictionary.
                - I am tired enough to sleep finally
The bad thing:  - My brain hurts

... And tomorrow I'll start reading all the 100 the mails
about ergativity that I have not opened yet because it's
terminologically so difficult to understand.

Good night for now -- it's already about 01:45 am at the
moment I'm writing this.
                                        -- Carsten Becker




PS: Yay, I'll get "Describing Morphosyntax" from my
godmother for my 18th birthday as it seems ... When I told
her I'd like to have that book, she said it'd be no
problem.

--
Eri silveváng aibannama padangin.
Nivaie evaenain eri ming silvoieváng capanaris.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Le Petit Prince
  -> http://www.beckerscarsten.de/?conlang=ayeri