Re: Some or any

From: "Stephen DeGrace" <stevedegrace@...>
>A couple primes that we are dealing with now are
>SOMEONE and SOMETHING. Tokcir has a word {yer} (the
>curly braces are a parochial notation of ours to
>indicate a Tokcir word or phrase in English text)
>which can be used as a prefix {yer-} and means
>some/any. You can force a word like {yerdin},
>"something", to have the "something" meaning by using
>the definite article {q yerdin} or the "anything"
>meaning by using the indefinite article {òl yerdin},
>otherwise you rely on context to disambiuguate where
>possible. This has, however, been a matter of some
>debate and I think it is likely to open again.
Well, two things about those universals--
first, they don't IIRC have to be standalone words (we get phrases like English
"there are", not sure if I remember any examples that were specifically bound
morphemes in any sample lang though), and second they may not be culturally
relevant (some examples I remember were 'word' in Chinese and generic 'I'/'you'
pronouns in Japanese)

Anyway.  As for that anyway, if {den} (or whatever the root is) means "thing"
generically, and can be indefinite on its own (maybe use {òl din}, if that's the
grammatical way to put it), it would be able to stand for the prime SOMETHING.
{yerdin} seems to me to be too much of an English relex--it doesn't have to have
"some/any" in it.

Having SOMETHING as a lexical universal means you can speak about indefinite
things as things.
For example you would use it in sentences like:

"something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue"
"I just ran over something"
"Something's happening"
"Don't tell me it's nothing, I know it's something bothering you"

How does Tokcir handle these?  I am guessing not with {yerdin}, if you have to
"force" the word.

>I think in our group we have possibly better strength
>on the logical analysis of this matter than on
>knowedge of actual linguistic usage and precedent.
>Languages defintely have their own unique "logic"! As
>the latter as well as the former has some bearing on
>decisions we make, I was wondering what people might
>be able to tell me about how universal is making a
>lexical some/any distinction, and what are some ways
>people know about for languages to make these kinds of
>distinctions, especially if they differ from the
>practise in English...
Well, I only know Spanish, which has {algo} for SOMETHING.

This is apparently from Latin {aliquod}, of which Lewis and Short says:

    >> aliquis, more emphatic than quis, denotes that an object
    >> really exists, but that nothing depends upon its individuality;
    >> no matter of what kind it may be, if it is only one, and not none

You're not supposed to trust X-English English-X dictionaries on stuff like
this, but I have {quelque chose} for French, {chto-to} and {chto-nibud'} for
Russian, and {io} for Esperanto.

(Maybe this woefully inadequate scholarship will prompt others to contribute.)

    *Muke!
--
http://www.frath.net/