Re: Tentative Ebisedian number system

On Thu, Jul 04, 2002 at 07:38:02AM +0100, Jan van Steenbergen wrote:
[snip]
> Ebisedian doesn't have real adjectives, right? From what I have seen, they are
> actually nouns that modify other nouns.
Correct. And strictly speaking, it is not the adjectival noun that
modifies the noun; it is the stative sentence formed by the juxtaposition
of the adjectival noun and the noun, that modifies it.

> As a result, you have the possibily of
> asking yourself the question: what modifies what? Depending on the context, a
> "black horse" could then be expressed as "a horse being a black thing" or "a
> black thing being a horse" (bad example, because I don't expect to find any
> horses in the Ferochromon Universe)...
Well, I *do* in fact have "horses" in Ferochromon, although they aren't
really horses; they are hexapedal creatures, usually black (how did you
hit upon "black horse" by pure chance? :-P). They are widely used as a
means of transportation, and are fast-moving; hence I glossed them as
"horses" as being the next closest thing from an earthling's POV. :-)

The phrase "black horse" would be rendered as:
        ni       bw3'  d0    mangi'.
        (subord) black (aux) horse
        (loc)    (cvy) (org) (loc)

The modifying phrase is "black" in the conveyant case, and "horse" in the
originative. Blackness is an expressed attribute, hence it is described as
that which is expressed from the black object. (The "horse" is the origin
of the conveyed blackness.)

Although other adjectival attributes may use a different noun case w.r.t.
the modified noun, it is nevertheless clear that the adjectival noun
modifies the noun.

The type of noun-modifying-number derivation I'm talking about is
different, though: it is compounding two words together. E.g., if we take
the above phrase "black horse", we may form a compound word _mangobui'_,
consisting of the radix _manga-_ from _mangi'_, "horse", and _bui'_,
"black". The compound _mangobui'_ would mean "horse-blackness", i.e., the
particular type of black that horses have.

[snip]
> In the case of cardinal numbers, this seems even more natural. Nobody would be
> surprised if the numbers were treated like adjectives. But in many cases it's
> the number that is dominant and not the noun. If you say: "My CD player has
> space for five CDs", it's obviously the number five that contains the crux of
> the message. In Ebisedian, the sentence would probably look more or less like:
> "player"-LOC (modified by "CD") modified by "my"
> "space"-CVY modified by "five" (five being modified by "CD")
Hey, that's pretty good. ;-) You hit the nail on the head with the loc-cvy
construct to express the space within the player. As for expressing
possession, there isn't any special word for it (yet); you just modify the
noun with a rcp-cvy construct:

        ni       ebu'  d3    juli'r  n3       3mir33'n3  di    jhi'li.
        <subord> I     <aux> house   <subord> child      <aux> room
        (loc)    (rcp) (cvy) (loc)   (cvy)    (cvy,plur) (loc) (loc)
        [---  "my house" (loc) ---]  [--"where-children-are room" (cvy)--]
        "In my house is the room where the children are."

This would be parallel in structure to "In my CD player are (five) slots
where the CDs are."

> Correct me if I'm wrong; don't correct me if the Ebisedi don't have CD
> players ;)
:-)

> On the other hand, in some situations it might be wise to do the reverse. In
> the sentence "My neighbour has three parrots and a dog", the number three is
> nothing more than a specification from the more important parrots. In that case
> you might consider using the number as an adjectival noun.
[snip]

Good point. Maybe I should have both?

But getting back to my original point---the type of number-modification I
was referring to is by compounding: you stick the radix of the noun onto
the word for the number. So you'd get compounds like "the horsey
threeness", i.e., the threeness peculiar to the horses, for "three
horses"; or the "housey twenty-seven-ness", the twenty-seven-ness that is
very houselike, referring to the fact that this particular instance of
being twenty-seven is the twenty-seven of those twenty-seven houses.

I suppose you could think of it this way: the number expresses an abstract
multiplicity, and by sticking a noun radix on the number, you indicate
what this multiplicity is of.

> Since I cannot imagine a universe without parrots, I'll assume that there must
> be at least a few of them fluttering around above the Ebisedian landmasses :)))
[snip]

Well, so far, there aren't really any creatures resembling parrots yet. I
just *might* put some in there if you aren't careful, though! :-P


T

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