Re: CHAT: Star Wars and its conlangs

On Mon, 24 May 1999 00:37:04 -0500, Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> wrote:

>Tom Wier wrote:
>> For example, I'm pretty sure I saw a consistent use of -sa /-s@/
>> to indicate possession:  I am pretty sure /mis@/ is what was
>> used to indicate "my"
>
>However, Jar-Jar once said /misa no laik dis/, where /misa/ appeared to
>be used as a subject, and also, something like /misa h@ngri/ or
>something like that, for "I'm hungry"
I was thinking that maybe -sa was a nominative marker; it seemed to be =
used
frequently after the subject, but not consistently so. Towards the end I
got the idea "hey maybe it's an ergative marker?", but by that time it =
was
too late to confirm or falsify that guess. I'll have to watch it again, =
but
it'll be Saturday at the earliest before I have time to see it. Of =
course,
"misa hungry" would be evidence against the ergative hypothesis. Maybe it
marks the topic of the sentence? Or a verb tense/aspect of some kind?

--
languages of Kolagia---> =
+---<http://www.io.com/~hmiller/languages.html>---
      Thryomanes        /"If all Printers were determin'd not to print =
any
   (Herman Miller)     / thing till they were sure it would offend no =
body,
   moc.oi @ rellimh <-/  there would be very little printed." -Ben =
Franklin