Re: A little entertainment

On Tue, 21 Mar 2000, Irina Rempt wrote:

>I considered that, but I wanted to avoid the impression that Valdyan
>has a progressive form; the present or simple past is used for
>everything unless it's *very* important that it's just one moment,
>and eating a boy usually takes more time than that. (The punctual
>aspect would have meant either "took a bite out of the boy" or
>"devoured the boy in one gulp" :-)
OK, I see. In Talarian, it doesn't matter how long it takes the wolf
to eat the boy; just whether the action is over and done; not yet over
and done; or it don't matter one way or the other.

>> Sometimes the compounding feature turns out nice! Coordinate
>> substantival stems can be strung along to form a single word. In this
>> instance, there are two nominal stems, so the resulting word will be
>> declined in the dual number.
>
>Neat.
>
>> The others (above) can't work this way because they aren't coordinate
>> with respect to one another (i.e., the wolf and dog aren't in the same
>> category with respect to dining on boyflesh).
>
>Ah, I see. It doesn't matter that dogs don't usually eat boys and
>wolves do, but only the present situation.
Right. It could be a fish or an orc; just so long as the two nouns are
of equivalent categories.

Padraic.

>   Irina