Re: A little entertainment

On Mon, 20 Mar 2000, Padraic Brown wrote:

> On Mon, 20 Mar 2000, Irina Rempt wrote:
> >  "I saw the wolf that ate the boy"
> >
> >implying that the meal was in progress when I saw it.
>
> In English, those two mean roughly the same thing. For the latter, you
> might want "I saw the wolf that was eating the boy."
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" :-)

> Carawelhacarahoncu eka-ma wehhemi!
>
> "However, I see the battling-wolf-battling-dog!"
I like that! I'm reading the _Batrachomyamachia_ ("Battle of Frogs
and Mice", I don't know the official English title) to the kids in a
metrical Dutch translation, I can't manage Homeric Greek the way it
ought to be, and anyway I want them to understand at least *some* of
it. The eldest is fascinated, the other two pretend to be bored and
go on playing with their Legos but they're still indignant when I
stop :-)

> 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.

   Irina

--
           Varsinen an laynynay, saraz no arlet rastynay.
irina@valdyas.org (myself) - http://valdyas.conlang.org (Valdyas)
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