Re: A little entertainment

Adrian Morgan <morg0072@...> wrote:

>A couple of things: (1) Conjunctions - the model
>I'm working on has different conjunctions
>between adjectives, between nouns, and between
>clauses. Is this a realistic idea or is it
>overkill?
Myself, I usually make a difference in my langs, in
the conjunction 'and', between clauses (or verb phrases)
and noun phrases. Adjectives I generally juxtapose with
no conjunction.

It seems to me that it's perfectly realistic, especially
if you have a reason. For example, one of the versions
of the conjunction could have been originally a verbal
inflection (like Japanese -te) -- and this is the one
who ended up being used for clauses. The other version
could come from a noun case ending (maybe commitative,
'with').

For whoever knows: what did Latin do with _et_ and <-que>?
Could you use <-que> with whole clauses?

> (2) Relative clauses - I really want to
>research this a bit more because it strikes me as
>the hardest part of language building
We had a thread about this some time ago -- check the
archives (are they in www.egroups.com?) -- where we
discussed the ways we do this in our langs. The main
ways were:

1. Use a relative pronoun as a linker (English 'that',
'which', 'who').

2. Same as 1, but also resume the pronoun on the subclause
(*'the man that I saw him'). Some of Rosenfelder's extreme
examples are possible or compulsory in certain languages.

3. Keep everything as it is, except for the relativized
part of the subclause ('the man I saw him-who', 'the cat
it-which ate the mouse').

4. Change nothing; just place the whole subclause in the
same place you'd place an adjective (as in Japanese).


--Pablo Flores
  http://www.geocities.com/pablo-david/index.html
  ... I cannot combine any characters that the divine Library
  has not foreseen, which in some of its secret tongues do not
  bear some terrible meaning. No-one can articulate a syllable
  not filled of caresses and fears; which is not, in some one
  of those languages, the powerful name of a god...
                   Jorge Luis Borges, _The Library of Babel_