Re: The last enemy

Sanghyeon Seo wrote:
> While reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I came across this
> quote from the bible, 1 Corinthians 15:26, and I thought it's neat. So
> how does this translate in your conlang?
>
> The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.
>
> Here's a Taruven version I came up with:
> ypharrury etširis ekuì.
I've had to think about how "enemy" is translated in Minza. There is a
class of nouns that takes an obligatory argument (more or less
"inherently possessed" nouns), and certainly "enemy" would be one of
those. (Additionally, the underlying concept is an adjective-like one,
something like "hostile".) The difficulty in the translation is: who is
death the enemy of in this context? "All life" is one potential answer.

In Minza A:
Šøryk ri šułys šutši kazeva dža guoru žu.

ri šuł-ys-Ø        šutš-i    kaz-ev-a
be hostile-one-ABS final-ABS live-VN-GEN

  dža  guor-u     žu     šør-yk-Ø
  that destroy-PF future die-event-ABS

ABS: absolutive
VN: verbal noun
GEN: genitive
PF: perfective

"The final one hostile to the living that [someone unspecified] will
destroy is the event of dying."

But there's an unfortunate ambiguity in this construction, if "šøryk"
can be taken as the object of "guoru žu". In that case, the sentence can
be interpreted as "(something unspecified) is the last enemy that will
destroy death". So in part to prevent this, "death" is moved to the
topic position.