Re: The last enemy

From: Mia Soderquist <happycritter@...>

> > The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.
> Nevashi
> Mi an ya rhedhim mise'i kwe fi omalya lia go ya gorem.
> Relative clauses have an opening (kwe)
> and a close at the end (lia).
So glad I'm not alone in this. Géarthnuns relative clauses start with a relative
pronoun (duh!) too numerous to go into here and (and this is what struck my
eye) a marker at the end of the clause, "sho". Géarthnuns is SOV and before I
knew Japanese, I thought "sho" was just helping to direct traffic with the
build-up of verbs at the end of a sentence (seemed to help restore some the
rhythm I enjoyed from German):

The man I saw is dead.

Géarthnuns: Chö dhaubs lö, chöt sí lé tel sho, sfaikh.
the man/nom aux/pres.perf., who/acc I/nom aux/past see SHO, die

Après Japanese, it seemed that "sho" was mimicking Japanese "to" (which seemed cool,
as Géarthtörs is plunked in the Sea of Japan), at least in some
circumstances:

He said it was raining.

Japanese: Kare wa ame ga futte ita to yutta.
he-topic rain-sub was falling TO said

Géarthnuns: Söb lé, gü seth lé höifun sho, ngamath.
he/nom aux/past, that it/nom aux/past rain/discoursive.mood SHO, say

But "sho" covers almost any imbedded subordinate clause, and usage expanded to
cover (optionally) subordinate clauses in general:

If it rains, we won't go.

Géarthnuns: (Aim) seth lí haufun (sho), pantala lí hekadiz.
(if) it/nom aux/fut rain/speculative (SHO), we/nom-negative aux/fut. go/conclusive

You could say:

Seth lí haufun, pantala lí hekadiz.  OR
Seth lí haufun sho, pantala lí hekadiz. (I like this one)  OR
Aim seth lí haufun, pantala lí hekadiz.  (more high-brow, written?)

Anyway, I like that structure you've described (though I doubt Nevashi "lia" has the
same scope as "sho"), where an imBEDded relative clause has a warm, toasty
opening-closing binky surrounding it.

blahblahblah X blahblahblah Y blahblah

On to other things: Is there an ea-luna webpage? From what I knew of ea-luna, it
always seemed to me a cosmic counterbalance/counterfoil to Géarthnuns.

Yin: ea-luna, Hawaiian

Yang: Géarthnuns, Georgian

Kou

Replies