Re: Indicating verbs valence? (Was: The disappeared conlang)

> From: Stephen Mulraney
>
> On Wed, 23 Jan 2002 17:29:54 -0500
> The Gray Wizard <dbell@...> wrote:
>
>
> > > Perhaps you could have a 'valence' inflection (or particle,
> or whatever)
> > > on the verb which specifies how many and what kind of 'arguments'
> > > the verb takes. I learnt a lot about this kind of thing from
> David Bell's
> > > grammar of ámman îar (thanks David!). You can see the kind of
> valencies
> > > that his language inflects for at section 7.3 on
> > > http://www.graywizard.net/Conlinguistics/amman_iar/ai_predicate_mo
> > > rphology.htm
> > > You might need to read the section at
> > > http://www.graywizard.net/Conlinguistics/preliminaries.htm
> > > too, in order to understand the dialect of English used in
> this grammar ;)
> >
>
>
> > "understand the dialect of English used in this grammar"? Hmmm,
> could it be
> > that my maladroit elucidations might not have been posed in as
> luculent a
> > presentation as might be required?  I'll have to work on that. ;-)
>
> Well, I don't think it's such a problem - in fact your
> descriptions are wonderfully
> clear, once one has been initiated. Oddly, the experience of
> understanding certain
> sentences there felt rather like the experience of reading the
> proof of a mathematical
> theorem - a feeling of things slotting in as I read...
Hmmm, could that be because I was trained as a Mathematician and not a
Linguist?

> 'luculent' - that's not quite a cromulent word, is it ? ;)
'luculent' is high on my short list of favorite 'over-the-top' words.  I
like most its almost total lack of self-reference.  What could be less
'luculent' than the casual use of 'luculent'?  But unlike Homer's usage, I
think you'll find that the OED would quite agree that 'luculent' is indeed
"a perfectly cromulent word!"

Stay curious,
David

David E. Bell
The Gray Wizard
dbell@graywizard.net
www.graywizard.net
AIM: GraWzrd

Wisdom begins in wonder.

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