Re: Conlang Shadows

Dan Sulani wrote:
>    This got me to wondering, how would our various conlangs deal with
>the following situation:
>    A person is outside on a cloudy day. Suddenly the clouds part, the
sun
>shines,
>and a shadow appears. What has happened? Obviously, if one uses the sun
as
>the subject of the sentence, one could say that it "caused, made, etc."
the
>shadow.
>But what if the _person_ were the subject of the sentence? What would the
>verb be? (Assuming that one did not want to express the idea that the person
>was "casting" the shadow like a fisherman "casts" his net.) Or maybe one
>would
>want to keep that association! Would there be differences between humans
>and non-humans? Animate shadows versus inanimate shadows?
>Other distinctions? Or maybe some grammatical structure other than
>subject-verb?
[snip the always so interesting rtemmu translations]

According to what I seem to have written in the dictionary, Mamqian uses
the verb _sya_ "to cause, to make", with the shadow in uuolel ("benefactive"
or "final") case and the shader as a nominative subject.
A person casts a shadow:
Syr tei ölii.

But this is too simple. I think there must be several possible constructions
depending on one's point of view on the situation.
A bit of brainstorming:
ñ = n-tilde, ö = o-with-two-dots

Kaor Sei-Mahta djöl öliy cwiwiy jeemer.
gives sun mahta strong shadow-ACC very.black-ACC he-DAT
"The bright sun of the mahta month gives him a deep black shadow."
(The person being talked about casts a dark shadow.)

Kaor Sei-Mahta djöl öliy cwiwiy jiil.
gives sun mahta strong shadow-ACC very.black-ACC he-BEN
"The bright sun of the mahta month gives him a deep black shadow."
(Something casts a dark shadow on him. It is also possible that this sounds
like the sun was intentionally doing him a favor, I'm not sure.)

Ölölid auqehe öhjeedar.
shadow-CAUS-PL cedars cool-ly
"The cedar trees make a cool shade."
("Shadow" turned into a causative verb "to make a shadow.")

Syr vilu saf ölii mceeol musilosoo (/musilosma).
causes house white shadow-BEN big-BEN garden-BEN (or: garden-ILLATIVE)
"The white house casts a great shadow to the garden."

Lor öli jeeni (Seiter).
exists shadow he-POSS (sun-CAUS)
"He has a shadow (because of the sun)."
(I think a Mamqian would think that the shadow one casts is comparable to
personal property, which also explains the dative/benefactive difference
in the first and the second sentence. "Dative" is a case of possession,
"benefactive" isn't.)

?Öliidar oñor Sei jiry.
shadow-ly is.like sun he-ACC
Something like "There is a shadow to him, thanks to the sun"?

?Öliidad oñrid jiry.
shadow-ly-PL is.like-PL he-ACC
"There is a shadow to him, thanks to the circumstances"???

I just can't seem to translate the verb oñra. In its most typical usage,
it means approximately that (the object) feels in an (adverb) way about
(the subject), or that (the subject) gives an (adverb) impression to (the
object). E.g.
Faliidad oñrid fary.
well-PL is.like-PL me
"Everything seems well to me."
= "I'm happy."


That was fun.
-M. Astrand


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