Conlang Shadows

Hi all!
    I'm back after a rather prolonged sojourn in Real-Life, including
complications following a thorough computer upgrade (following a rather
thorough computer _breakdown_  :-P  )
    While I was away, I happened to read something on folklore where
the subject of "shadows"  was discussed, and the significance of a person
"casting" a shadow (as well as inanimate objects "casting" shadows).
    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? How would a logical lang such as lojban handle this?

    At any rate, rtemmu, my conlang would use a "passive-causative" as
follows:
(indefinite articles omitted in order to simplify the example):

"A person casts a shadow"

na  belshyempagihe  na  myaiikmnaik

(na  belshye-mpagi-he  na  m-yai-ik-mna-ik)

Analyzed as follows:

1st na = the speaker is subjectively considering belshyempagihe
              at a "normal" rate of change
belshye-  = passive-causative prefix (meaning that the existence of what
               follows the prefix
              (mpagi  in this case) is somehow passively involved in causing
              what is
               described by the next process-word. ( myaiikmnaik).
            belshye, itself, is derived from  bel (= tool-process), shye (=
             existence)
mpagi = the process of being a person
-he = with respect to

2nd na =  the speaker is subjectively considereing  myaiikmnaik at
               a "normal" rate of change
 myaiikmnaik = shadow

(This last word has an interesting construction:

mikmik = energy
-yai-  infix meaning pertaining to vision
thus, myaiikmik = light

-mna- infix meaning "result of blocking"

thus:  myaiikmnaik means the result of blocking of light, ie shadow.)


Dan Sulani
------------------------------------------------------------------------
likehsna rtem zuv tikuhnuh auag inuvuz vaka'a.

A word is an awesome thing.

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