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Re: valency question

From:Roger Mills <romilly@...>
Date:Friday, May 11, 2001, 21:53
Amanda Babcock wrote:

>To me, these two examples of "call" are two separate words, and would be >separate words in a conlang, unless I wanted it to be a European conlang. > >One word is "to call, to summon", with a single object. > >The other one would be "to call, to name, to refer to as", with two
objects,
>which you could keep as two objects distinguished, perhaps, by case, or >you could move one of the objects into a prepositional phrase - or you
could
>noun-incorporate one of them! "John ugly-called the cat"! > >Amanda >"Mom, he ugly-called me!!!" heehee
What a wise solution; it just happens to coincide closely with how Kash deals with the problem. -yamen 'to call, call out, summon', takes dat., mayamen Shenjiye 'I called Shenji' -lepes 'to call= refer to s.t. as...' takes anim.dat., inanim.acc., the complement is nom. (if a noun): Mina yalepes Shenjiye Cici 'Mina calls Shenji "Chichi"; ele yu milepes uku 'we call that plant uku ~that plant is called uku' ; (ya)trakambo re halepes kashe yonji 'it's impolite to call someone 'little cock'; (the caus. rundepes means 'to describe': rundepeska ele uku 'describe(imper.) the uku plant') Others: -pilimen 'to consider s.t. as ...., be of the opinion that...': ne mipilimen feliyo 'we consider him a fool'; mipilimen re yale angayi ri latondrelen ya 'we are of the opinion that there is life on that planet.' -pila-pila 'to consider, ponder, think over' < pila 'to think': ipila-pila kracalni 'they considered the problem' -vele aran, lit. give name, 'to name' (objs in dat/nom, like _lepes_; the name given[nom] follows aran directly): ivele aran Shenji anayeni ~anayeni ivele aran Sh. 'they named their child Shenji' -caus. rumaran 'to name, to appoint': mirumaran Shenjiye kataren ~ Shenjiye mirumaran kataren 'we named Shenji(dat.) (as, to be) leader(nom)'

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