Re: valency question

Muke Tever sikayal:

> How do natlangs and conlangs handle making distinctions between sentences like
> these?  English uses word order (with intonation differences too, I think),
> but I wonder about other ways (are there any?).
Yivríndil uses the "quote particle" in both of the example sentences that
you give.  The quote particle, breifly, can be used with any verb of
saying or indicating to show what was said or indicated.  Thus, with the
following examples:

>      John called the beaver ugly.
>      John called the ugly beaver.
Since the Yivríndi know nothing of beavers, I'll be using horses:

Yoana paratyal nihirn ef festil
Yoana par-atya-l ni-hirn ef fest-il.
John call.VERB.PAST DEF.horse QUOT ugly.ADJ.
"John called the horse ugly."

Yoana paratyal nihirn festil.
Yoana par-atya-l ni-hirn fest-il.
John call.VERB.PAST DEF.horse ugly.ADJ.
"John called the ugly horse."

The same could be done for the next set of sentences.

>      Mary thought about a cat eating.
>      Mary thought about eating a cat.
This is a different type of sentence that would have completely different
syntax in Yivríndil, so it's not relevant.  As someone else mentioned,
this mostly results from a quirk of English syntax and morphology, and so
isn't an issue in most languages.


Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu

"If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are
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