Re: HELP: Relative Clauses with Postpositions

on 2/10/04 10:02 PM, David Peterson at ThatBlueCat@AOL.COM wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I was trying to do some work on the Babel text in a language of mine, and came
> across some problems with the sentence "They found a plain in the land of
> Shinar".   Here are the facts:
>
> -SOV word order
> -Postpositional
> -Cases: Nom., Acc., Gen., Dat., Loc., Inst., Adverbial.
> -A noun in the genitive follows the noun it possesses.
> -A noun modified by a preposition (generally) gets the locative case.
>
> Now here's the problem.   The above sentence would, basically, look something
> like this:
>
> plain land [of Shinar] in [they found it]
>
> There might also be a verb like Spanish "estar" in there, but that's not the
> tough part.   I'm trying to figure out where to put that postposition.   It
> just doesn't make sense to me.   Which seems more "right":
>
> plain-ACC. land-NOM. Shinar-GEN. in [they found it]
>
> or
>
> plain-ACC. land-LOC. Shinar-GEN. in [they found it]
>
> or
>
> plain-ACC. land-LOC. in Shinar-GEN. [they found it]
>
> For some reason, the last one seems like the one that "should" be correct, to
> me, but then it ends up looking like the wacky language we've been discussion,
> where you have an adposition coming between two NP's.
>
> Anyway, what I want to avoid is doing what Turkish or Japanese does, where
> you'd say something like "the in-the-land-of-Shinar plain".   And I actually
> have a good reason for wanting to avoid this construction, I just...can't
> remember it.   Anyway, can you help?
>
> -David
That's unfortunately the problem you get when you mix left and right
branching. Eloshtan happens to have the same type of problem, though the
particular phrase you're translating works out a little differently.
Basically, most modifiers in Eloshtan go before the noun, but those pesky
relative clauses come after. So where do you put the postpositions? The rule
is that postpositions have to go directly after the noun, and relative
clauses end up coming after. I'd be surprised if natlangs did this (unless
it's one of those languages where modifiers can get tossed to and fro
anyway). The problem (or a problem) is that you're breaking up a
constituent. It's supposed to be "in [the land of Shinar]". If you start off
with "[in the land]", then "of Shinar" has no NP left to attach to. Of
course you could just say it started off formed properly, but then then
something moved.

-Josh

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