Re: Parts of Speech

On Wed, Jun 12, 2002 at 04:59:50PM -0400, Nik Taylor wrote:
[snip]
> The Kassi divide words up into 3 major classes, each of which are
> divided into three subclasses.
[snip]

Fascinating. Ebisedi grammarians insist that Ebisedian only has 3 parts of
speech: verbs, nouns, and "relatives" (or "relators", if you will).

Verbs and nouns are easily understood; but "relatives" comprise of a large
class of words varying in function from conjunctions and mood markers to
correlative particles and subordinating particles, which are inflected for
case, and pronoun-like back/forward-referencing ... uh, thingies, which
are inflected for *two* cases. The sole criteria for "relatives" is to be
a word that "relates" something to something else -- relating a noun to a
noun, a sentence to another sentence, etc..

At any rate, so far the "relatives" break down to:
- indeclinable particles:
  - mood markers:
    - optative particles (3)
    - subjunctive particles (3)
    - interrogative mood particles (3)
  - conjunctions/disjunctions (keve, miroo', miKa', zo)
  - correlative particles (2 + 3)
  - positive/negative particles (2: ji'e, my'e)
  - prepositional particles
    - demonstratives (3)
    - prepositions (18)
- inflected for one case:
  - subordinating particles: ni ... di
  - nominalizing particle: ti ... timi
  - adjoining particle: li
- inflected for two cases:
  - back-referencer: kili
  - reflexive quasi-pronoun: sili

Hmm, that is a LOT of "relatives". Considering that I only have about 175+
words in the lexicon right now, I better get to working on those "content"
words instead of these auxilliary words! :-P


T

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