Re: Non-static verbs?

On Wed, Aug 16, 2000 at 01:53:15PM -0700, SMITH,MARCUS ANTHONY wrote:
[snip]
> I'm curious what this would actually look like.  Is there an equivalent of
> "there" in the phrase, or is it something like "car [be] in my
> possession"?
It would be closest to the latter. There is a word for "there" but it's a
demonstrative and not used in this context.

> > "I hate apples"
> > can be translated two ways: (1) with a (adjectival) noun indicating the
> > currently static dislike for apples, or
>
> Would this be a sentence with three nouns then?
Yes it would. There is no requirement that a sentence needs a verb (in
fact, there are two classes of sentences in the language that doesn't need
verbs).

> > I'm still working out the details of this system, so I'd appreciate if
> > anyone knows any natlangs/conlangs that exhibit this same behaviour, so
> > that I can take a look and find out what has been done in this area
> > before.
>
> I'm not sure how this system works for transitive states (like "hate",
> "love", etc.).  How could you tell the difference between an adjectival
> noun and a "stative verb" in these contexts?
The short answer is, there is no difference between an adjectival noun and
a stative verb. Something like "I hate her" would be translated to the
equivalent of "she be in my hatred". When occurring in isolation, this
would mean "I hate her"; but it could also occur as a noun-clause in a
complex sentence, in which case it would be the equivalent of a
participle; e.g.: in the sentence "I, hating her, wrote her a letter of
complaint", the phrase "I, hating her" is exactly the same as the
translation of "I hate her".

I'm still working out the details, so things may change; but the above
gives the general concept behind the system.


T