Re: English "another"/Conlang Question

On 8/8/07, David J. Peterson <dedalvs@...> wrote:
> It just occurred to me that "another" is kind of strange in English.
> Here's the relevant distribution:
>
> (a) I want a different cookie.
> (b) I want another cookie.
> (c) *I want an another cookie.
> (d) ?I want an other cookie.
> (e) I want the other cookie.
> (f) *I want different cookie.
>
> So "another" isn't properly an adjective, or it would have the
> same distribution as "different".  Yet I get the sense that "an other"
> is different from "another".  The thing that bothers me is that
> you clearly can't say "an another", unless "another" is some sort
> of brand name.
Historically, I guess it was formed from "an other" and therefore
doesn't want to take (redundantly) "an" before it.  Similarly it
doesn't seem to want a definite article either:

(g) *I want the another cookie.

> I have a series of nouns that are supposed to be derived from
> a combination of this /i/ particle and a noun.  It forms what I've
> called instance of action nouns, or object nouns, or various types
> of nouns, something like this:
>
> tei "to dance" > itei "(a/the) dance"
> moi "guava tree" > imoi "guava fruit"
> kavaka "to write" > ikavaka "book"
>
> In a sentence, you would do it this way:
>
> Ka hava ei i imoi.
> /past eat I OBJ. guava/
> "I ate a guava."
>
> Have I done this wrong?  Should there be no object marker?
Omitting the object marker with i-nouns is
plausible enough, but I could see it going the
other way, especially given the passage of
enough time since "i" started being used as
a prefix.

--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry

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