Re: question about classifiers

On Sat, 4 Dec 1999, Nik Taylor wrote:

> Nik Taylor wrote:
> > Why have classifiers?  You already use seperate verbs for things like
> > "read".
>
> Er, what I meant, of course, was why add new classifiers.
>
> Of course, any category could add new items.  So, perhaps, after a word
> meaning "travel" is used a lot of times for various vessels (like "They
> built it.  It travels thru space"), it might be worn down to a pronoun,
> becoming a suffix.
>
> How do you handle prepositions?
That's my weak point, actually.  I considered two posibilities: the first
is the adjectival preposition, which can be a transitive verb with two
arguments:

ngk -- "to be in"

ngk-qa-lu
to be in - I - manufactured enclosure.  "I"m in the house."

As for adverbial prepositions, I don't know -- I was thinking adverbial
constructions can be prefixed to the verb, but how do go about that
prepositionally I don't know.