Re: Grie Ka #1 (was Re: ,Language' in language name?)

Hiroshi Kato <hkato@...> wrote:

Wow, thank you for your input.
(And thank all of you guys for additional info)
There are so many ( and very major ones), huh?
It is always good to know my ignorance.
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uh-oh! Hiroshi, there is a misunderstanding here! i don't know more than you
do but only something else. none of us is ignorant but we're all used to
different langs.
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And actually I am already getting influenced by those inputs.
For example, I really like

(From: "Kala Tunu" <kalatunu@...>)
 > Hebrew
 > beit-sefer "house-book" = "school"

(It sounds really nice, and natural. I'm surprised!)
So maybe, I'll make up words like that in near future.
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yeah, but there is another fact that mingles here: some items look
"naturally" possessing or possessed items regarding other items (in french
linguistic books they talk about "référent et attribut").
for instance, if you look at the following pairs of words, you would
naturally imply which is possessed and whic is possessing:
man - height
house - family
animal - eye
some others could be both ways:
mother - child
etc.
depending on the linguistic background, some items are considered as
"inalienable" or "alienable" property. for instance in some langs, one's
clothes are inalienable (like in ainu).
anyway, when an item is considered as a natural part of another whole item,
the whole item is often put in front of the part:
french: "il frappe la femme à la tête" ("he hits the woman's head")
indonesian: "pohon tingginya (adalah) dua meter" ("the tree is two meters'
high")

the genitive word-order in french and indonesian are "head (of) woman" and
"height (of) tree". but they both thend to put the "whole" (woman and tree)
before the "part" (head and height). to do so, these languages use a dative
("à la") and a possessive suffix "-nya":
"pohon tingginya" is really "the tree its height". that's what turks say
too: "odali kapisi" = "of the room its door" = "the room's door".
there is a also a conlang that tags both items as master and servant.
but in compound words they usually stick to one word order (head-tail or
tail-head).
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But....it is getting clearer and clearer that one of my ambitious targets,
i.e.
an equal accessibility regardless of linguistic backgrounds, is just a naive
one. :-)
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not at all! there are definitely easier languages to learn than others!

Mathias



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