Re: Syntaxy-Turvy (long, crazy)

>===== Original Message From Constructed Languages List >
>Note that there are verbs describing situations with more than 3
>participants.
>
>OTOH, many isolating languages allow only one nominal object for one
>verb. To translate Christophe's example, you need two transitive verbs
>and form a chain of them: I giv(ing)-to dog give bone ('give-to' and
>'give' are different lexemes; 'give-to' works very much like a
>preposition 'to' or 'for'). The problem of prepositions is solved
>thus, too. I think there is more than one way to embed this system
>into your reverse syntax.
Is that what they call a "serial verb construction"?  I've heard of such
things but know nothing about them in detail.

>Interestingly, it seems that verbs tend to denote dynamic situations
>with potentially several participants, whereas nouns more typically
>point to relatively stable entities with usually only few features
>attributed to them in each occurrence. So verbal syntax is usually
>richer and requires some means to distinguish more roles. Can this be
>reversed, I wonder?
I'm not sure that's a matter of reality or whether that's just the way we are
forced to think by having verb-central language.

I see the (conceptualized) world as consisting of an unspeakably complex
webwork of entites linked to each other; some of these entities are things,
and others are states/processes/events, and traditional syntax requires us to
choose a state/process/event as a focus and discuss the one or more things
which are linked to it.

I'm not sure that it's *inherently* more difficult to choose a single thing
and discuss the several states/processes/events it is involved in.

But it certainly is unfamiliar!

You will notice that in an action-chain, where A performs action 1 on B, and B
performs action 2 on C, and C performs action 3 on D, who then performs action
4, it's not *inherently* more difficult to phrase it as:

(A 1) (1 B 2) (2 C 3) (3 D 4)  --- the Taxy way --

than to phrase it as:

(A 1 B) (B 2 C) (C 3 D) (D 4)  -- the English way.


Sentences like "something bothered me, so I sat and thought, in order to
understand it" are much easier to phrase in Taxy (as I hope to revise it,
using indirect objects to represent Intentions) than in English:

   S    V    IO       DO       DO
Bother me understand sit and think.

But I do realize that Taxy reverses a very basic principle of human language
in general -- the verb as the centerpiece of the sentence.

Ed

-------------------------------------------
         edheil@mailandnews.com
-------------------------------------------