Re: HELP: a few questions

On Thu, Aug 15, 2002 at 02:13:47PM -0600, Dirk Elzinga wrote:
> At 11:19 PM -0700 8/14/02, Jim Grossmann wrote:
[snip]
> >2nd:   Has anyone experimented with chaining conlangs or other ways to
> >eliminate grammatical subordination of clauses in a conlang?
>
> Haven't done this. I've always been fascinated by subordination, but
> in my projects I like to turn subordinate clauses into what look like
> noun phrases. I then claim that the language doesn't actually have
> subordinate clauses, since they're really noun phrases. But that's
> cheating.
[snip]

Hmm. It seems that that's what Ebisedian does, now that I think of it. For
example, quoted discourse is done by surrounding the quote with the
particles _ti_ and _timi_, and inflecting the particles for case. The
entire thing then acts like a single noun phrase, which can then be used
as an argument to the verb _ta'ma_, "to speak".

There is one problem with this scheme, though. Right now, there is no way
to distinguish between direct and indirect discourse, since both would
require the use of the same grammatical construct using _ti_ and _timi_.
I'm tentatively turning a blind eye to this issue, but I really have no
idea how I might resolve it. :-/


T

--
If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are perfectly
safe; if you look at it the thousandth time, you are in frightful danger of
seeing it for the first time. -- Jesse S. Bangs

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