Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: adjectival vs. adverbial prepositional phrases

From:Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...>
Date:Monday, October 14, 2002, 8:13
Is there any way you could avoid sending dark blue text on a light blue
background, David? It's hard to read on my homoe computer, and practically
impossible on the Uni's Sun terminals.

                                               Andreas


>From: David Peterson <DigitalScream@...> >Reply-To: Constructed Languages List <CONLANG@...> >To: CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU >Subject: Re: adjectival vs. adverbial prepositional phrases >Date: Sun, 13 Oct 2002 16:32:47 EDT > >Nathaniel wrote: > ><<Of course, there are >also plenty of ambiguous examples like "I opened the presents under the >tree.">> > >That's a good one, as far as ambiguity goes. In my language Kamakawi, the >the ambiguity would remain, because that's one of the places where the >ambiguity in that languages lies. [My quote: All languages have >ambiguity, >but not all ambiguities are equal.] So, "A mama ei ie nawa ie pala" >/(new >subject) (hug) (I) (predicate+def.) (fish) (in+def.) (house)/ could mean "I >hug the fish who is in the hosue" or "I, who am in the house, hug the >fish". > (Of course, due to the multifariousness of /i/, it could also mean, "I >hug >the fish on behalf o the house.") So that ambiguity remains. > >For an example of a language where that ambiguity is resolved, take Zhyler >(from my quote below). So if you want to say "I read the book in the >house", you have two options: > >1.) /am.'SAr Ez.'dZez a.'mum/ (book-ACC. house-INESS. read-PRES.-1sg.) >[Note placement of the house phrase, and the stress.] > >2.) /'ez.dZEz am.'SAr a.'mum/ (house-INESS.-ADJ. book-ACC. >read-PRES.-1sg.) > >So the difference is that in phrase 1, the "in the house" part comes right >before verb, because that's what it modifies--i.e., it describes the manner >or the place in which the action took place. In this case, the action is >a >person reading, so it describes where that reading took place. And, >regular >stress in Zhyler is word-finally. > >In sentence two, though, the "in the house" part comes before "the book", >because it's describing where the book is. Also, it becomes an adjective, >and adjectives are the sole exception to the stress rule in Zhyler, >adjectives taking penultimate stress (stress shift is a common way of deriv >ing adjectives from nouns). Also, only stress vowels are tense, so /E/ > >[e]. So three changes: stress, vowel quality, and placement. But it >resolves the ambiguity. (There is ambiguity in other places.) [Man, I >hate to throw this in here, but in the pregame shows for the baseball >playoffs, they've been playing some awesome music for the Angels (my team; >I'm from Orange County)! Once they played Led Zeppelin's "Hot Dog"--very >obscure, excellent. And just right now they were playing "Peace Frog" by >the Doors! How 'bout that...] > >If you wanted to really stress the idea of "I" (the speaker) being in the >house, you could drag out a pronoun (usually for first person, you just get >a >suffix on the verb). So that'd be: > >/'ez.dZEz mA am.'SAr am/ (only change is /mA/ is 1sg pronoun, and the verb, >then, loses the 1sg ending) > >And that'd translate as something like, "While I was in the house, I read a >book", or something, but it'd be kind of weird to say that. This language >doesn't like pronouns, and avoids them wherever possible. > >-David > >"imDeziZejDekp2wilDez ZejDekkinel..." >"You can celebrate anything you want..." > -John Lennon
_________________________________________________________________ Join the world’s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com

Reply

daniel andreasson <danielandreasson@...>