Re: adjectival vs. adverbial prepositional phrases

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





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