Re: Translation Exercise (was The last enemy)

I like this, as it's a good exercise in constructing passive ideas in
ergative languages:

Gau kasko derin de, idedoan daga.

|death| |enemy| |final| |3p aux| , |3p erg Subj - 3p Obj - predictive
aspect - relative suffix| |destroy|

The penultimate word is an example of the use of the ergative to render a
passive construction. It uses the same pronoun (i.e. 3rd person) in both
ergative subject (ide-) and object (-da) forms, the object form here taking
the predictive marker -o so making -da into -doa. Although this is an
example of both subject and object referring to the same thing, one would
not use the reflexive here; this is used only for strict reflexives (i.e.,
death would literally be destroying itself!) and this use of the same person
for both subject and object is enough to mark this as a "passive"
construction. Incidentally, the main stress in the sentence falls on the
first word.

Mike
>> > ...how does this translate in your conlang?
>> >
>> > The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.
>>

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