Re: Varon

On 19 Jan 02, at 18:36, Christophe Grandsire wrote:

> En réponse à The RipperDoc <ripperdoc@...>:
>
> > It's just a sort of "irregularity". And I think it looks better, and,
> > I didn't know any language that did have colors as nouns.
>
> French! In fact, in French any adjective can be used as a noun, including
> colors.
I think he meant "that has colours as *verbs*". As I understood it, his
language was something like "The tree greens" for "The tree is green".

(I think I read somewhere that some speakers of Esperanto do something
like that -- add a verb ending to colour names and use it as a verb.)

> Amerindian languages can consider numbers as verbs
So can Polynesian. Leads to some interesting translations. My Niue
dictionary has, among others, the following sentences with translations
and an attempt by me at a literal translation:

    Ua e fufua moa haaku ne kai he aho nei
    I ate two eggs today
    Two ABS egg chicken my[*] REL eat in day this
    = the eggs which I ate today twos (= is two)

    Ne taha e fufua moa i loto he kato
    There was one egg in the basket
    PAST one ABS egg chicken in bottom of basket
    = the egg in the bottom of the basket oned (= was one)

Interesting that the number takes a tense marker such as 'ne' (= past),
just like verbs. So I guess they are verbs there.

Cheers,
Philip

[*] Not really "my chicken eggs"; just the fact that the subject of a
relative clause can move into the main clause as a possessive. So it's
a variation of, if I'm correct, "Ua e fufua moa ne kai e au he aho nei"
= "Two ABS egg chicken REL eat ERG I in day this".
--
Philip Newton <Philip.Newton@...>

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