Doug Dee wrote:
>Interesting. My (still very sketchy) principal conlang has 4 kinds of
>article:
>
>1. Definite: "The dog bit me."
>2. Generic: "The dog was the first animal domesticated by humans." "Dogs
are
>mammals."
>3. Specific indefinite: "I'm looking for a dog. (It was here a minute ago;
it
>must have run off.)"
>4. Nonspecific indefinite: "I'm looking for a dog. (I haven't had one
since
>I was a child; I'd like to get one again.)"
That is cool. I've been toying with four-level deixis articles for an
unnamed language: near me, near you, near neither of us, indefinite. It's a
lot like the Japanese ko-, so-, a- system, but with a fourth level added.
This is tied to the concept of the "fourth person" pronoun, which will be
an indefinite, unspecified, or "null" subject. Fourth person conjugation
will therefore replace the passive voice: "(4p) broke the plate" for "the
plate was broken".
>I was distinct annoyed to read in _Definiteness_ that "It has often been
>pointed out that no language has noun phrases distinctively generic in
form."
> That is, my article #2 seems to violate a linguistic universal that
generics
>are treated as either definite or indefinite.
Why should you be annoyed? You've successfully violated a universal! Keep
it!
M