Re: 80th lexicon entry

From: "H. S. Teoh"

> ObConlang: what kind of conjunctions are in your conlangs? Are they
> equivalent to the English "and", "but", etc., or are there different words
> for the various meanings of "and", or are they divided differently from
> conjunctions in English?
Géarthnuns has "zhö" for "and", and is only used to link nouns, adjectives,
and adverbs. "Kfö" as '"and" is used to connect verbs and clauses. "Arzhö"
works like "zhö" in the meaning of "but" ("It's not green, but yellow."; it
also crops up in the reverse, where it does not occur in English: "Damn it,
Jim, I'm a doctor, [but] not a bricklayer" ["but", mandatory in
Géarthnuns]); "arkfö" like "kfö". "Orha" ("and") is a sentence connector and
feels more to me like "moreover", and always follows the auxiliary in a new
sentence: "And when you pray, be not like...". "Öblé" ("but"), "however",
works the same way. (I have since found out that many Latin conjunctions get
shifted to second position like this). This helps sentences from having
conjunctions bunch up at the beginning, which sounds nasty in Géarthnuns
("But since he's not coming...."; "Arkfö vböçü fökh la thauth sho..." YECH!
"Vböçü fökh la öblé thauth sho..." Much better.). "Zhö", "arzhö", "kfö" and
"arkfö" have more import than they might in English, since they are needed
if a sentence changes polarity mid-stream (affirmative to negative or vice
versa), which is why "but" is requisite in the above Star Trek sentence,
while not in English.

Kou

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