Re: EXERCISE: Meanings of to be

Well here I am, answering my own exercise. I'll have to think about it now.

>1. forming predicate nominative: He IS happy
elanagiuo treats this construction with an adverb rather than an adjective,
and uses eguo, to exist, in final position.

Ko bia       esigaie kogu.
N  Separator adverb   V

ko - pronoun particle 3rd Sing.
bia - separator, in this case a verb before bia is redundant
esigaie - happily, being-happy
kogu - exists, third person singular present

He happily exists.

(BTW, my sentence analysis style has been changing as I watch other posts
and try to make myself more understandable.)

>2. equivalence: Today is Wednesday.
This uses etauo, my only verb that looks like a noun but conjugates. It
means, roughly, "to be equivalent to the half of the sentence after bia."

Kataka ta bia Uadanesadiuo*.

ka-  - this
-taka - time
ta - etauo, to be equivalent, present singular stem
bia - separator
Uadanesadiuo - sound it out ten times fast and you'll get it

Now is equal to Wednesday.

*It's a pidgin form of "Wednesday," because I haven't worked on the calendar
yet but it definately won't have seven day weeks.
>3. existance: To be, or not to be.
>4. English use, for creating verb forms: He is walking.
No eqivalent to the progressive. Koshashu means he walks.

>5. Numerical equivalence: One plus one is two.
I haven't worked on numbers yet but it would use etauo.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jake
AIM: alwaysawake247
MSN Messenger: alwaysawake247@hotmail.com



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