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Re: EXERCISE: Meanings of to be

From:agricola <agricola@...>
Date:Tuesday, July 2, 2002, 22:23
Jake _wr_ote:

Talarian is interesting in that, while there is a verb "be" (ffewam), it is largely
unnecessary because any substantive can be used as a verb. In particular a
sative verb, which essentially makes for a verb that means "is X".

>1. forming predicate nominative: He IS happy
One can use some other verb to form a phrase that roughly means the same. Like, "socta manstar-co", is-wise saint-the. Such would certainly emphasise the saint's inherent holiness. To simply describe someone or something as holy, one could use "xatam", go, with a verbal noun. Like, "xatati manstar-co sacttani", goes saint-the holying-in (or the saint is in being holy). There is no emphasis on any of the saint's inherent qualities.
>2. equivalence: Today is Wednesday.
Talarians can distinguish between nenaparti and naparati. The former is the punctual aorist and means "it was Wednesday" or "it will be Wednesday"; while the latter is durative present and means "it Wednesdays", i.e., today is Wed. [By the way, the days of the week are ultimately derived from ancient Semitic forms.]
>3. existance: To be, or not to be.
General existence is where "ffewam" shines: "ffewtan-wa ffewtan-na", being-either being-not. Or "ffewtan-wa na ffewtan-wa". The latter is a bit clumsy, since -na is really a suffix.
>4. English use, for creating verb forms: He is walking.
Present progressive form. Talarian doesn't have it. The closest would be something like "xatati pashshaxatomtar-co", goes walker-the. Here "xatam" is durative, so gives a sense of continuance, though not equivalent to the English.
>5. Numerical equivalence: One plus one is two.
"Pamtra-hal trayas wewosa ashtor": 5-towards 3, because of, lives 8. In other words, 'eight exists because of putting five to three.' Several neat things here. First, mathematical numbers are base-10 (rather than the usual base-12) and are derived from Sanskrit. Regular numbers are derived from another language entirely. Second, the equative verb, "wasam", is a 'resultive stative'. Statives have two subtypes, neutral and resultive. Neutral simply describes a pure state; resultive describes a state as a result of some external action: "morta", he is dead; "memorta", he is murdered. The resultive is due to the action of putting one number towards (-hal) another, thus altering the state of their values. Padraic.
>Jake