Re: Auxiliary verbs

Hi all,

On Sun, 7 May 2006, Carsten Becker wrote:
>
> From: "Philip Newton" <philip.newton@...>
> Sent: Saturday, May 06, 2006 9:59 PM
>
> > To express "You must (not go)", I'd say "Du darfst nicht
> > gehen"  =
> > "You may not go" -- but the converse of that is "Du darfst
> > gehen" =
> > "You may go", with a different modal verb. So in that
> > sense, "have to"
> > has only one negating form, one which negates the modal.
>
> Since I found this to be more sensible than what English
> does, I copied it for Ayeri:
>
>   You must go    = No sahaevang   (must go.2s.AGT)
>   You may  go    = Kila sahaevang (may go.2s.AGT)
>
>   You mustn't go = Kila sahoyevang (may go.NEG.2s.AGT)
I note the existence in English of the form
"mayn't".  This contraction is now, I think,
somewhat rare; however, my parents and
teachers were both at pains to teach us
the difference between "may" and "can",
"may not" and "can't".

 - you can do = you are able to do
 - you may do = you have permission to do

Sample dialogue:
 "Dad, can I go to the pictures?"
 "Certainly, you are able to go."
 "Bye then!"
 "Where are you going?"
 "You said I could go to the pictures!"
 "I said you can go, but I didn't say you may."
 ":-("


I further distinguish "must" and "need", as
follows:
 - you must do = you are obliged to do
 - you need to do = you are required to do

On this reading, "may not" is certainly not
the same idea as "must not".


> The literal use of "mustn't" in Ayeri would imply "needn't"
> instead, so there are actually two forms that express
> "needn't", _no -oy-_ and _ilta -oy-_.
Another pair on which our parents pounced
was "want" and "wish":

 - you want = you lack
 - you wish = you desire

We might say "I want to go to the pictures",
only to be told "You may wish to go there, but
I want you to mow the lawns" ...

You can see my Dad was something of a pedant.
I guess I got my politics from him, after all!

obConlang:  The auxiliary and modal verbs of
English present a useful model for the meta
discussion of action: expressing attitudes and
the like.  My feeling is that French, German and
Spanish have equally subtle distinctions, as
probably do most natlangs.  Although I was
never able to suss out good ways to express all
of these attitudes in Malay, Kadazan or Cham,
I'm sure it was because of my earlier linguistic
habits, rather than any lack in those languages.
Malay seems to have rather more terms for
shades of emotion than English does, and it
takes a while to get a good handle on these less
physical aspects of a language.  So, in the
interests of naturalism, I'd like to encourage
other conlangers to pay attention to providing
an adequate stock of words and structures
dealing with attitude and emotion, rather than
overly focussing on teh tangible.

Regards,
Yahya

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