Re: Lahabic Syntax

On Mon, Oct 02, 2000 at 03:45:54PM -0400, The Gray Wizard wrote:
[snip]
> What is "usual" is a difficult concept when it comes to adjectives.  Many
> languages have no distinct category of adjectives at all, but express the
> properties of a noun using either nouns or verbs.  Many of these, however,
> do make this distinction in that they tend to use verbs when used
> predicatively and nouns when used attributively.
I see. Well, the thing about my conlang is that noun modifiers are
actually inside a relative clause -- you can't have a standalone modifier
in the main clause. So in the sentence "the red horse runs through the
countryside", the phrase "the red horse" is rendered as "the horse which
is red":
        ryy's        n3       k3'   d0    m3ng3' loo'ri.
        run          <subord> red   <aux> horse  countryside
        (incid,perf) (cvy)    (cvy) (org) (cvy)  (loc)
        "The horse which is red runs through the countryside", or,
        "The horse which shows forth red runs through the countryside"
        (if you translate the relative clause literally).

Trying to put "red" in the main clause will produce a rather strange
sentence:
        ryy's        k3'   m3ng3' loo'ri.
        run          red   horse  countryside
        (incid,perf) (cvy) (cvy)  (loc)
        "Red and the horse runs through the countryside".

You *could* see such a sentence in native prose, as "red" is sometimes
used as idiomatic jargon referring to philosophical or scientific
entities. But "red" would *never* be interpreted as a modifier of "horse",
because of a phenomenon in the language I call "implicit conjunction".

Basically, barring a few special exceptions, whenever you have two or more
adjacent nouns or noun-clauses in the same case, they are understood as
having implicit conjunctions between them. So:
        pii'z3d3 b3z3t33' 3mir33'n3 jhy'li.
        man      woman    children  room
        (cvy)    (cvy)    (cvy)     (loc)
        "The man *and* the woman *and* the children are in the room."

In fact, strictly speaking, there aren't any explicit conjunctions in the
language -- instead, there are divalent and trivalent correlatives which
can be used when you want to explicitly emphasize a conjunction. The
native speakers find it utterly redundant to specify more than three
explicit conjunctions, and would simply use a mixture of implicit
conjunctions and correlatives.

>
> ASMCL, amman iar predicate adjectives are indeed very verb-like in that they
> may take all of the inflections of an auxiliary including polarity, tense,
> aspect and mood.  When used attributively, these inflections are not
> allowed.  amman iar attributive adjectives do not take nominal inflections,
> however, but many languages require adjective agreement for attributive
> adjectives making them indeed very noun-like.
[snip]

Interesting. It seems that my conlang is *lacking* attributive adjectives;
hence, you need to use a periphrastic relative clause construct to express
it.


T