Re: Terms of Endearment

Chris Bates wrote:

> How many people have the [love/like] distinction in their
> conlang?
Kash, definitely.  sisa 'love (vb or n; also 'lover')', lisam 'like'; lisam
has derivs. lilisam 'like a lot, dote on', lalisam 'prefer' (< lavi lisam
'more like')
Similarly, Indonesian cinta 'love', suka 'like'.  Curiously, both are
Sanskrit loans.

>  And finally, adjectives used as nouns. Do many conlangs/natlangs allow
> free use of adjectives as nouns? .....Of course, this question has
> no meaning if a language has stative verbs instead of adjectives.
Kash "adjectives" are stative vbs. when used predicatively, ñakimi yapambara
(ñaki-mi ya-pambara car-my it-is black-- but not when descriptive:
yale ñakimi pambara (there-is my-car black= I have a black car).  They can
also be nominalized, as in Spanish, by using the demonstrative (as a sort of
def.article)---
malisam yu pambara (I-like that black= I like the black one); where
appropriate, you can distinguish gender--
malisam ye vital  'I like the tall one(fem.)'-- though not as easily in the
plural-- niç pamabara 'the black ones(inanim.)' but nila vital 'the tall
ones (m. or f.); you'd have to say something like nila vital re sinut~luma
'the tall ones that are male~female'

Indonesian is similar to Kash, except the difference between
predicate/descriptive depends on intonation or word order--
mobilku hitam 'my car is black' with stress on both -bil- and hi-; also,
hitam mobilku

mobilku hitam 'my black car' with main stress on hi-, secondary or none
on -bil- (not *hitam mobilku in this sense) -- and

yang hitam 'the black one' (rel.pron. + black, that which/the one who is
black)

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