'Yemls Grammar Questions
From: | Jeffrey Jones <jsjonesmiami@...> |
Date: | Saturday, April 26, 2008, 12:53 |
I'm not feeling in top mental form right now, but I'm going to try posting
this ....
One of the problems I've always had in writing up 'Yemls grammar has been
with terminology. Besides function words and numbers, 'Yemls has classes of
words differentiated by which tense and aspect inflections they take. These
classes are:
(1) actions, such as hit, run
(2) qualities, such as hot
(3) other states, such as belong to (I don't remember if see, want belong here
or in (1))
(4) inherent characteristics, such as dog.
Any of these can be used as _syntactical_ verbs, nouns, or adjectives, as in
d dOg: SEL. - "The dog is singing."
d SEL: dOg. - "The one singing is a dog."
So what should I call each of these?
Another terminological question is what to name the moods. One is pretty
much an indicative mood. It's used in statements (positive and negative),
questions, and assumptions. This mood is unmarked. There may also be one for
contrafactual conditions and conclusions, but I've never pinned down how it's
marked. The other mood, marked with a suffix -q, is used for a number of
things:
(A) in main clauses with no subject present as an imperative
(B) also in main clauses, but with a subject present, to indicate the wishes of
the speaker (possibly, if the sentence is a question, it would involve the
wishes of the addressee(s))
These two also apply to direct quotations.
SELq. - "Sing!"
uEi: SELq. - "Let's sing!"
jOn: SEL-q. - "May John be singing."
i: SELq. - "I want to sing."
(C) in noun clauses which are objects of certain auxiliaries; these indicate
hypothetical actions
(D) in adverbial (?) clauses it may indicate purpose
(E) in other uses it may indicate either possibility or preference (I'm not sure
which; I haven't found my handwritten notes yet)
So what should I call the moods?
Jeff