Re: Gz^rod|in (Some grammar now : articles)

At 04:12 14/03/00 PST, you wrote:
>>
>>So, the article indicates the verb's tense and mood?  Interesting.
>>
>>This system seems very artificial, but of course, if you don't care
>>about being naturalistic, that's not a flaw.  It's quite interesting.
>
>It seems to me that an article that expresses number and person of the
>subject as well as modus/tempus of the verb might be considered an
>auxiliary verb as well. I think that such a construction exists in Basque.
>So it's not that artificial. (You might argue that Basque is a n unnatural
>language though :-))
>
Yes, given to humans by Aliens, which is why you can find alien genes in
the Basques DNA... </end joke>

Well, Basque is a little different, it uses a periphrastic conjugation for
most of its verbs, with the auxiliaries corresponding to 'to have' and 'to
be' (I don't remember the forms though), and a few other defective ones.
Those auxiliaries are really like verbs and are used as verbs in their one
right too (with periphrastic constructions for future for example). So it's
a little different. But it's true that such kinds of articles could be the
origin of real auxiliaries in a later state of the language (let's say...
within 6 generations? :) ).

                                                Christophe Grandsire
                                                |Sela Jemufan Atlinan C.G.

"Reality is just another point of view."

homepage : http://rainbow.conlang.org
(ou : http://www.bde.espci.fr/homepages/Christophe.Grandsire/index.html)