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Re: More thoughts about S11 grammar

From:H. S. Teoh <hsteoh@...>
Date:Thursday, March 24, 2005, 17:41
On Wed, Mar 23, 2005 at 12:00:40AM +0100, Henrik Theiling wrote:
[...]
> "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@...> writes:
[...]
> > You mean it's time to make another Tatari Faran post? ;-) > > Exactly! I'd love to comment! :-)))
OK, I'll see if I can post something soon. I haven't been working very much on TF, although when I last left off, there was a little crisis involving infinitive vs. gerundive phrases vs. participles. The current description on the website uses the nominalized verb (using the -i suffix) for both, but I'm wondering if the existing relative verb conjugations can be extended to cover some of these usages. Quite a tangle to sort out. [...]
> > > I think these sentences show that some relations cannot easily be > > > split into two verbs: they feel inheritently binary (=transitive). > > > > I disagree. For statements of equivalence, e.g. John is a butcher, why > > not verbalise the predicate? John-butcher(ises). Cliticize the > > predicate. > > That was actually my first idea. However, such a sentence may be used > as relative clause where you want the referent to be the noun that is > verbalised. This causes problems. This was especially a problem for > a verbaliser expressing location or possession. Therefore I decided > that there will be no verbalisers in order to make relative clauses > straight-forward.
Ah OK. I didn't remember exactly how your relative clauses were constructed. [...]
> > For statements of possession "John has a book" why not verbalize the > > genitive of 'book'? > > Because I wanted to reduce noun-noun modification to relative clauses, > too. There's thus no genitive case (or any equivalent postposition > etc.). The reason why I wanted this is that a genitive particle would > be a binary concept. And I wanted to remove all adpositions in favor > of verbs -- which, in turn, are intransive.
OK. [...]
> > The LOC marker could, of course, be an actual verb meaning "to be > > located in" or "to be the location of <something>". You could also use > > a different verb for the second -BE, if you prefer, like the > > equivalent of Mandarin's _zhai4_ ("to be present at <someplace>"): > > Hehe. Probably a typical thing many Chinese native speakers do, since > it's not distinguished in most dialects: I think it should be 'zai4', > not 'zhai4'. :-)
Yes, my particular idiolect of Mandarin has collapsed the various affricates into just aspirated/unaspirated, and all the sibilants into [s]. I always have trouble figuring out what's the "correct" transcription to use. [...]
> Anyway, that's indeed exactly the verb I had in mind for 'there is', > later in my posting.
OK. [...]
> > Sounds like you're going through what I went through when I got to the > > point in Ebisédian grammar when I suddenly realized that it has to be > > able to somehow express stative concepts. :-) > > I supposed you would tell me something like this... :-)
:-) [...]
> > And for the verb to-have, I honestly dislike the verb in English. It's > > sloppy thinking. > > Definitely. However, I especially like the Chinese 'you3' for it's > broad usage. Especially its verbalising property in > 'you3 yi2si' - 'to be interesting' and > 'you3 yong4' - 'to be useful' / lit.: 'to have use'
Note, however, that _yi4si_ means "meaning" or "intention", so _you3 yi4si_ is more accurately understood as "to be meaningful". As in, "how meaningful!". (Also, I believe _yi4si_ should be tone 4 rather than 2?) I don't know how verbalising this construction is... in my (untrained, biased) native mind, it is more an adjectival construction than a verbal one.
> I wanted to use this in expressions like 'I am cold': in many German > dialects this is 'kalt haben' (haben = have), so there's an > interesting link, too. I'd distinguish: 'coldness-be' and > 'coldness-have'.
Nice. I've never thought of that. Ebisédian would use something like _cold-LOC I-CVY_, literally "I am in cold".
> Still I agree that in many cases, I'd not use 'have', e.g. 'own' > would probably be different.
OK.
> BTW, Mandarin's 'hen3' - 'much, very' is also nice for it's universal > usage. Combined with the above, I just love expressions like > 'hen3 you3 yong4'.
Yeah, _hen3_ is an intensifier. In this case, _you3 yong4_ is really like an adjectival phrase, so you could say _hen3_ is functioning as "very". (Unrelated pedantic note: the phrase is really _hen2 you3 yong4_ due to tone sandhi. Generally speaking having two tone-3 syllables side by side is undesirable.) [...]
> However, Finnish shows that the concepts of 'have', 'be equal to', 'be > a', 'have a property' (be + adjective), 'be located at' are really > just expressions of being in a certain state -- Finnish only has the > copula 'olla' for all of these. (And Russian just doesn't bother to > mention its copula at all in these case. :-)) > > If you have transitive verbs (like 'olla'), you can mark the exact > meaning at the object/adjunct (with a case, for example), without > mixing up concepts. > > However, for S11, I think I agree with you. I fact I think that I > *need* different verbs, because they are only intransitive and are > like cases in other langs.
Yeah, the intransitive-only idea doesn't quite work with this feature. :-) [...]
> > > I don't know what exactly will be needed. Hopefully you have some > > > thoughts about what will most probably be special verbs? > > > > I don't like the idea of special verbs. The monovalent-verb-only idea > > is the right way to go. You just have to unlearn the wrong ways you > > picked up from your L1. ;-) > > I think you're right. Thanks for pushing me back into track! :-)))
Hehe. Sometimes it takes another conlanger to keep you going far enough with your ideas. :-) [...]
> > > Yet the normal intransitive verbs just don't feel elegant in some > > > cases. > > [...] > > > > You mean *transitive* verbs? > > I meant the normal intransitive verbs in S11 here. In contrast to the > special ones.
Ah I see.
> More thinking is necessary, but I think you convinced me to stay with > the original idea. There are many sentences to run tests on now. :-)
[...] Glad I could help. T -- "Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." -- E.W. Dijkstra