Re: More thoughts about S11 grammar

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