GROUPLANG: simple, original,natural case sys

Clinton wrote :

On Sat, 17 Oct 1998, Pablo Flores wrote:
>
> > That's not so different from the STM, only a bit more mixed.
>
>         I've been following this case discussion for a bit, as I'm
> currently working on (aka "redeciding") Aelya's case system. I'm taking a
> case grammar approach, which means that Aelya ends up ergative, sort of.
Too bad. There are many other approaches. I hold ergative for an undecisive
compromise between all-cases and all-voices systems. But you won't find that
kind of judgement in linguistics, because this involves discussing what meaning
is. A very dangerous issue in linguists' eyes. Meditate on it and you will
understand their whole system of analysis is dust in the wind (dustmen ? :-)

>         The question is this...what's STM? I think I missed it.
>
>         Clinton
>
A joke, Clinton. Only a joke :-)
St Thomas could not believe Christ resurrected until he could feel His wounds.
All-noun rooting predicate ('ALRP')'s promoters like me need concrete nouns as result
or agent of a process to believe there is a process. Reversely, they can make a
process from most nouns as English does. For instance :
'Circle' is unaspective, i.e. it need not be involved in a process starting and ending
(aspects) such as 'to encircle' or a state such as 'to have the shape of a
circle' to exist as a circle.
But people like Carlos and me dream of these processes and states when
encountering a circle. In our eyes 'circle' is also something we experience as
the ring on a finger, the walls rounding up a town, the snake coiling up on a
tree, and all steps of processes therewith.
And we can't believe abstract concepts of verbs : we tend to need a physical
evidence of these processes, such as a golden ring, a steal hammer, a cart,
etc., the same way as St Thomas needed touch Christ's wounds to believe. That's
what French would call St Thomas' System (STM) :-)

Mathias



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