Re: THEORY: Deriving adjectives from nouns

Tem Thu, 3 Jun 1999 09:48:00 -0700, Charles <catty@...>
skribis:

>Marcos Franco wrote:
>
>> I have four kind of adjectives from a noun in UTL:
>> 1. direct one:                  menta
>> 2. direct agglutinated one:     mentoa / mentea (-o and -e are
>> sing&plural noun endings respectively)
>> 3. indirect (suffixed) one:     ment-al-a
>> 4. preposition-compounded one: mento-pora, mento-kuna, mento-pera...
>>
>> As for their meanings:
>> 1m. which is... mento
>> 2m. related with... mento/mente
>> 3m. of (de)... mento/e
>> 4m. por, kun, per, (etc)... mento
>>
>> As you see, 1. and 4. are precise-meaning, though 2. and 3. are not,
>> and I have still to decide some things, like:
>> a. What's the exact meaning of preposition "de" (of) (which would
>> affect 3.)
>> b. Whether it should be better to have 2m. for 3. and and 3m. for 2.
>> c. Whether it would be worthy to have a 5th adjective: genitive one,
>> expressed by -y added to the noun, or to attach genitive's meaning to
>> 2 (after assigning to it 2m to 3).
I've already made some decisions. It's important to keep 2 as 2m for
the compounds in 4 to be consistent. I mean:
mento-pera (by means of mind) =3D mentoam pera (-am =3Dadverb ending)
=46or being correct, mentoam has to mean "in a way related with mento",
and that's only possible if 2 -> 2m.
About 3. I've decided that -al- serve to derive nouns from -oa/-ea
adjectives (to avoid forms like "mentoo"). That way, mentalo will mean
"something related with mind" (and mentala would be then "which is
something related with mind").=20

So both "mentoa masturbio" and "mentala masturbio" would be correct
translations of "metal masturbation". But to precise meaning, I should
have to use a 4. construction. In fact, all may be expressed by a 4.
construction. The rest ones are just to provide simpler ways to
express usual meanings. Well, assuming "ni" is my accusative
preposition (sorta esperanto's unofficial "na"), I may use it to say:
mento-nia masturbio
and then we have a precise way to express "masturbation of (applied
on) mind".

>That seems like a lot of fine distinctions for what is usually
>quite vague in my own speech. I don't know if many natlangs
>make such distinctions. Even genitive (for me) is only usefully
>distinguished from normal adjective by being able to take
>more adjectives itself, as in "pretty little girl(s)(') school",
>though many langs do distinguish different types of possession.
Particularly on that case ("pretty little girl(s)(') school") you have
an ambiguity, since it's not clear whether the school is "for girls"
or "of the girls".

>Also, how will you distinguish "painting crew from "painted bridge"?
Uh? This is trivial: "-a -o", "-ata -o".

>Last time I tried this, I ended up with 6 kinds:
>-a, plain vague adjective
>-o, genitive, really a noun used as adjective
>-ia before noun, active participle without object, "painting crew"
>-ua before noun, passive/inverse, "painted bridge"
>-ia after noun, takes object, "the crew painting the bridge"
>-ua after noun, "the bridge painted by the crew"
Well, that's good, though I would change the first two ones. -a to
make it more precise, -o to make it consistent (if it is an adjective,
it shouldn't end with noun ending -o).


Saludos,
Marcos