Re: congrammar update

Roger wrote:

>tunu's -n is like -nya in the
>way that it's a possessive pronoun when
>suffixed to a noun but it only refers to a noun
>precedent ....
>....but -n is also an accusative pronoun referring
>to a head noun precedent .....
>....and it's also a nominative pronoun ....
>it is not itself the tag of substantive although it is
>part of construct nouns:
>
Lots of duties for {-n}.  Out of curiosity, is it considered the "same"
morpheme in all cases, or several?  The latter wouldn't be unusual...
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yes, it's the same morpheme wich is a prostuff referring to a
"topic". a "topic" is a topic (with tag "a") as well as the head noun of a
subclause ("i") or the verb ("u").

man a-n have house i roof-n long u-n very
man TOP-HE has house THAT roof-(of)-IT long ADV-IT very
the man has a house with a very long roof

i can't explain very well though:
"a" refers to "man", "i" to "house" and "u" to "long"
while "n" refers back to "a", "i", or "u" precedent.

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>does Kash use also a topical tag to do so?
>or is it more like the reverse indonesian construction :
>Yono (harus) menulis alamat > alamat (harus) Yono tulis
    I'm vague on the use of -lah, but it strikes me it would be used here:
alamatlah, (yang) Yono tulis, or even the passive, alamatlah yang ditulis
Yono.
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this would give a different and genuine topical turn to "alamat" though--
which is what tunu does, except for the passive form of course.
whence my question to which your answer above responded clearly.

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    Seems to me Indo. uses intonation to disambiguate things like this:
dokter áli can be either Dr. Ali or Ali's doctor, but dókter, áli would only
be the emphatic of áli dókter 'Ali is a doctor'  (Kash has a verb 'to be',
but like adalah, it's not often used except in writing where precision might
be necessary.)
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ah? i admit i've never noticed that.
but i've often been told that french ears are pitch&stress-deaf.

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        Mmm, no I don't think so.  /re/ is the invariant relative clause
marker and technically plays no role in the rel.clause; so:  ... the man who
saw me ...kash re mam (me) ya/tikas (he-saw);  ...the man (whom) I saw
...kash re yan (him) ma/tikas (I-saw)....  the man to whom I gave the money
...kash re ne (to him) ma/wele toye.  The closest equivalent is sort of
tangled-up English, when we say "...the man which I gave him the money".
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i see. so Kash uses the 3rd person to refer to the head noun
of the subclause like in "very bad" french:

"l'homme qu'il me voit"
kash re mam yatikas
neju i-n kite sana
(btw, why "mam" rather than "man"?)

"l'homme que je le vois"
kash re yan matikas
neju i sana kite-n

"l'homme que je lui donne l'argent"
kash re ne mawele toye
neju i sana tuke moni tai-n

i like very much this way of saying things.
but i wanted to make a difference in tunu between 3rd person and topic.
i guess in kash it's not necessary thanks to personal and case affixes:

"the man to whom he gives money"
kash re ne yawele toye

"the man who gives money to him"
kash re yawele toye ne
(i made up "ne" but i guess it may be "ye" or "ñe" too-- i like ñe better
actually).

but in tunu i kind of need "n" because natural word order is TSVOiO with
almost no possible permutation like kash "to-him he-give money". hence:

neju i sini tuke moni tai-n
man who he give money to-him
"-n" refers to head noun "man" while "sini" ("he/she/it") refers to someone
else.
("tai" is like "kepada")

neju i-n tuke moni tai sini
man who-he give money to him

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(snip)
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i like how Kash sounds.
i suggest we make an IndoPacific & Austric Conlang Club with Saalangal,
Boreanesian, etc.
like there is a Celtic one already :-)

btw, what is the plural of "kash"? "kash-kash"?
and how does kash handle TMA ? are they mostly auxiliaries like in indonesian?
what's Kash url again?


mathias