Daniel Andreasson wrote:
>
> Christophe skrev:
>
> > Well, I'm not sure about an interrogative mood, but what I can say is
> > that the Romance grammatical tradition considers infinitives and
> > participles to be impersonal moods, whereas indicative, subjunctive and
> > imperative are personal moods (and if you have an imperative mood, why
> > not an interrogative one?).
>
> Yes. That is most likely the most important question in conlanging:
> 'Why not?' I like moods, the more the merrier I think.
>
In fact, I saw last week a webpage about a natlang with an
interrogative mood. But I don't remember which one. I hope I put it in
my bookmarks...
[snip of interesting stuff (or shit? :) )]
>
> That is, I mark the arguments both on the verb (with an accusative system)
> and on the NPs themselves (with an ergative/'active' system). Somewhat
> unusual I guess, but why not? I like it. Redundancy rules!
> What do you think?
I love redundancy rules! Chasma"o"cho is full of them. I don't
understand why I spent so many time creating languages not redundant...
:)
> And just to make it clear. I'm not criticizing Austin in any way.
> I was just curious about some moods I hadn't heard of before.
>
I didn't take it as a criticism. What strikes me is that the English
tradition doesn't consider the infinitive as a mood. Strange that
grammatical traditions can differ for such basic things in two different
but related Indo-European languages.
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> Daniel Andreasson | daniel@conlang.nu |
http://conlang.nu
> "Mmm... free goo..." - Homer Simpson
> ----------------------------------------------------------