Re: Translation Exercise:

In a message dated 03/7/02 11:20:49 AM, annis@BIOSTAT.WISC.EDU writes:

<< Inspired by Uk and Ugh, a slight misquote of Humpty Dumpty:

"When I say a word it means exactly what I want it to mean, no more
and no less." >>

    Hey!  We had our first potluck for SLUGS (the Society of Linguistics
UnderGraduateS) yesterday night, and we were all trying to come up with a
motto, and we came up with that exact same quote!  Weird...  Were you
there...?  ;)  Anyway, so what is the exact quote?  None of us knew; we just
knew kind of what it was.  Anyway, here's Megdevi for it:

"ZUlo m&kIl&ZIm za4a4o ?oj, doj qabasi ZImIm Zu, lI?oj dZakajali, lIdoj
qabasi, dijx va4ij, dijx zova4ij."

And it's like...

(1) (at) the time (in which); (2) word-acc.; (3) say-irr.; (4) I; (5) it; (6)
mean-pres., intr.; (6) that which-acc.; (7) yes; (8) particle-I; (9)
intr.-want-pres.; (10) particle-it; (11) mean-pres., intr.; (12) not; (13)
more; (14) not; (15) opp.-more.

    It occurs to me that I don't know what /lI-/ is.  It's kind of like a
comp., but it also indicates the object of a verbal noun.  So, "I eat the
carrot", would be "I eat carrot-Im", where /-Im/ is the accusative, but in "I
want to eat the carrot", it'd be "I want eating-Im lI-carrot", so that the
verbal noun of eating takes the accusative, and the object of that takes
/lI-/.  So I know how to use it; I just don't know what it is.  Oh, it also
does things for performative verbs.  So, "I think bunnies are cute", would be
"I think, lI-bunnies are cute".  And for, "The man who petted the bunny came
to the store the other day" would be "The man, lI-he petted a bunny, came to
the store the other day".  Any ideas on what this could be?  Or is it just a
particle which takes care of different functions, and, if one were doing a
kind of reconstruction of it, or something, one would just say that these are
different particles that happen to have an identical form?

-David

"Zi hiwejnat zodZaraDatsi pat Zi mirejsat dZaCajani sUlo."
"The future's uncertain and the end is always near."
                --Jim Morrison