Re: Laranao modals, aspects, etc.

Daniel Andreasson skrev:

>The Laranao quantifiers:
>
>onga  * all, collective ('all')
>ongai * all, distributive ('every,each')
>ele   * any / hypothetical sg. ('any one',
>        'he who...' 'any one who...')
>elao  * any / hypothetical pl. ('any',
>        'those who...')
>eto   * some sg. ('someone,something')
>etao  * some pl.
>ero   * many
>
>Did I miss any important quantifiers? Does this
>look like a reasonable system?
Many languages have a paucal quantifier, meaning
something like "some", "a few", "a little bit", "not
many", "several".  Is this covered by "etao"?
There are actually two kinds of "some" in English,
and it's not clear which kind corresponds to
"eto"/"etao":

   There are some people in the garden.
      (= an indefinite/non-specific number)

   Some people like salsa music.
      (= more than none, but less than all)

Many languages also have proportional quantifiers
like "most", "enough", "not enough", and "more",
but these notions are also expressible in other
ways.  It's also possible to have a negative
quantifier "no/nothing", but other languages
indicate this concept by negating an indefinite
construction (e.g. Malagasy expresses "No
children came to the party" as "There aren't
children who came to the party").

Some languages have a dual collective quantifier
"both", while other languages use "every/all" +
"two" for this.

Tokana (which is somewhat rich in quantifiers)
includes the quantifiers "miotsaka" and "antsaka",
which mean "every kind of/all kinds of" and
"many kinds of/various", respectively:

   ten miotsaka halma
   "every kind of book"
   "all types of books"

   antsaka halma
   "many kinds of books"
   "various and sundry books"
   "books galore"

>The Laranao aspects:
>
>io   * negative     'not'
>toa  * inceptive    'begin'
>he@  * cessative    'stop'
>area * ?name        'to be able to make in time'
>if@  * habitual     'use to' 'to do regularly'
>0    * perfective   'complete action'
>mi   * imperfective 'incomplete action'
>
>Is there a name for the 'make in time' aspect?
>It's used like: 'Will you be able to bake all
>those cookies in time for christmas?' =
>'Will you _area_ bake all those cookies before christmas?'
Sounds like a conflation of aspect and modality
to me:  Completive aspect + abilitative modality.
How about "abilitative-completive"?

>Can I have 'negative' as an aspect?
Calling negation an aspect implies that it forms
part of a paradigm with the other aspect particles,
and is thus mutually exclusive with them.  Is this
the case?  Can "io" not co-occur with, say, "mi"
or "if@"?  I suspect that it can, in which case
you should treat it as a separate category.

Cheers,
Matt.