Re: EAK - two problems

On 5/20/07, R A Brown <ray@...> wrote:
> INTERROGATIVES & INDEFINITES
> In the ancient language the same words are used for both, differences being:
> Interrogatives are placed first in the clause/sentence and are accented
> on the first syllable;
> Indefinites are placed in some 'unemphatic' position in the sentence and
> are enclitic (i.e. they throw their accent back onto the preceding word
> if they can, otherwise the disyllabic words are accented on the second
> syllable - monosyllabic lose the accent).
>
> Can I do something similar in EAK, for example (assuming the context
> makes it clear we are referring to the future):
> Póte se élthe? = When will you come?
> Emé élthe poté = I'll be coming sometime.
>
> What if the word is monosyllabic?
> Pòs se prásse autó?  How will you do it?
> Emé prásse autó pòs _or_ Emé prásse pòs autó = I'll do it somehow
>
> (Note: _élthe_ and _prásse_ are used only to give examples; they may not
> be the actual verb forms used in EAK - I haven't 'done the verbs' yet :)
>
> Will this work?
I can imagine so, especially if interrogatives always go in first
position (i.e. no "in-place interrogative" is allowed, even for
stylistic effect, as in English "You told him _what_??!").

How old are the ka- words? MG uses those for indefinites (káti
"something", kápòs "somehow", kápote "sometime", kápou "somewhere"),
but I don't know whether they were a relatively recent invention or
whether they've been around long enough for you to plausibly
incorporate them into EAK.

I thought you didn't want enclitics, though? In which case, I suppose
you could simply say that interrogatives-as-indefinites never throw
the accent back onto the preceding word but are simply always stressed
on the second syllable.

> [POSSESSION]
> In 'Latino sine flexione' Peano was able to make use of the Latin
> preposition _de_ in imitation of the Romancelangs and Vulgar Latin; even
> in the written Classical language we find instances of 'de + abl.' used
> instead of the genitive in certain situations. There is AFAIK nothing
> comparable in Greek, where the genitive persists to the present day.
I don't know of anything, either.

I went with _apó_ for GSF, which looks distinctly odd to me when I
read sentences I've written myself (due to the strong survival of
genitive in the MG I know), and I have to translate it mentally into a
construction with Romance _de_ to ensure that it's reasonable. But
then, I imagine that VL use of _a_ and _de_ for ablative and genitive,
respectively, would seem similarly strange to someone who had studied
only CL.

Would _apó_ be a resonable candidate for AEK, too?

> I had thought of simply using expressions such as _to emé patro_ = 'my
> father' (lit. the I/me father). This is close enough to ancient _ho emós
> patêr_ where _emós_ is the possessive adjective meaning "my". But we get
> problems if the possessor is a noun, e.g. _to to emé patró mètró_ is an
> awkward way of expressing "my father's mother - especially awkward IMO
> is the repetition of _to_.
Ah, yes. In AG, you'd have the second article in the genitive case,
but if you lost that, that construction looks weird and I don't know
whether it'd work well.

> I had though of resurrecting the morpheme _then_ (a bound morpheme in
> ancient Greek), after all _eméthen_ is actually attested with the
> meaning of "my". It could be use, like the modern English _'s_ as the
> possessive marker at the end of a noun phrase. But _to to emé then patró
> then mètró_ still has the awkward repetition of _to_.
>
> In the ancient language, not only attributive adjectives where place in
> the attributive position between article & noun (or after the noun with
> the article repeated), but adverbs and prepositional phrases, used
> attributively, were place in the same position. I shall retain this
> feature in EAK, for example:
> to en to selêno andró _or_ to andró to en to selêno = the man in the moon
> to nun ánthròpo _or_ to ánthròpo to nun = the person of today (lit. the
> now person)
>
> In the above examples I have, following ancient practice, put the
> possessive phrases in the same position. But even in Classical Greek,
> 1st and 2nd persons could alternatively use the genitive of the pronoun
> as an enclitic after the noun. This is the only method for pronouns in
> modern Greek, where it has extended to the 3rd person as well. I do not
> want to introduce enclitics into EAK, but I wonder if the possessive
> expressions could not occupy the same position as the determiners such
> as _toúto_ "this" (e.g. toúto to andró = this man), so:
> emé then to patró _or_ to patró to emé then = my father
> emé then to patró then to mètró _or_ to mètró to patró to emé then then
> = my father's mother
>
> Darn it!! we've now got a repeated _then_!!!!!
>
> Help!
I'd recommend using a preposed particle of some kind.

E.g. using _apó_, you'd have _to apó me patró_, _to patró to apó me_
"my father"; _to apó to patró to mètró_, _to mètró to apó to patró
"the father's mother"; _to apó apó me to patró to mètró_, _to mètró to
apó to patró to apó me_ "my father's mother".

The last breaks down a little when you nest "to [pseudo-genitive]
noun" more than once, but still works if you use the postposed form, I
think. And besides, it would break down even in AG form, I think --
_ho tès tou tòn politôn dèmarhou mètros patêr_ for "the citizens'
mayor's mother's father" is rather unwieldy IMO, especially compared
to _ho patêr ho tès mètros tès tou dèmarhou tou tòn politôn_ "The
father of the mother of the mayor of the citizens".

What do you think?
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>

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