Cases, more cases, abortion, nuns

>En réponse à Matt McLauchlin <matt_mcl@...>:
>Interesting system. In order to stop people who don't really understand to
>criticize your work, maybe you could change the cases names. I would keep
>ergative, and would think of "experiencer" for your absolutive (in all your
>examples where absolutive appears, it refers to the thing which suffers,
>experiences the action, whether it is triggered by something else: "she
>breaks
>the window" or not: "the book rises") and maybe "locative" for your
>"nominative", not for any spatial meaning, but because metaphorically the
>name
>seems to fit (I hope you don't have already a "locative" case :) ).
Actually, I do. However, I'm thinking of this nomenclature:

CURRENT    PROPOSED
Nominative Nominative
Ergative   Agent
Absolutive Patient

Does this sound standard enough?

> > Enlighten me--what is the optative?
>
>The optative marks an action that the speaker wishes to happen. Sometimes
>it also marks a potential event. In Attic Greek, one of the uses of the
>optatives is in swearing -- something like "may the gods curse you" would
>have "curse" in the optative.
Ah, I thought that was called the "volitive". Is that different?

>For the record, I'm ambivalently anti-abortion.  Reading 20 essays on the
>morality or lack thereof of abortion left me even more confused than I
>began with.
FWIW, I was once having a discussion with my (ex-)boyfriend about abortion.
He was mildly anti-abortion and I was strongly pro-choice. Then we decided
it was kind of stupid for two gay guys to be arguing over abortion.


>"Monk" to Western readers, a friend pointed out to me, usually means a
>male person.  "Monk" to me means male or female; I've seen enough female
>Buddhist monks on the subway in Seou.  <shrug>
I once heard someone talking about a "Buddhist nun", which startled me
greatly. The very first image that popped into my mind was a Christian nun
in full habit, except with saffron instead of black.

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