Re: ANADEWISM: Natlangs that do comparison with true verbs?

Hey!

*nods head*. Thank you. So you *can* do that with verbs in
not-so-foreign natlangs, too, I see. I must think about how
to do that in German. I guess it's like in Dutch. So let's
see:

  Der Mensch gleicht dem Wolf in seiner Wildheit.
  Man equals the wolf in his ferocity.

  Der Wolf übertrifft den Menschen in seiner Wildheit.
  The wolf surpasses man in his ferocity.

  Der Mensch unterliegt dem Wolf in seiner Wildheit.
  Man is inferior to the wolf in his ferocity.

René: Maybe it would have been better to choose "as for"
instead of the second "is". Maybe it would have been
better, too, to say "was seine Wildheit betrifft" (what
concerns his ferocity) instead of "in seiner Wildheit".

The problem was that when I tried to translate, or at least
tried to do the interlinear for the story of the Northwind
and the Sun (also a standard example as it seems to me), I
had difficulties translating "Aber je mehr er blies, desto
fester hüllte sich der Wanderer in seinen Mantel ein" --
"But the more he blew, the more tightly the traveller
wrapped himself into his cloak", or so. I haven't had the
English version available offhand, only the first two
sentences of it. Ayeri is not capable of handling two
"true" verbs ("Vollverben", as opposed to copulae), it can
only handle one copula and one verb per clause. Subclauses
can have own verbs of course, too. I shot myself into the
foot by taking the German version, because G does not care
about marking adjectives and adverbs as English or French
do (-ly, -ement). So finally, I translated "je kräftiger er
blies" -- and saw after a while that actually,
"kräftig" (powerful) and "fest" (here: tight) are actually
adverbs, which can be compared more simply: Adding the stem
of the comparison verb as an ending to the adverb, which
gives us
"nu-micyo-ican-eng" (AGT.strong-very.to=be=more=...=than)
and "nu-TIGHT-eng" (AGT.tight.to=be=more=...=than). In the
environment: "... nárya ti ang maBLOWiyùin numicyoicaneng,
to asanoang ea maWRAPiyè nuTIGHTeng cong tova iyèin."
I haven't made up words for "to blow", "to wrap sth/s.o.
into sth" and "tight" yet.

BTW, by the end of next month, it'll be one year that I'm
working on Ayeri! And as I noticed when doing the
interlinear of the "Northwind and the Sun", there are still
revisions to be made and things to be covered in the
grammar. My further plans are first to update the German
translation (the PDF file) and then to rewrite the English
version (the HTML file). The grammar is quite complete up
to now, but still without stylistic registers and stuff.
Making a raw translation of some examples should actually
only be a matter of coining words. The two alphabets will
be included into the PDF file, too. While doing this all, I
must urgently make up words for my naming language,
Ambrian, set up more intelligent sound changes, puzzle
names together and finally let them run through the sound
changes. I have also thought about looking up the PIE roots
of the list of most common words for names by Jeffrey
Henning and let the roots run through five or so different
phonologies to create a bit more variety. Because there's
no justification for PIE roots in my conworld, I'm afraid I
have to say that these names are too old to be
reconstructed :P Or maybe I could have my own
reconstructions?.

Have a nice day,
Carsten

--
Eri silveváng aibannama padangin.
Nivaie evaenain eri ming silvoieváng caparei.

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