Re: GROUPLANG: Pronouns
| From: | Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Monday, October 19, 1998, 8:57 |
|---|
At 15:45 16/10/98 -0400, you wrote:
>Carlos Thompson wrote:
>> I've suggested we have a compulsory gender/class dictintion with other
>> optional "genders" or markers which would be needed for agreement
>> differenciation or extention of the meaning. I've post sex being one of
>> them, deixis or another referencial mark as another one. Number would be=
an
>> optional mark also. Politeness would be also optional.
>
>I don't know about all these "optional" features. I don't know of any
>language where such a thing is optional. And politeness couldn't be
>optional. By having no indication of politeness level, that in itself
>would say something, just as in English, not saying "please" says
>something. And optional number just seems odd. If we're going to have
>a number system, we oughta make it mandatory. Please, let's not have an
Why? Because the languages you know use these features mandatorily?
But that doesn't mean making them optional is artificial. Maybe a dead
language we didn't discover (I'm sure there are many of them) used gender
distinction optionally, or optional number (that's not far from Mandarin, is
it?). Saying some feature in language is artificial because you never saw it
has no value. I think you're more naturalistic than nature itself. If we
manage to create a language that is not more difficult to learn than
natlangs, then it will be as natural as another one, as odd as its features
may seem.
>obviously artificial language. We're not re-inventing NGL here. (I
>intend no disrespect to NGL, my point was that NGL is obviously
>artificial, and unnatural; I'm hoping to have a natural-looking lang)
>
>As for the cases, I really don't like the proposal. Is it set in stone
>yet? I'd like to propose another system. This isn't all-or-nothing, of
>course
>
>1. Absolutive
>2. Ergative
> These might be in a mixed system, thus more accurately
> absolutive-nominative
>3. Genetive
>4. Dative
>5. Instrumental
>6. Role (I don't know the term)
>7. Comitative (with; co-agent)
>8. Aversive (avoidance; he avoided *the fire*, he fears *fire*)
> Of course, this could be handled by other cases, perhaps local cases
>9. non-Comitative (I don't remember the term; without)
>10. Associative (non-possessive genetive, e.g., *his* illness)
>11. Partative
>12. Vocative
>13. Comparative (he is older *than me*)
>14. Various local cases - I'm not particularly attached to any specific
> system, but the more cases, the better, as far as I'm concerned.
>
Here again, I find you too much naturalistic. You're a little bit
too much oriented towards a particular way of thinking. If other ways can
function, why not trying them? Why should we keep that ergative-absolutive
system as an absolute we must obey? I've heard of some languages that have
differents cases for the subject of an intransitive verb, for the subject of
a transitive verb and for the object of a transitive verb (sometimes more
than one case for each). It is neither ergative nor accusative and the case
system that was proposed is very near to it.
>Perhaps think about multiple case-marking?
>
I think it's a good idea. It's one of the feature of Euskara that
makes it flexible enough. Let's work on it.
Christophe Grandsire
|Sela Jemufan Atlinan C.G.
"R=E9sister ou servir"
homepage: http://www.bde.espci.fr/homepage/Christophe.Grandsire/index.html