Re: Knowledge-related roots in sabyuk

On Wed, Aug 07, 2002 at 12:52:15PM +0200, julien eychenne wrote:
[snip]
> Imagine a situation where there is a father and his son. In both cases the father
> says 'Listen' to his son. But have look at the differences :
> (i) Slux-ô-ki !
>     listen-Prospective-2person
>     'you will listen' == ''Listen''
>
> (ii) Hir-ô-ki !
>      listen-prosp-2pers
>      'you will listen'  == ''I have something to tell you''
>
> In (i), the father is just asking for his son's attention (you could imagine
> that the son was speaking at the same time).
> In (ii) however, the situation is more sentencial, more serious, the father is
> about to say something important to his son.
[snip]

Cool distinction you have there. In Ebisedian, you can have several
degrees of distinction, using optatives and imperatives:

1) uso'  kuta'me   eb0'         [?u"so ku"tam& ?&"bA]
   <opt> listen<v> me<pronoun,org>
   "Please listen to me." - _uso'_ is the weak optative particle, marking
   the sentence as a polite request.

2) oso' kuta'me eb0'            [?o"so ku"tam& ?&"bA]
   "I wish you would listen to me" - _oso'_ is the regular optative
   particle, which expresses a wish.

3) 0so' kuta'me eb0'            [?A"so ku"tam& ?&"bA]
   "I think you should listen to me" - _0so'_ is the strong optative
   particle, and conveys a sense of exhortation or expression of opinion.

4) kuta'me eb0'!                [ku"tam& ?&"bA]
   "Listen to me!" - here, no optative particle is used; rather, the
   incidental inceptive verb is used alone, as an imperative.


T

--
Why is the sea always restless? Its bed is too rocky to sleep on.

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