Re: Zero-ness

On Fri, Aug 11, 2000 at 07:24:58AM +0100, Raymond Brown wrote:
[snip]
> The first - tho obvious to any Latinist, is methinks rather esoteric to all
> others.  And the second seems to me to imply that whatever it was was once
> there but has been removed.  That's not my understanding of the zero number
> - it surely simply means that there aren't any what-you-call-its there at
> all (and possibly never have been) - if you see what I mean  :)
Yep, exactly... that's what my zero number is intended to indicate. Or
rather, the nullar number, since I've decided to go with "nullar". Some
examples of the usage of the nullar number in my conlang:

1) You can say a house is "r0i'" (red, singular locative), meaning "the
house is red" or "it is a red house"; or you can say a house is "myi'r"
(red, nullar locative), meaning "the house is no-red" or "it is not a red
house".

2) When asked how many "3jul3i'r" (houses, plural locative of juli'r)
there are, you may reply "myyjuu'r" (house, nullar locative), meaning
"there are none", or you may reply "juli'r" (singular loc), meaning "there
is only one".

3) Idiomatic usage: the word for universe, "Peri'm", is sometimes used
in the nullar number to indicate non-existence or impossibility in a
sarcastic or contemptious way, for example, you can say that something is
[only] in "myyPri'm" (myyPri'm = no-universe, nullar locative of Peri'm):
meaning, "it is so ludicrous it cannot possible exist". Or, you can say
that a plan will lead to "myyPru'm" (myyPru'm = no-universe, nullar
receptive of Peri'm): meaning, "this plan will get us nowhere!" or "this
is a ludicrous plan that accomplishes nothing!".

[Aside: please forgive for the weird-looking orthography... I have 9
vowels and 27 consonants, and running desperately short of Roman alphabet
letters, esp. for the vowels (can't use diacritic marks 'cos i might need
them later for tone/accent), plus I want to make it easy to type in ASCII,
so I resorted to using `0' and `3' for vowels (imitations of 'o' and 'e',
respectively).]

> >:)
>
> Quoting smilies rather changes their meaning  :)
[snip]

Hmm, double-quoting smilies may make things worse... :-P


T