Re: proverbs?

In a message dated 9/26/01 11:53:05 PM, florarroz@YAHOO.COM writes:

>I was just going through my conlang filling in details
>on the grammar, when I chanced to glance at my
>proverbs section.  Now, we all know that pronouns are
>substitutes for nouns or noun phrases, but why not
>have substitutes for verbs or verb phrases.  I call
>these proverbs (I think there is some other term that
>uses the word "proverb", but I can't remember what.)
>Are there languages that have proverbs?  Has anyone
>developed a system of proverbs for their conlang?
>
>Here is mine.
>
>It combines the tense prefix (or suffix) and the
>gender, and the number suffix.
>
>Example-
>k- = past
>-k = future
>o = masculine
>a = feminine, etc.
>-s = plural (really original, this one.  :-))
>
>Past       Future
>ko  ka     ok  ak
>kos kas    oks aks
>
>if my verb is say, "kbroya" (k = past, a = feminine)
>my proverb would be "ka". Proverb of "broyok" would be
>"ok".
>
>How do other people do it?
>
>HEather
That's interesting - so your proverb is basically all the verb affixes
needed, just no root, if I understand correctly. Eloshtan couldn't do that
because you'd have things like "mt" or "qk" - the affixes themselves don't
always provide vowels, which any Eloshtan word needs. Eloshtan doesn't have
pronouns (like "I", "you"), but I've been thinking about proverbs for a
while, and couldn't come up with a word that sounded right. And it just
occured to me (I think after reading Padraic's response) that you would
probably just use the words "cefy, "cezefy," or "ceqefy." Those mean "to be
this," "to be that," and "to be that (way over there)." If "ce" ("this") can
stand for a whole noun or adjective phrase, and adjs., nouns, and verbs are
interchangeable, then why not just use the verbal forms to stand for other
verbs? So you can now say "Fenyepefilik nesvepcemt yomoto glif, vi yumam
cemev yomoro glill" (I thought about proverbs yesterday, and I do today
also). Problem solved, thanks for bringing it up! :-)

Josh Roth
members.aol.com/fuscian/eloshtan.html