Re: past tense formation

J Matthew Pearson wrote:

> What's wrong with keeping the subject in the nominative: "Yananay ya
talanar
> dalayan".  That's how natlangs with similar systems would do it.  "Man" is
the
> subject of an intransitive verb, so it will stay in the nominative in the
past
> tense, rather than being recast in the instrumental.
>
> I think you have a very elegant system.  No need to change it.  :-)
Thanks! Actually, on reexamination of the Hindi system, this is what happens
there. If I had paid attention while writing the post, I would have noticed.
I'll blame it on severe lack of nicotine and caffeine. Either that or I say
Robbie Williams was messing with my head...

I thought "s'annah annayan" didn't sound right, because it could also mean
"burnt bread", as well as "the bread burnt". So to disabiguate the two, I
can overhaul the syntax of the language and make adjectives precede their
nouns:

s'annah annayan "the bread burnt"
annayan s'annah "the burnt bread".

This also opens up possibilities for playing with participles. I could use a
participle instead of a relative clause:

Dalayan yañanayo s'annah annayan.
go-ppt man-pl-inst bread-nom burn-ppt.
The men who went burnt the bread.
By the went men the bread was burned.

instead of

Yañanayo, to dalayan, s'annah annayan
man-pl-inst, REL-inst go-ppt, bread-nom burn-ppt
The men who went burnt the bread
By the men, that went, the bread was burned.

The second example places the emphasis on the men (as opposed to the
children, say), whereas the first is neutral in terms of emphasis (the place
with the greatest emphatic weight is at the beginning of the statement,
BTW). To emphasise the fact that the men went (rather than stayed), a third
construction is possible:

To dalayan, yañanayo, s'annah annayan.
Those that went, the men, burnt the bread.

Hmm, now I've got something to play with!

> Matt.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
E souvein-te della veritát que se ja dissó,
                 And remember the truth that once was spoken,

Amer un autre es veder le visaic de Deu.
        To love anonther person is to see the face of god.
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