Re: Copula

On 3/19/07, Jason Monti <yukatado@...> wrote:

> So what you're saying is that I am free to treat 'be' as a transitive and
> intransitive verb in my own conlangs without being 'unnatural'?
>
> I would treat it as a normal, transitive verb when copular (That is a dog); and
> as a normal, intransitive verb when existential (There he is!) in my own
> conlang.
Another possibility is to create a predicative case for this
use, and also for the complement of certain other verbs
- e.g. in "He found that book interesting" or "He described
that book as interesting" the word "book" might be accusative
and "interesting" predicative, if those are distinct cases.
You could probably find other uses for that.

Arie de Jong's version of Volapük had a predicative
case that is used, if I understand correctly, in sentences like
my examples above, though not for the predicate of
a simple copular sentence with "binön" (to be).  It
was also used in sentences like "She painted the house
green" for "green".  Esperanto, and I think classical Volapük,
use the nominative for the predicates in ditransitive
sentences like these.

gzb has no copula verb; it uses the comment case or
the stative case in simple predicative sentences and
the comment case in find/describe/judge type ditransitive
sentences.  For ditransitive predicatives like "paint"
it would use patient case for the thing painted and inceptive
case for the color.  (Except that all these "cases" are actually
specific postpositions, rather than noun inflections.)

> Speaking of which, I'm thinking of making it OV again, where pronouns follow
> the verb if there are any, but regular SOV in 3rd-person sentences with an
> actual nominal subject (as opposed to a pronominal subject).
Nice alternation.

--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/gzb/gzb.htm

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