Ar 10:16 15/11/01 +0100, bhac Christophe Grandsire le scríobh chugam:
>En réponse à Keith Gaughan <kmgaughan@...>:
>
> > Ok, here's my question. I've been thinking of adapting this idiom for
> > use in Erëtas but I have doubts as to its scalability. Are there any
> > other languages that use similar constructions. Just for reference's
> > sake, here's how I intend on representing direct and indirect relative
> > clauses:
> >
> > Direct relative clause (`that I see'):
> > ...of my seeing...
> >
> > Indirect relative clauses (`that sees me'):
> > ...with my seeing...
> >
> > Thoughts? Could it work well?
>
>Well, there are languages that use nominalisation of verbs to make relative
>subclauses (Finnish - though it also has relative subclauses with finite verb
>forms and relative pronouns -, Quetchua and Turkish are examples of that).
>Finish can even use nominalisation for completive subclauses. So it's
>absolutely not unnatural.
Neat! Then there are
>The only problem you could have if using a genitive
>structure is the orientation (subjective or objective) of the genitive.
>English
>(like Modern French) has only subjective genitive: "my fear" is equivalent
>to "I am afraid", "I fear" or "the fear that I experience", never to "somebody
>is afraid of me", "the fear that somebody feels towards me".
Using it with the preposition `of', does hint at a objective meaning though.
>In Middle French,
>possessives could also have an objective meaning (the second one I showed
>you),
>but it was mostly restricted in poetry (I know a few examples in theater plays
>in verse). I don't know if English ever allowed such a construction. The
>problem is the ambiguity that it creates: will "my seeing" mean "I see",
>or "(someone) sees me"? Your idea seems to make sense (at least as for the use
>of the preposition "of" or "with". E.g. in Latin, the ablative - instrumental
>in languages that have it - is used for such construction: vir magno
>animo: the
>man WHO HAS a great soul - more often transformed into an adjective: vir
>magnanimus -),
I've always felt the difference between nouns and adjectives was rather loose
myself, especially genitives and the like.
>but I'm a little concerned about the use of the possessive
>adjectives to mark subject or object of the verb of the relative clause. How
>will you translate a sentence like "to whom I give it", where both subject and
>object are present as pronouns?
Something like `X with-giving of-it from-me', I would say.
>In my Azak, I solved this problem by having two different genitive cases: a
>genitive subjective and a genitive objective (in fact, they are genitive
>ergative and genitive absolutive, since Azak is an ergative language), and
>thus
>two different sets of possessive adjectives.
How would something like that have evolved?
>But it's only an idea. Maybe you want to keep the ambiguity, or use other
>constructions.
I think the above construction is the way I'd like to go. It sort of fits my
idiolect anyway.
K.
--
Keith Gaughan <kmgaughan@...>
http://homepage.eircom.net/~kmgaughan/
I can decide what I give / But it's not up to me / What I get given -=Bjork=-