Re: Linguistic encoding of direction (Re: The Conlang Instinct)

Thomas R. Wier <artabanos@...> wrote:

> This raises an interesting question:  how are directions encoded
> linguistically in our conlangs?
Drasel=E9q is not very innovative about this... Demonstratives are
pretty classic:

_fes_  'this'
_do"s_ 'that'=20
_fa_   'this thing'
_do_   'that thing'
_faik_ 'here'
_doik_ 'there'

<-ik> is a rather grammaticalized location suffix, also found in
_minik_ 'right here (by the speaker)'. Drasel=E9q also has _fandung_
'this side' and _dondung_ 'that side' (often used together to
contrast) and the adverb _nevul_ 'on the near side (of a point of
reference)' (no counterpart for 'far side' attested).

The only thing about deictics is that they are also resumptive, and
the proximal ones are consistently anaphoric (referring back, right?).
The deictic adverbs are currently replacing prepositional constructions
to mark obliques, producing a weird effect of having a lot of barely
connected propositions:

        Du`thes  vu"s fes  olm   faik famp sa"nnat.
        year.GEN end  this house here now  go.1sFUT
        'I'll get to this house by the end of the year.'

This is of course bound to produce some ambiguity...


--Pablo Flores
  http://draseleq.conlang.org/