Re: Decomposed verbs (OOP-ish but applies to any lang)

Javier BF wrote:

>But, how would one know that "The red book, by John, to Mary"
>means "John gave the red book to Mary" and not "John read
>the red book to Mary" or even "John threw the red book at
>Mary" ("at Mary" is a here recipient, not a locative)?
  The "gave" part is implied by the lack of anything else. "Threw" isn't
excluded here, but without any indication that the book was thrown, the
speaker would take this to mean "gave". Other meanings would require nouns
like the "throwing" or "reading" or "gift" that you mentioned.

Ja uturbika dadró Ios Maríjia.
TP recitiation-ABS book-GEN John-ERG Mary-PURP
"John read the book to Mary."

You're right, there's going to have to be nominalisations of events and
states if this is going to work at all. A lot of these things will also be
expressed with end-state adjectives. This is currently the hardest part of
building the vocabulary, because I'm trying not to make these seem
too "verb-like".

M

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