Gz^rod|in (More on word order and passives)

Firstly, I got one of those Rejected Postings
messages that everyone's been talking about, wrt
my reply to Christophe's reply to the idea of
byverbial adjectives. Which is strange, because
I certainly received a copy from the list a few
minutes after I posted it, as I'd expect.

In that post I reaffirmed my quest for a better
word than 'byverbial' and suggested that someone
who knew a little Latin might help. I also
expressed more thoughts on dropping the en-
prefix on positive byverbials derived from verbs.
And such things. You did see it, no?

OK. Word order. Usual deal - please read through
and tell me if there are potential pitfalls.

As I said, word order is SVO if the object is a
noun or SOV if the object is an adjective. In
the latter case, said adjective must be in the
byverbial form.

Noun phrases begin with the article (unless
omitted). If the article is a pronoun, all
adjectives follow. If the noun is explicit,
adjectives usually come after it, but if the
adjective *specifies* rather than just
*describes* the item, it might well come
before the noun. Sol (all), son (some) and
numbers would almost always come before.
Proper nouns behaving as adjectives (as in,
'the Gz^rod|in language' come immediately
before the noun. Byverbial adjectives always
come at the end of the noun phrase.

I haven't invented words like 'very' yet,
but they would come immediately after the
modified adjective (maybe occasionally
before for extra emphasis ... not sure).

Most adverbs provide a semantic link between
subject and verb, and come before the verb. If
the link is between verb and object, the
adverb comes after. For this reason, adverbs
often switch sides if a sentence is converted
from active to passive.

In English, "He *slowly* walked *up* the hill";
"The hill *up* waswalkedby *slowly* me".
(of course, in English 'up' is a preposition
but that's English...)

In my discussion of byverbials, I mentioned the
primary way of constructing passive sentences.
The secondary way is to mark the object rather
than the subject with the long article. It is
then usual to add the -kk suffix, otherwise
reserved for vocative sentences, because the
meaning of the sentence is reversed and
attention should be drawn to this fact.

M^no yara reqn = I desire her
Reqn yara m^nokk = She is desired by me #2
Reqno yaral kkat m^n = She is desired by me #1

The rule is: #1 (the method I explained the
other day) is used generally, but #2 (the
method I've just explained now) is used for
sentences rich in adverbs.

Adrian.
--
http://www.netyp.com/member/dragon
http://www.flinders.edu.au