Re: Noun and noun or noun

> (N.B.: What you are referring to as "separative" is generally called
> "distributive" by semanticists.)
Phonotactics and distributive plurals -- two new linguistic terms today :)


> A conlang that I fiddled around with for awhile and then abandoned,
> called Auari (or Awemai), made just such a distinction - but on the
> verb rather than the noun.  Here's an example with made-up vocabulary,
> since I can't remember any of the words I devised for Auari/Awemai:
>=20
> =09ndiima=09=09"see (a single object)"
> =09ma-ndiima=09"see (a collection of objects together)"
> =09wa-ndiima=09"see (multiple objects one at a time)"
>=20
> =09kana ndiima-mat=09    "I saw the house"
> =09kana ma-ndiima-mat  "I saw the houses (all together)"
> =09kana wa-ndiima-mat  "I saw the houses (one at a time)"
This does look like the same sort of idea.  Interesting that you place the
collective/distributive marker on the verb.  In Arove"n it is in fact the
verb which determines how collective plurals are handled so this would make
sense in Arove"n also, though it wouldn't be doable because of the way word=
s
are constructed.


> My current conlang, Tokana, can sorta kinda make this distinction
> as well, but only in the past tense.  There are two different past
> tense forms in Tokana, which I call the "simple past" and the
> "aorist".  The aorist picks out one specific event which occurred
> at a particular time in the past, whereas the simple past does not=20
> pick out any specific event, and can thus in principle be used to
> refer to multiple events.  The Tokana Reference Grammar includes
> the following illustration of this contrast:
>=20
> =09Sthoke      ante katia tohauatne
> =09destroy-Aor many house fire-Inst
> =09"Many houses were destroyed by fire"
>=20
> =09Sthokun     ante katia tohauatne
> =09destroy-Pst many house fire-Inst
> =09"Many houses were destroyed by fire"
>=20
> The first sentence, with the verb in the aorist, must refer to
> a particular incident:  There was a single fire which destroyed
> many houses at once.  The second sentence, with the verb in the
> simple past, may refer to multiple incidents:  The sentence
> simply means that many houses were destroyed by fire; it could
> be that different houses were destroyed by different fires on
> different occasions.  Here we find a collective/distributive
> contrast in the interpretation of "many houses" which is 'parasitic'=20
> (so to speak) on the fundamental semantic contrast between the=20
> simple past and the aorist.
Exactly it.  Arove"n makes a further distinction with regard to time settin=
g:
a collective plural group neccessarily operates in the same time span, but
so does a separative (I'll try to use "distributive" from now on!) group,
if the particle "tel" is added on; otherwise the events are considered enti=
rely
independant of each other.
Is there a present-tense or future-tense analog of the aorist past, in Toka=
na
or linguistics in general?

Josh

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