Re: CHAT: the gay Canadian (was: "have a nice day")

On Thu, 2 Mar 2000, John Cowan wrote:

> Matt Pearson wrote:
>
> > Perhaps "the X" in this case means "the individual out of some
> > (perhaps unspecified) set of individuals who is identified or
> > identifiable by virtue of being an X".
I zapped the wrong message, but here goes (AFMCL):

tisan airen        "a powerful servant"
Tisan lea Airen    "the Mighty Servant"
                   (title of the high priest/ess of Mizran)

Vegelin duyen      "Lord Vegelin" (literally "noble Vegelin"
Vegelin lei Duyen  "Vegelin the Great" (King Vegelin II)

As Valdyan doesn't write capital letters, the pronoun is the only
thing distinguishing a simple epithet from a unique title. Note that
it isn't a relative ("Vegelin who is noble"); the regular personal
pronoun, not the relative pronoun, is used. The common-gender third
person pronoun just happens to be _lea_ as well.

I go by "Raisse the Thaumaturge" on the rec.games.roguelike.nethack
newsgroup, and everybody knows that there are many thaumaturges but
there's only one Raisse :-)

   Irina

--
           Varsinen an laynynay, saraz no arlet rastynay.
irina@valdyas.org (myself) - http://valdyas.conlang.org (Valdyas)
          http://www.valdyas.org/irina/index.html (home)