Re: GROUPLANG: optional features and case

Herman Miller wrote:

>Well, the only case I remember suggesting was Genitive anyway, which falls
>under Attributive, so this is fine with me. The term "agentive" is a bit
>confusing, but we'll have our own "grouplang" words for the cases
>eventually. (BTW, what should we call the lang itself?)
"The Tongue" is fine, tho a bit pretentious :-)
"Our Tongue" would be just right. I suggest we make a compound of
"our" (exclusive 1st pers) + "tongue", where the pronoun is inflected
by whatever means we have to show our importance :-)
Or it could be something like "The Tongue of the Makers"...

>I also think that dative doesn't really belong under the attributive case,
>but I'm not sure what would be a better place for it. Absolutive, perhaps?
Let's take a verb with two objects, like "give", and do this:

erg-I pat-it pred-give_away-susp, erg-you (pat-it) pred-take
OR
erg-I pat-it pred-give_away-susp, abs-you (pat-it) pred-have
OR
caus-I pat-it abs-you pred-have

I don't know if this is easy, or totally correct, but I think
it conveys the information... and it's nice to have different
ways to say a thing.


>>> > As I posted earlier I'd rather tag on the predicate whether it's verb or noun-rooted, then
>>> >cases would be understood from context.
>
>It sounds essentially equivalent to my suggestion to use specific
>derivational affixes. Making it optional would allow for brevity when the
>meaning is obvious.
That's what English does, even when the meaning is not so obvious.
I've always felt strange about such words as "dustman", meaning the
guy who removes the garbage from cans. I think I would have called
him "degarbager" or something like that...
Spanish has a related problem regarding the word "hue'sped", which
means "host" but also "guest"!


--Pablo Flores