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Re: Futurese

From:Javier BF <uaxuctum@...>
Date:Wednesday, May 1, 2002, 18:45
>> "Be na hin da qor su go" >> {by}{a}{horse}{pred.}{disturb}{upon}{I} >> A horse disturbs me > Hmm...why is "horse" made oblique? Originally, I thought your
nouns and
>pronouns were similar to Chinese; e.g., no separate words for "I" and "me". >Now, however, it looks as though it is necessary to form weird convoluted >sentences to express a simple action.
"Weird convoluted sentences to express a simple action"? What do you mean? To me, the way German builts its sentences seems "weird" and "convoluted", but it doesn't mean that they're so in absolute terms; to a German speaker that's the "normal" and "easy" way while the Spanish way would be the "weird" and "convoluted" one.
>> "Su go da qor be na hin" >> {upon}{I}{pred.}{disturb}{by}{a}{horse} >> I'm disturbed by a horse > > I'm also wondering why it is necessary to express "upon", since
you already
>have marked the actor with "by". My guess is that this is some form of >accusative marking. > If such is the case, what prompts you to dictate both >articles and accusative particles for an auxlang?
Because that frees word order from the task of determining those grammatical relationships. About the articles, the "problem" with them is not that there's something "difficult" about its conceptual part but that the use natural languages make of them is fully idiomatic and thus illogic and unpredictable. Articles can be very useful, and even make THE difference in some contexts, if they're used consistently according to their exact meaning.
>> "Da qor be na hin su go" >> {pred.}{disturb}{by}{a}{horse}{upon}{me} >> There's disturbance by a horse upon me > > Looking at these two sentences, it looks as though you use
sentence order to
>determine the topic of the sentence and that the English glosses aren't >literal translations, but more to show the topic shift. So how would one
say
>"A horse distrubs me," with horse as the topic _and_ subject? "Na hin da
qor
>su go"?
Yes, word order determines topic and comment, not subject and object. Cheers, Javier

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Peter Clark <peter-clark@...>