Re: Emphasis markers

Emphasis is definitely something Teonaht needs, what with its rigid syntax,
which is becoming less rigid as I use it.  I created emphasized pronouns a
while back that basically mean "he on his part," or "he himself," or "as for
me," ("as for me all blushing!") but I believe these could be applied to
articles and verbs as well:

Le                     tah  el(l)o   uafla
the (volitional)    bird pret-it fly

Le   airy   tah  elo      uafla
The  itself bird pret-it fly

I already have, rather Celtically,

uaflar      le tah    elo      dey
Flying     the bird pret-it do

Or more succinctly:

uafla airyi
"It FLIES


I rather like the German forms of emphasis with ja, aber, denn, doch, auch,
schon, etc., which change the emphatic structure of the sentence in subtle
ways.

Sally
----- Original Message -----
From: "Gary Shannon" <fiziwig@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Monday, July 24, 2006 10:05 PM
Subject: Emphasis markers


> In English we can say "What are you doing?" or we can
> replace the simple "what" with the emphatic "what" by
> placing any one of a number of emphasis markers after
> the pronoun "what". Examples include "the hell", "in
> the world", "in the name of all that is holy", "in
> blue blazes", and so on. E.G. "What in the sam hill
> are you doing?" (What does "sam hill" mean, anyway?)
>
> These emphasis markers don't parse out in any
> meaningful way, but serve only as conventionalized
> signs to mark the emphatic "what".
>
> But couldn't the emphasis be marked on the verb just
> as easily? It's not done this way in English, but
> other languages might use verb marking for emphasis,
> as in "What are you by the hairs of Gaknar's beard
> doing?"
>
> I'm curious to see how other conlangs have marked
> emphatic forms. Do you use ephasis marking words or
> does your language have a different, emphatic form for
> some words? Which part of the sentence is marked?
>
> --gary
>