Re: Adjectives vs. stative verbs, plus general info

At 05:13 PM 3/15/2002 -0800, Jesse R. wrote:
>Well, I am exploring my possiblities for the lang I am
>putting together.  I am curious if anyone else has
>played with removing adjectives all together and
>simply using stative verbs?
   Yes, though my examples will be tentative due to ]
my in-process-overhaul of the phonology.


>I figured that in complex
>sentences one would break it into a stative verb
>phrase and append a tran/intrans verb to these
>phrases.
>
>   The happy man went home.
>   would translate best literally as:
>   The man, who is happy, went home.
     That's basically what I do too. In direct relative constructions
(where the subject or object of the relative verb is
the antecedent), a "conjunct" form of the verb is used (the
same form is used after certain particles, like the negative
and interrogative).

    i har soni: the happy person, lit. the person who is happy

    where soni is the present conjunct form of the verb
'sona' meaning "be happy". You could also say:

    future:
    i har saura: the person who will be happy

    imperfect:
    i har sone: the person who used to be happy, habitually

    preterite:
    i har sonde: the person who has been happy before

    subjunctive:
    i har soena: the person who should be happy


>The man, who is happy but was once very unhappy and
>may soon be unhappy again, went home.
>
>yet being able to say it in less words
>i.e.
>man happy happy     happy
>     pres  past,neg  fut,neg,possible
    that would be (in my again nameless lang):

    i har soni etsonde etsaura

    etsonde: en (neg) + son + te (preterite conjunct ending)


>A syllabic alphabetic script.  Lots of fricatives.
    Ooh! have you devised it yet? what does it look like?

   Aidan

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