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Re: Pee in the Soup (was: Re: damnable bureaucracy (was: Leaving for a few days))

From:Sylvia Sotomayor <kelen@...>
Date:Saturday, September 15, 2001, 3:32
On Friday 14 September 2001 19:19, Padraic Brown wrote:
> Here's a good one to counter with, which was posted by a fellow > conlanger (Lionel Bonnetier) over on a.l.a in the midst of the > wasterel lands of Usenet: > > "The gods gave us language, the conlangers give [it] back." >
tetille antaxóni ke anérji, il aT tetille í ke mataxóníkóni tetille = SE+past+3p.paucal ('cause it's a group) source + 1p.pl goal ke is the source marker il aT means 'and then' í means 'again, back' -érj- is the root for god, here in the collective -taxón- is the root for language, and -taxóník- would mean constructed language, and -taxóníkón- would be person who constructs languages. antaxóni, like anérji, is in the collective, which is the default word for "language". mataxóníkóni is an animate plural. mataxóníkóni is not a collective, because conlanging is an individual thing, not a collective endeavor (mostly), but the gods giving us language is a collective endeavor, or so it seems to the speakers of Kélen. And, while collectives nearly always take the paucal, plurals don't usually do so. The paucal in the second tetille is based on the speaker's observation that conlangers are a small (close-knit) minority and thus worthy of the paucal. -- Sylvia Sotomayor sylvia1@ix.netcom.com wa jamú anániTa; (not.be thing.SG one/alone.ADJ) The Kélen language can be found at: http://home.netcom.com/~sylvia1/Kelen/kelen.html