Re: Changing worldviews with language (LONG)

 --- "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@...> wrote:
> [snip]
> > Or perhaps you might go the route of something
> very adverb-dependent: eat
> > me-wise pizza-ly. Some eating happened, in a
> pizza-ly fashion, and was
> > conducted me-wise :) Of course, this leaves open
> the possibility that the
> > pizza is doing the eating.
>
> Ah, you really should take a look at Matthew's
> "bac". Its grammar is very
> similar to what you describe here.
>
<pricks up ears>ah, cocktail party syndrome . .
.</pricks up ears>

right, ok. in bac ( leaving aside the restaurant for
the time being ) you could indeed use 'pizza' as an
adverb modifying the word 'eat'. here's how you would
do it :

first, specify the topic ( what the sentence is about,
in most cases equivalent to the subject of the
sentence expressed in, say, english ) :

|sot| I

second, specify the relationship or action which is
being predicated of the topic :

|Banr| 'eating'

finally, provide any further information about this
relationship/action. in isolation this looks like a
normal noun, but used after a verb is acts as an
adverb :

|ptata piyttsa| 'food viz pizza' ( pizza being a
foreign word has to be glossed for meaning and
sentence function )

|sot Banr ptata piyttsa| 'i am eating pizzaly' 'i am
eating pizza'


<breath></breath>

now, there is another way you could express the same
thing, which would be a bit more precise ( what i've
just given could also mean, eg, i am eating with a
pizza ( in the ethiopian fashion of using bread as
cutlery and crockery ) . . . not too confusing here,
but this sort of phrasing is ambiguous elsewhere )

so, first two steps are the same :

|sot Banr| 'i am eating'

then we add a second verb phrase along these lines :

|ptata piyttsa Pant| 'food viz pizza is nourishing'

so :

|sot Banr ptata piyttsa Pant| 'i am eathing, pizza is
nourishing' 'i am eating pizza'

this is such a common way of expressing things that
you can almost consider the english verb 'to eat' to
correspond to the bac double verb |Bar Pat| where the
english subject comes before |Bar| and the object
before |Pat|


<breath></breath>

finally there's the question of expressing 'in the
restaurant'. this can be done in various ways, and
i'll explain by giving a few examples :

|thabr sot Banr ptata piyttsa Pant|
'a restaurant: i am eating pizza'
here, |thabr| is the oblique case of |abr| 'eating
place'. at the beginning of the sentence it qualifies
the whole sentence

you could also be more specific and say
|ghil thabr . . .|
'inside of a restaurant: . . .'

|Gil thabr . . .|
'it's inside a restaurant . . .'

|sot Ginl tabr Banr ptata piyttsa Pant|
'i am in a restaurant eating pizza'

|sot Banr Ginl tabr ptata piyttsa Pant|
'i am eating in a restaurant, pizza is nourishing'

|sot Banr ptata piyttsa Pant Ginl tabr|
'i am eating, pizza is nourishing in a restaurant'

of these, the first couple are the most natural, but
others could be used if you're being specific ( for
instance 'i spoke to emma in hong kong' could be
translated to mean i wan in hk, emma was in hk, or the
conversation happened there . . . )

hope that's not too bad an explanation,

bn

=====
bnathyuw | landan | arR
stamp the sunshine out | angelfish
your tears came like anaesthesia | phèdre

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