Re: Appositives, more gender, careers
From: | Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> |
Date: | Sunday, September 10, 2000, 19:42 |
Fakaltinátas núsal "Thomas R. Wier":
> You can, of course, break that language univeral (most universals are
> statistical anyways). But what's the motivation for it? That's the important,
> and interesting, thing about conlinguistics for me: coming up with novel,
> but reasoned, structures for a human language.
Well, Watakassí does that to some extent. Names do not inflect,
instead, the "name word" inflects. Names are preceded by a specific
word, depending on what the name refers to. For instance, a man uses
"nús" (derived from _nlakús_, "man")
Fakapátas nús Bíl núsal Ján
Past-hit NW-abs Bill-abs NW-erg John-abs [NW = "name word"]
John hit Bill.
My reasoning is that it's a kind of ellipsis "The man [whose name is]
John".
It seemed perfectly natural to me when I devised it.
--
"Only two things are infinite - the universe and human stupidity, and
I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
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