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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 ICQ: 18656696 AIM Screen-Name: NikTailor