On Thu, 18 Jan 2007 19:29:45 -0500, Roger Mills <rfmilly@...> wrote:
> Jeffrey Jones wrote:
> > I'm having trouble coming up with the morphosyntax for translating "to be
> > different from" in NYSEC. My problem is that this doesn't seem to fit any
> > existing argument structure category. It has two arguments: what's
> > different and what it's different from. It's not transitive and neither
> > argument is a possessor. The way English does it won't work either. Any
> > ideas?
> >
> Hi Jeff!!
> I see I haven't approaced this in Kash, either; but there is a verb/adj.
> çunu 'different'-- the derivs. mean 'to change' (trans. or intrans.)
Hi Roger!!
That's something I have to make a note of: deriving different and change from
the same root.
> I think we could say "X differs/is different from Y" in one of two ways:
>
> X yaçunu alo Y(gen.) '...is different from Y...' (where alo is also used in
> comparative constructions, lit. "different than") OR
> X yaçunu liri Y(acc.) '...is different w.r.t. Y...'
I think I want to make a distinction between "from" and "than"; I might want
to say "John is more different from Tom than Fred is".
> And one could say "...is not the same as..." too
>
> Indonesian, FWIW, uses its prep. dari 'from': X berbeda dari Y (/beda/
> 'different'-- I think it's an Indic loan), and you could also say "not the
> same as..." tidak sama dengan... (not same with...)
>
> Hmm, while on the subject, Kash has no verb for
> 'differentiate/distinguish'...yet. :-((
I think I could just add a dative argument (with appropriate changes to the
verb ending) for that.