Re: Missing Words

At 9:31 pm +0100 16/3/02, Christophe Grandsire wrote:
>En réponse à "M. Å." <moriquende@...>:
[snip]

> To my defence, I use different construction to get over it:
>> to
>> say "I have a son", one must say
>> Lor sate faani.
>> "Exists boy my."
>> or "There is a boy that's mine."
>> I had thought this was pretty original,
>>
>
>I would have thought so, but my little booklet about the structure of
>languages
>says that languages like Quechua and Aymara use a similar construction :)) .
You don't have to look so far from home; up in the north west of France
you'll find:

eur mab eus am    (Breton)
A   son exists my = I have a son

In fact none of the modern Celticlangs have a verb "to have".
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At 2:35 pm +0200 17/3/02, M. Å. wrote:
[snip]
>
>It doesn't matter me anymore - not since I started reading books on
>linguistics... but I still sometimes try to do things *I* haven't *yet* seen
>in use, if I'm not too busy stealing nice ideas.
Quite right - IME if it's possible some language somewhere will do it. It's
darn difficult to think of a single original feature.

The thing with a conlang is to mix these elements in new and interesting
ways so that they become your own distinctive creation.  It's rather like
cooking (oneof my other hobbies), I like to think: all the ingredients have
been used before, but I use them in my own way to create something new.

Ray.

=========================================
A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                     [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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