Re: Missing Words

En réponse à Matthew Bladen <matthew.bladen@...>:

>
> This isn't the boldest step in the world, I know, but I thought I'd
> bring it up to ask a more general question: what words have other
> conlangers felt able to do away with, and why? By 'do away with' I
> mean 'not represent, not have exist' as opposed to expressing notions
> via cases and whatnot. I suppose definite and indefinite articles are
> the most obvious.
> --
Well, Itakian has a few conjunctions (which work more as evidentials than as
conjunctions, so I could well say that it has no conjunctions at all :)) ), but
lacks things like "but", "then", etc... (this is rendered through adverbial
constructions) Itakian also lacks quite a lot of verbs: to be, to have, and all
verbs of movement (to go, to come, to leave, to arrive, to enter, etc...). It
doesn't need them, since it renders those with nominal sentences with a
prepositional predicate and/or subject ("I go to the beach" becomes simply: "I
to the beach"). It has also the strange idea of rendering predicate
constructions like "I am happy" in the same way as "I have a house" rather than
like "I am a doctor" :)) (basically, you say "I have hapiness", or rather,
since Itakian lacks "to have": "I with happiness").

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.