> [mailto:CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu] On Behalf Of Jim Henry
> >> I'm not sure yet what it would mean to convert an entity or
> >> quality root into a preposition.
>
> > I have derived prepositions in Sasxsek. The suffix "-u"
makes a
> > lexical into a preposition.
>
> Only one of these is relevant to the issue with säb zjeda.
> Others are concepts that are/would be lexicalized
> in säb zjeda by a relationship or process root anyway.
> But:
>
> > bon = good
> > bonu = for the benefit of; for the sake of
> > (benefactive)
>
> This makes sense; I could generalize that and say
> that a quality root > preposition transformation makes
> a prep. meaning "object of prep. has this quality with
> respect to the head of the prep. phrase". It might
> not work with all qualities/adjectives, but it would
> work with a fair subset, I reckon.
There is certainly a bit of a verbal quality to prepositions,
but they have a different function in the sentence which is to
mark the noun's relationship.
I could say:
mo hap dorav bonu lo. = I open the door for her.
"Her" here is not the thing being opened but the reason why I
opened it.
> At present I have the benefactive preposition derived
> from a process root for "help".
To me that would more along the lines of instrumental. S:S: has
a short preposition "ju" to mark the instrumental.
> That still leaves me with one transformation out of 20
> (entity root > preposition) that doesn't seem to make
> any sense. Note that some concepts that would be noun
> roots in other languages are relationship/preposition roots
> in säb zjeda, -- kinship terms for instance. Nouns for
> persons in such relationships to other persons are
> derived from the root preposition. All entity roots
> describe concepts that don't have an inherent
> relationship to some other entity. (E.g., "father/mother of"
> is a preposition root, "person" a noun root.)
>
> I guess I could kludge in something like " [obj of prep] is
> treated like/considered as [entity] by
> [head of prep phrase]", just to avoid having a
> gap in the system, but I don't like it.
Or a relative pronoun "X *who* is the father of Y ..."
I do have another adposition "lu" which roughtly means "called
by" to equate a common noun to a specific proper noun. If I say
"kat iu mo lu vladimir ..." it would be like "My cat, Vladimir
..."