Christophe Grandsire wrote:
> En réponse à Christian Thalmann <cinga@...>:
>
> > > ba: interrogative particle - used at the end of a sentence asks if
> > the
> > > sentence is true.
> > > Si Carlos pire li domo ba? - Does Carlos burn the house?
> >
> > Why is it placed at the end of the sentence? It might be less
> > confusing if it came right at the beginning -- otherwise the
sentence
> > will be parsed as a statement until the very last word!
>
> I'm not Carlos, but I guess it's placed at the end of the sentence
because the
> Chinese "ba" from which it's obviously borrowed is placed at the end
of the
> sentence. Japanese also puts its interrogative particle "ka" at the
end of a
> sentence, and Japanese speakers seem to never have had problems
recognizing
> questions.
hmmm. It actually came from swedish tag question "va?", then I reminded
I had no <v>... Anyhow, you can thing of "ba" as a tag question marker.
> > > Pronouns:
> > > 1st: mi (sg), mimi (pl ex), nos (pl).
> > > 2nd: wo
> > > 3rd: lo/la
> >
> > Why are there two plural forms for the first person, but none for
the
> > others? Wowo, lolo and lala might come in handy, and aren't hard to
> > memorize. =)
> >
>
> I think in this case it should have a full pidgin system, i.e. get rid
> of "nos", and allow concatenations like miwo, milo, wowo, wola, etc...
It's
> easy to learn (just have to learn mi, wo, lo and la, and say that if
you put
> them together it's equivalent to "and") and easy to understand. It's
not for
> nothing that it's one of the features all pidgins share.
Well. I guess I will move this way better:
mi : I, exclusive we.
mimi : exlusive we (pl.)
miwo : you and me: inclusive we
wo : you, y'all, thou
wowo : y'all
mila : she/they and me
milo : he/they and me
lala, lola, lolo : they
miwolalo : everybody
-- Carlos Th