Re: Strategies for disambiguating ad*

Yahya Abdal-Aziz wrote:

> *** ObConLang, two questions for you:
> A.  Do you have any conlang in which adverbs and adjectives may have the
> same form, as in Malay?
Coincidentally :-) Kash, yes-- although the adverbial form is sometimes
reduplicated, or has the all-purpose -ni suffix attached, so there's less
chance of ambiguity. But adj. follow nouns, and adv. usually precede verbs--
but the main difference from Ml/Indonesian is: NO PASSIVE VOICE, so a
sentence like your Ml. example couldn't occur.  Here's the counterpart:

anju irundingar areyal velu yu, irucunu arañi ratu, yukar "ratu areyal
marok"
When they built the/that new temple, they changed the name of the street
(become=to) "Old Temple Street"

i-ruN-ningar 3pl.-CAUS-stand.up 'they built''
i-ruN-çunu  3pl-CAUS-be.different 'they changed'

Lit: when they-built temple new that, they-changed name-of street, become
"street temple new"  OR:

anju veluni irundingar areyal (velu) yu, .....
when recently they-built temple (new_) that....

Here's a case where both the adv. and adj. could occur together:
areyal velu, veluni cakumbor 'a new temple recently collapsed'
areyal velu yu, veluni cakumbor 'they new temple recently collapsed'
but there would be a break in intonation (indicated by the comma) making
these topic/comment sentences.  If you wanted them to be specifically SV,
you'd have to reverse word order in this case:
veluni cakumbor areyal velu (yu).

Another way: areyal velu yu re veluni irundingar, cakumbor 'the/that new
temple REL recently they-built (it), collapsed'

These are all quite formal and proper; I suspect in everyday speech one
could drop the 3pl prefixes without creating a problem. Ambiguity could
result if the topic of the S were animate:

anju kalowe irundisa, irucunu (yarucunu) arañi, yukar vilem
when Kalo-DAT they-made.king, they (he) changed his name to Vilem --(i.e.
who decided to change his name?) but of course that's a rather formal
situation anyway...

Aaack, vocabulary gaps. There should be a basic verb for "build" I think;
and surely there are Post Offices....And sometimes the lack of a passive
voice results in cumbersome circumlocutions, but NO PASSIVE was a deliberate
decision on my part (if only to avoid total resemblance to Ml/Indon.).
=====================================================
> Consider the following sentence in Malay:
> 1. "Bila Pejabat Pos baharu dibina, jalan itu ditukar nama_nya menjadi
> Jalan Pejabat Pos Lama."
> "When Office Post new was_built(%), road that changed(%) name_its becoming
> Road Office Post Old."
..jalan itu ditukar namanya... is certainly understandable, and common--
but kind of tangled up, no? jalan itu must be a sort-of topic. More correct
would be: ...nama jalan itu ditukar... 'the name of that street was
changed...' --just my non-native intuition.

Actually, both the Ml. and Kash sentences are ambiguous another way-- they
could both mean that the street where the _new_ building is, is now called
"Old ... Street", which clearly wouldn't be the case.

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