Re: nominator sentences (was Re: cases)

On Mon, Sep 11, 2000 at 01:12:47PM -0400, Jonathan Chang wrote:
> In a message dated 2000:09:11 5:06:02 AM, hsteoh@QUICKFUR.YI.ORG writes:
>
> >The idea behind a summaritive sentence is to recapture the main ideas and
> >the inter-relationships between the main ideas from preceding discourse
>
>     Intriguing... this may fit into one of those "logical language" schemes
> (a la Loglan, Lojban (sp?), etc.).
[snip]

Well, I'm not sure how "logical" my conlang will turn out to be, though...
there are going to be lots of odd exceptions, idiosyncrasies, idioms,
etc.. Not to mention ambiguities, esp. in stative sentences. (Stative
sentences are verb-less sentences describing the unchanging state of
something; verbs are used *only* when events (changes of state) are
involved.) Stative sentences use noun cases to describe certain
relationships... but the meaning may sometimes be quite ambiguous.

For example:    pii'z3da biz3t30'.
                man from-woman.
This can be interpreted to either mean "the man is the woman's son", or
"the man is sent by the woman". Literally, "The man from the woman".
Context would be required to make this clear. (I love context sensitivity!
:-P) Of course, a participle can be used for "sent" to disambiguate the
meaning; but native speakers don't like to use it if the context makes
things clear.


T