Re: A'stou part III: the Personal System and the Verb (LONG)

Christophe Grandsire wrote:

> - "exclusive nos": this person refers to the group where the speaker
> belongs to, and from which the listener is excluded. Yet, when the speaker
> speaks in the name of this group, he must use the "ego" person.
Can you give a specimen of when this *is* the right thing to use?
Also I don't understand how it can be glossed "them", which always
excludes both the speaker and the listener in English.

> - "vos": this person refers to a group to which the listener belongs, but
> to which the speaker wants to be excluded from. It never refers to a group
> of listeners (the "non-ego" is used instead) but to the general group they
> belong to.
The gloss "them" seems impossible for this one too.

> NOTE: A few months ago, while I was reading a booklet about the structure
> of languages, I was surprised and interested by the existence of some
> languages that didn't have subclauses but used noun phrases with noun forms
> of verbs instead. I already liked the infinitive subclauses of Latin, so
> the idea of making a language with only infinitive subclauses really
> pleased me. So you can imagine my surprise when I discovered on my notes
> about A'stou that actually I had already done that when I was 17!! :))
English alone among the Germanic languages has Latin-style "accusative and
infinitive" constructions, such as "I wanted him to go".  They apparently
started to be used during the revival of learning, so this may represent an instance
of a grammatical form being borrowed from a higher-prestige language.

--

Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis um dies! || John Cowan <jcowan@...>
Schliesst euer Aug vor heiliger Schau,  || http://www.reutershealth.com
Denn er genoss vom Honig-Tau,           || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Und trank die Milch vom Paradies.            -- Coleridge (tr. Politzer)