Deriving adjectives from nouns (was: Re: mental masturbation)

Tem Wed, 2 Jun 1999 15:28:11 EDT, "From
Http://Members.Aol.Com/Lassailly/Tunuframe.Html" <Lassailly@...>
skribis:

>>  In UTL it would be said "mentala masturbio",
>
>this is very interesting : may i ask what really means "mentala" ? does =
it=20
>mean that "mens" is the object of masturbatio ? or does it mean that=20
>masturbatio has a mental shape/consistency ? or that the instrument is =
mental=20
>? or that "mens" is the beneficiary thereof ? etc. i think that kind of=20
>adjective is the main cause for semantic mis-translation between =
natlangs.

Well, I think you've made your judgement before knowing the issue. You
still don't know what's the meaning of -al- in UTL. Anyway, you've
made a good comment there and it's something I'm dealing with in UTL.
I have four kind of adjectives from a noun in UTL:
1. direct one:                  menta
2. direct agglutinated one:     mentoa / mentea (-o and -e are
sing&plural noun endings respectively)
3. indirect (suffixed) one:     ment-al-a
4. preposition-compounded one: mento-pora, mento-kuna, mento-pera...

As for their meanings:
1m. which is... mento
2m. related with... mento/mente
3m. of (de)... mento/e
4m. por, kun, per, (etc)... mento

As you see, 1. and 4. are precise-meaning, though 2. and 3. are not,
and I have still to decide some things, like:
a. What's the exact meaning of preposition "de" (of) (which would
affect 3.)
b. Whether it should be better to have 2m. for 3. and and 3m. for 2.=20
c. Whether it would be worthy to have a 5th adjective: genitive one,
expressed by -y added to the noun, or to attach genitive's meaning to
2 (after assigning to it 2m to 3).


Saludos,
Marcos