Re: Tasratal: sketch: connectives (long)

On Friday, October 26, 2001, at 08:10 , Nik Taylor wrote:

> Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
>> Hmm...perhaps in a case like the following:
>> "Yoon and Darth Vader are practicing lightsaber(wo)manship," where the
>> understanding is that Yoon and Darth Vader *just happen* to be doing the
>> same thing, but otherwise there's no connection (and they might not even
>> be aware that they're doing the same thing).  Or rather, the connection
>> is
>> coincidental.
>
> That reminds me of an ambiguity I've come upon a few times, a sentence
> like "Two of my friends got engaged".  Does that mean one engagement, or
> two?  I.e., did they get engaged *to each other* or *to other people*?
> Uatakassi wouldn't have a problem with that, well, actually it would,
> since there's no concept of marriage :-), but, if there were, the
> reciprocative voice would be used if it's one engagement, and the active
> if two.
>
<laugh>  Yes--I've thought about that one occasionally.  I guess if
Tasratal has a word for marriage/engagement ^_^ it might use that
connective to mean two people got engaged *to other people.*  A
reciprocative particle might be worth thinking about, though...

YHL