Voice alterations + Alas, System Restore !

--- Trebor Jung <treborjung@...> schrieb:
> Merhaba!
>
>   Voice alterations only alter emphasis of arguments
> of a sentence. In a certain conlang, I currently
> have both. I thought of 'doctor vs. patient' -
> converses - and realized things like 'I own a book'
> and 'A book belongs to me' are the same thing,
> except that the latter is 'I own a book' just with
> emphasis on 'book' (= 'The book is owned by me'),
> whereas the first sentence emphasises 'I'. If
> emphasis alteration will work for verbs, will it
> work for nouns? Will I be able to just use emphasis
> particles instead of verb marking _and_ emphasis
> particles? I'm thinking not. And if not, how can I
> get around this problem? How can I express 'patient'
> without an inverse voice?
>
> Since voice alterations only alter emphasis of
arguments of a sentence, John Quijada suggested I only
use the emphasis particles (in a certain conlang).
Then I thought of 'doctor vs. patient' - converses -
and then realized things like 'I own a book' and 'A
book belongs to me' are the same thing, except that
the latter is 'I own a book' just with emphasis on
'book', whereas the first sentence emphasises 'I'. If
emphasis alteration will work for verbs, will it work
for nouns?”

Philippe antwortet:

I analyse “A book belongs to me” as “A book is owned
by me”, meaning that conceptually it is the passive of
“I own a book”.
- I own a book = locutor owns book (standard
expression; locutor is implicitely focused, thus:
locutor[+focused] owns book)
- A book belongs to me = locutor owns book+focused
(non standard, to be marked)
I wouldn’t use the term “emphasize” in this case,
because it looks like a different concept:
- I own a book (active form, not emphasized) # I
(myself) am the owner of a book, It is me who own a
book (“I” emphasized)
- A book belongs to me (passive form, not emphasized)
# It is a book that belongs to me (“book” emphasized);
also “It is this book that belongs to me”, “This very
book belongs to me” (emphasized on “this”)

“To own” and “to belong to” are converse verbs, but it
looks like the “A-owns-B” form is the privileged one,
compared to “B-belongs to-A”. This seems not being the
case with pairs like “to sell / to buy” (hard to say
which one would be the privileged one). This probably
because “to own” more often refers to a human agent
and a thing possessed, when “to sell” and “to buy”
both refere to a human agent, the object of the action
(the thing bought / sold) being equal. And it happens
that we are human beings, or supposed so.

-------------------------
OT: Alas System Restore !

I tried the System Restore in hope to fix a nasty “The
System has recovered from a serious problem” message,
appearing since a few days on my screen every time I
start Windows XP. I tried to restore from a recent
point of restoration, without result. Then from an
earlier one, the same. Then from an even earlier one,
all the same. So I tried the JSI-Inc tip:
- turn off System Restore, shutdown, restart Windows
XP, then:
- turn on System Restore again, shutdown, restart
Windows XP
and it’s just all the same, except that I lost all my
restoration point (as announced).
So now I’ll try boiling “Toad, that under cold stone /
Days and night has thirty-one / Swelter’d venom,
sleeping got” in my cauldron, with some “fillet of a
fenny snake”, “toe of frog, wool of bat, and tongue of
dog”, but just in case somebody had a better idea ???



=====
Philippe Caquant

"Le langage est source de malentendus."
(Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

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