Re: The deliberate redundancy; was: Idioms

On Tue, 8 Jun 1999, Sally Caves wrote:

> Redundancies below, after a short discussion of the reviled
> preposition!  <G>
>
> dunn patrick w wrote:
> >
> > Sally, in discussing Teonaht (incidently, I love that conlang!  I actually
> > read bits of it to someone at work once and said, "isn't that beautiful?"
> > He nodded slowly and backed away) mentioned some idioms, particularly the
> > quirky use of prepositions.
>
> Hey thanks!  Did you also read him bits of your own conlang? ;-)
>
> The quirky use of prepositions is not a popular topic... I've gotten no
> response to it or suggestions, so this is welcome!
>
> > Hatasoe is similar.  For instance, the preposition pazo, meaning "for", is
> > used to mark indirect objects.  "Duo", "upon", is used with the verbs "to
> > walk," "to go" and "to drive" even if it's inside a structure.  And felan,
> > "with", is often sued to indicate possession, particularly when an animate
> > noun owns another animate noun.  "The man's brother" therefore could be
> > "Pato sha" but is usually "Pato felan sho."
>
> Well this is quite interesting.  How do you use pazo with walk?  I'm not
> sure I understand your example above because you don't give long enough
> sentences with each word glossed.  For instance, in Pato felan sho, what
> does "sho" mean and what does "sha"?  How is "duo" inside a structure?
Let me give some examples.

pazo to introduce the IO:

ea olosua pazo pato sue.
I  I.it.sing for brother song.
I sing a song to the brother.

ea olohomaka pazo apueo gaze.
I I.it.give for   god   tea.
I give tea to the god.

duo with pua, to walk:

ea opua duo talo.
I  I.walk upon island.
I walk about the island.

ea opua duo tete.
I I.walk upon house.
I walk through the house.
I walk in the house.

The use of felan to show possession:

Tete sha.
House man(const.)
The man's house.

Pato felan sho.
Brother with man.
The man's brother.

> Another thing that T. ought to do if it is an analytic language with
> lots
> of prepositions is make sure that there are some verbs that we regard as
> intransitive that they see transitively and vice versa.  It's so hard to
> fight the "relex" problem (a "coding" for your own native language) but
> you have to constantly be aware of it.  "Eat the food."  Transitive
> "eat"
> in both Teonaht and English.    "Give to the poor."  Intransitive "give"
> in both Teonaht and English.   "Listen to the music."  AHA!
> Intransitive
> "listen" in English but transitive in Teonaht.  Yay!
>
> But what about expressions that would make "eat" intransitive" and
> "give" transitive"?  Grace the poor with your donation.  Bite at your
> food.
This is a good point.  I'll have to dig through Hatasoe and make sure I'm
not relexing.

>         the wet fish
>         the feathered bird
>         the hard stone
>         the wet rain
>         the legless snake
>         the black crow
>
> Its six miles as the black crow flies.
> He's out fishing for the wet fish.
> He doesn't have brains enough to come out of the wet rain.
> He's caught between a hard rock and a hard place (!!! G)
>
> These modifiers would be meaningless insofar as determining a wet fish
> from
> a dry fish (something on your plate maybe?), and would be incorporated
> in the word.  These would become poetic words, or rhetorically
> embellished
> words.  I can see, now, how classifiers arose in some of the Asian
> languages.
> I wonder if it wasn't just this kind of process:  the flat plate, the
> long pencil, the round egg.
Being a poet, I'm immediately struck by the possibility of meter this
opens up.  If I could just stick "wet" before "fish" and not be derided as
redundant, it'd open up possibilities of a strict metrical poetic system,
like Greek.  It effectively gives you two words, with different meters,
for the same idea.

fish    wet fish
/       /   /
bird    fea-thered bird
/       /   _      /
snake   leg-less snake
/       /   _    /

English also has this "two words for one" ability, but only because we
absorbed -- or, as I like to put it, met with a crash of sparks and badly
pronounced vowels -- Norman French.  Hence, we have:

feather         plume
/  _            /
snake           ser-pent
/               /  _

Sorry, that swas something of a digression, unless you're working on a
poetic system for your language.  Something I've not yet begun; it's easy
to decide that you want, say, anapestic tetrameter to be the natural foot,
but much harder to impliment.

--Patrick