Re: polysynthetic languages

En réponse à Christian Thalmann :


>So "est" is the 1sg form nowadays?  ;-)
LOL, not only a mistake of person, but a mistake of verb! The correct form 
should be "ai" of course. That's what you get with homophones and somebody 
who doesn't pay attention to what he's writing :))) . And not using French 
often lately probably doesn't help ;)) .

>I still don't quite understand what function this "te" has
>in this context.  The one with the child who doesn't eat
>was kinda intuitive; it could be interpreted as "the child
>doesn't eat anything *from* me", or that the child does
>that *to me* out of sheer malice.
Except that you're extremely far from the meaning of the ethical dative 
there. It has nothing to do with "from me" or "to me". It has to do with "I 
feel involved in it".

>   That makes me sense.  =P
>But in the sentence above?
The point is to involve the listener in what you say by putting him/her in 
the sentence, although the action has nothing to do with that person. 
French has an expression describing exactly what I mean: "prendre 
(quelqu'un) à parti". Unfortunately, I'm unable to find a translation of 
this expression which captures the right meaning. And the Harrap's (despite 
its size) doesn't help. The expression is related to the expression 
"prendre le parti de quelqu'un": "to side with someone", but has a slightly 
different meaning. Then again, I can't seem to come up with anything in 
English that can translate this distinction.


>So what does the "ethical" mean here?
Ask those who chose that name for the phenomenon ;))) .

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang. 

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