Re: PoS & heretics (was: Cases and Prepositions (amongst others))

Barry Garcia wrote:
>A book I have on the basic grammar of Tagalog doesnt say that the order of
>the words affects the meaning at all (if it were important, such as in the
>Romance languages, i'm pretty sure it would have said something). It just
>says adjectives for instance, can go before or after nouns.  Since it isnt
>a Romance language, i'm not surprised that the word order doesnt affect
>meaning ;). The book did note that it is the linker (na when words end in
>consonants, -ng when they end in vowels) that denotes their relationship
>(they get bound together).>

I happened to find a paper by Paz B. Naylor-- a native speaker who taught
Tag. at Michigan-- and I must say the discussion is far from clear. Of
(a)"bahay na maganda" vs.(b) "magandang bahay" (both 'beautiful house') she
says "Syntactically, _na maganda_ is an attribute of bahay in (a), and _-ng
bahay_ is an attribute of maganda in (b), even if both....refer to the same
concept of "house that is beautiful".  Later on, she translates differently:
mabait na bata 'good child' vs.
batang mabait 'child who is good'.  Also, batang tumatakbo 'child who is
running' vs. tumatakbong bata 'running child'.   I wonder if this isn't
similar to Spanish, when it can invert some (I don't think all) adjectives,
effectively promoting the adj. to noun status-- un americano joven 'a young
American' (an american who is young),  vs. un joven americano 'a young (male
person)(who happens to be)  American'.  Whether you can invert, with the
same sense, say, una casa vieja > una vieja casa, I'm not sure-- I have a
feeling this is simply a way of emphasizing "old", if it's permitted at all.

In Indonesian, if you put the adjective first, you'd be using it
predicatively, and IMO somewhat emphaticly:
        1.  durian enak  (a) tasty durian, intonation approx. ---/-
        2.  durian(,) enak  durian is tasty, inton. -/- , /- (slight break
between the two words, probably indicated in print with a comma)
        3.  enak (,) durian  sort of:  Oooh, durian is tasty. /-, ---
(definite break between the two words) (---- level inton.,  / main stress)
Intonation, obviously, is very important.
(Ever had durian?  FYI, a football size fruit with a nasty spiky rind (hence
the name, <duri 'thorn') that reeks of very ripe Camembert, custardy
texture, tastes sort of sweet/tart/rotten.  Some people are totally
enthralled by it; I found it a non-event.  Better hotels, and the airlines,
forbid them.)
ObConlang:  colloquial/very informal  Kash would follow Indonesian;
correctly, the 3d sing. marker ya- would appear on enak in 2 and 3.