Re: Split verbs and other odd parts of speech

On Sun, 11 Jan 2004, Gary Shannon wrote:

> With SV order "John relinquish book moveto Mary
> accept." where the "verb" comes in three separate
> pieces, (reliquish/move to/accept) each piece
> belonging ot the object most directly connected to the
> doing.  [John relinquish] [book moveto] [Mary accept].
>
> Since each half-verb can only take one object there is
> no need to case mark anything.  I was thinking of
> letting the article/adjective/pronoun (see D;
> "changing word") carry the singular/plural distinction
> so "this book" is singular and "these book" is plural,
> but the noun doesn't change for plural, only the
> "changing word" changes.
If I understand this and Objective C correctly, it sounds somewhat like
Objective C (Objective C is an object-oriented programming language with
very minimal syntactical additions to C and is used as the native
programming language of NeXTSTEP & derivatives (MacOS X, GNUStep)). In
Objective C, a message (method, function) is something like
setWidth:Height: and to set the size of a rectangled named rect, you use:
  [rect setWidth: 20 Height: 20]
which appears to be rather similar to yours. I imagine your sentence would
convert to:
  [book moveFrom: john To: mary]
which seems rather like English but that's only because of the word
order, the fact that it isn't inflected, and the particular choice of
words, designed for English-speakers. Quite conceivably, it could be (with
a different syntax and the verb melo:Alna:Qualna):
  melo: puku Alna: djonu Qualna: marju
whereas 'Mary takes the book from John' could have the verb kimno:Arta:Skinta::
  kimno: puku Skinta: marju Arta: djonu
Or we could add tenses/moods etc for more fun (and use consant roots like
mtl:ln:kwln), and for 'John gives Mary the book' have:
  metlo: puku Lena: djonu Kølna: marju
  kemno: puku Sencta: marju Reta: djonu
(you can't expect a fully transparent inflexional system from me,
especially if the orthography has no defined extravagent pronunciation)
and for 'John might have given Mary the book':
  matlo: puku Alna: djonu Qualna: marju
  kamno: puku Skanta: marju Arta: djonu
(One presumes different orderings change the focus, though perhaps if a
word is mtl:ln:kwln, it can only appear as that.)

This does seem reasonably fun :)

--
Tristan

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