Re: Split verbs and other odd parts of speech

--- Tristan McLeay <zsau@...> wrote:
> On Sun, 11 Jan 2004, Gary Shannon wrote:
<snip>

> 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]
Very interesting.  I was thinking of building my verbs
up syntehtically from roots and affixes, but not doing
so with the nouns.  There would be a few root verbs
like "relinquish" (e.g. leo) and each would have it's
opposite like "not relinquish, retain, or hold on to"
(e.g. naleo")

Then I could have a prefix that governed whether the
act was voluntary or involuntary (eg. vo- or invo-,
just as a lame example) so voleo would be to reliquish
voluntarily, as in "to give" and involeo would be to
relinquish involuntarily, as to have something taken
away.  Then if the prefix was not present the action
is either neutral or at least nothing is said about
how the actor feels about it.

Suppose sebo is to receive, and nasebo is to refuse to
receive.  Adding balo, to cause, gio to move, and ribu
for book then: "John takes away Mary's book and gives
it to Tom, who refuses to accept it" would be "John
vobalo ribu gio Mary involeo Tom nesebo." [John
vokeso] [ribu gio] [Mary invobalo] [Tom nesebo]

or: Robin Hood balo mau takalu involeo mai rakufi
vosebo. (Rbin Hood cause the(masc. plural) rich
involuntarily reliquish and the(fem. plural) poor
volutarily receive.

Note I was going to leave the nouns unchanged and
inflect the article (required) to indicate singular or
plural.

> 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
I was going to use adverb-like entities to modify
tense and mood of the verb like "pastly run" for
"ran", or something like that.

Hmmm.  Lots of possibilities here.

--gary

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