Re: "to be" or "not to be"

Scotto:
<<
Anyway. I was looking in my Roget's Thesaurus and in the front, Roget
has the Tabular Synopsis of Categories.  This seems like a good
compendium of root meaning that I could work from as a basis for some
roots for my new lang. Under existence, there is an entry for
"Inexistence." Roget has a pile of words that related to this, but it
got me thinking. Is there a language that has a specific word for non
existence eg. "not to be"? I find it fascinating to think in those terms
and would like to see how it might have worked elsewhere.
 >>

I'm not sure if this is philosophically different from what you
were thinking of, but there are tons of languages with negative
copulae.  Something like:

Ma tan kala.
/I COP beautiful/
"I am beautiful."

Ma lor kala.
/I NEG.COP beautiful/
"I am not beautiful."

-David
*******************************************************************
"A male love inevivi i'ala'i oku i ue pokulu'ume o heki a."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."

-Jim Morrison

http://dedalvs.free.fr/

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