Re: "to be" or "not to be"
| From: | Scotto Hlad <scott.hlad@...> |
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| Date: | Saturday, June 14, 2008, 4:29 |
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Precisely what I was thinking. Thank you!
I thought it would be interesting the case of how strong would deny
something using a negative copula. If combined with a negative particle,
one could have the positive copula with the negative particle, then the
negative copula, then the negative particle plus the negative copula.
Example
Child #1: You're silly.
Child #2: I NEG.PARTICLE COPULA.
Child #1: Yes you are.
Child #2: I NEG.COPULA!!
Child #1: You are too!
Child #2: I NEG.PARTICLE NEG.COPULA!!!
Double negatives notwithstanding, emphasis would be come higher each
time. Normally, one would simply use the negative copula, but this
special case seems interesting to me.
Can you name a few of the languages that do have the negative copula?
Scotto
-----Original Message-----
From: Constructed Languages List [mailto:CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu] On
Behalf Of David J. Peterson
Sent: Friday, June 13, 2008 8:00 PM
To: CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu
Subject: 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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