Re: drinking a drink

i tried typing this up earlier, but i lost it because of issues with explorer so
i'm trying to type it again.

   -------Original Message-------
   > From: Sally Caves 
   > Subject: Re: drinking a drink
   > Sent: May 23 2003 20:21:03
   >
   >
   >  ----- Original Message -----
   >  From: "Garrett Jones" conlang@ALKALINE.ORG>   >
> i have thought of this type of rendundancy ("drinking a drink"), and have
   >  > deliberated for a long period of time on how to handle it in Minyeva.
   >  > Because of the structure of Minyeva, this situation occurs more often in
   >  the
   >  > language than in English. take the derivatives of the word "to know (how
   >  to
   >  > do something)":
   >
   >  [snip]
   >
   >  > - So, i have come up with a catch-all redundancy word. I have no idea what
   >  > to call it, and i don't know if it's an ANADEWISM.
   >
   >  I think it's pretty creative.  But why not make the focus, or the patient,
   >  the zlo word?  Maybe that's part of the ingeniousness of this construction,
   >  though.

i'm not exactly sure what you're asking here, but as seen below, the zlo word can
be used in any case, and its meaning corresponds to which case it is in. i am
considering having a separate word to use for each case, but i'm not sure.

   >  > zlo te         tone i   va
   >  > FIT-the (make) know PAT him
   >  > the teacher taught him.
   >
   >  > - the interlinear is near undecipherable here. basically, "zlo" here
   >  means
   >  > "the entity that causes someone else to know how to do something". In
   >  other
   >  > words, a teacher. the "zlo" here has the same meaning as the minyeva word
   >  > "ja'tone", which means teacher.
   >
   >  Or make the VERB the zlo-word?  The teacher zloes him.

well zlo is a pro-noun, so to replace a verb, you'd need a pro-verb. i decided to
create one, which will be "jlai", which means "to do what X usually does".

ja'tone te  jlai           i   va.
teacher-the (usual.action) PAT him.
the teacher taught him.

If there was some person named Kenya and he was known for being clumsy, one could say:

Kenya jlai.
Kenya (usual.action).
Kenya dropped something/tripped/did something clumsy/pulled a Kenya.

   >  Without the word "zlo", the sentence sounds
   >  > a little redundant:
   >  >
   >  > ja'tone te tone i va.
   >  > the teacher taught him
   >
   >  It does if you have made both "teacher" and "student" derive from the word
   >  "teach," or if there is not enough phonemic distinction between verb and
   >  noun, as you say.  This would seem to work well for Minyeva in that case.
   >
   >  I have a bit of that problem in Teonaht as -var or -ivar is so easy to
   >  attach to the verb: ravo:ivar, "lover"; so I created "amyeld."  Lo:
   >  deluanhar le amyeld ravvo:  "the lover loves his sweetheart."  Mendohtarem
   >  is "teach," and a teacher is logically a mendohtivar.  So I created
   >  naivvo:hsy.  Le naivvohsy menddohta.  Il ahthny le naivvohsy menddohta.
   >
   >  > - with the word for "student" as the patient, it gets even more redundant,
   >  > with all the "tone"s scattered about:
   >  >
   >  > ja'tone te         tone i   ji'tone-the
   >  > teacher-the (make) know PAT student-the
   >  > the teacher taught the student
   >
   >  Yeah... what you might need eventually is more vocabulary.  Believe you me,
   >  if you stick at it long enough, it will come.

i am planning on having a rather extensive vocabulary in Minyeva. There will be
many distinctions between roots, but there will be a lot of derivation also
present in Minyeva. Maybe i'll go for the record for largest conlang vocabulary
:-)

one type of derivation i'm not doing though is making antonyms into word/un-word
pairs. i like having separate lexical items for each word in the pair. Maybe
it's my ill-feelings towards the giant esperanto word "malgranda" which just
means "small".

   >  > what does everyone make of this?
   >
   >  I think it's neat.  In the long run, it cuts down on a lot of wordiness.
   >  Good going.

glad you like it :-)

   >  Sally Caves
   >  scaves@frontiernet.net
   >  Eskkoat ol ai sendran, rohsan nuehra celyil takrem bomai nakuo.
   >  "My shadow follows me, putting strange, new roses into the world."
   -------Original Message-------