Re: Unilang: the Grammar

In a message dated 4/25/01 10:36:32 AM, hr_oskar@HOTMAIL.COM writes:

<< As to adjectives, I'm all for stative verbs in place of a morphological

adjective category. Same goes for prepositions: verb sequences easily cover

their function without the arbitrariness inherent in IE prepositions.

Thus, "in" and "out" are simply verbs a par with "enter" and "exit";

monosyllabic verbs, most likely. The vocabulary would therefore include

various verbs not present in English, such as "be on top of", "be

beside", "be under", etc. >>

    This is actually what I did for my first language.  I have one verb
meaning "to be inside" and another meaning "to go into, to enter".  For each
of these verbs, though, I made a preposition with them.  Why?  I think I
realized (though I didn't even know this distinction existed at that time)
the difference betwen sattelite and non-sattelite languages.  I realized that
if I only had one verb for "to enter", then I'd have to use that every single
time, and if I wanted to describe how whoever entered (running, slouching,
trudging, tripping, etc.), I'd need to use an adjective, and I didn't like
that; a preposition's must shorter.  Now that I do know of all this, I'm much
more careful when I create those words.  And I think I do favor satellite
languages, despite their flaws.

-David

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