Re: Unilang: the Grammar

In a message dated 4/25/01 4:32:12 PM, hr_oskar@HOTMAIL.COM writes:

<< I'm interested in those 'satellite' terms; have any more details on that?
>>
    It's basically the preposition system of English.  Take Spanish, first.
"Correr", meaning "to run", can only be used intransitively.  So, if you take
the sentence "yo corro en la casa" it can only mean "I'm running inside the
outside", not "I'm running into the house", even though "en" can mean both.
In Latin and Esperanto, this is taken care of with the accusative case (i.e.,
in Latin you use "in" plus the accusative to indicate movement into
something, and "in" plus the ablative to indicate stasis.  And in Esperanto
the same thing occurs, only instead of the ablative, you use the nominative).
 In English, there are just sets of pairs of prepositions: "in"/"into",
"outside of"/"out of", "to"/"at", "away"/"away from", etc.  And even some of
these have fudged a little bit, so "I walk in the house" is ambiguous.  "I
walk into the house", however, is not.  So, whereas in a language like
Spanish, you have one word to mean "enter", and you just have to use a
present participle verb to describe how one enters (if one does it at all),
English allows you to use any sort of motion verb that might usually be used
only intransitively in Spanish and combine with a list of these satellite
prepositions that help describe the motion of the verb.  So, in Spanish you
use a definite verb and describe the manner in which it's done, whereas in
English you use a manner verb and describe the motion.
    More examples:  In Spanish, you can say "I enter/exit/walk/go/leave
running", whereas in English you'd say "I run into/away from/out
of/through/around".  That's the difference between satellite and
non-satellite (by the way, "non-satellite" is not the term; I forget what it
is.  Starts with an "a", I think...).  Because of this, they've done studies
where they'll show a native Spanish speaker and a native English speaker the
same film, and then have them describe it in their own language.  The Spanish
speaker will invariably have fewer manner verbs, whereas English will have a
plethora.  Even if, say, in the film a guy runs into a bank, the Spanish
speaker will more often than not say the guy enters the bank, whereas the
English speaker would say he runs into it.  So, that's what I know about
satellite languages.

-David