Re: Unilang: the Grammar

On Tue, 24 Apr 2001 14:12:01 EDT, David Peterson <DigitalScream@...>
wrote:

>  But anyway, as to your last three, I think there should be a whole other
>frame that goes with the initial diagram to express what's going on in the
>mind: Whether one wants to do it, whether one feels obligated, etc.  Then
>there's the how.  Anyway, I thought it was an okay idea, and now, thanks to
>your masterwork, I think it's a much better one.
Well, expressions of mindset are kind of what adverbs are for; there are
simply so many shades, it's easiest to draw on "adjectives" made adverbs;
it's a matter of making useful adjectives, such as "feeling obligated", etc.

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.

Though it's tempting not to have a copula, there is necessity: as part-of-
speech is generally not marked, a <subject + intransitive verb> sentence
could be interpreted as <subject + compliment>, without any copula.

Óskar