Re: Tatari Faran comparatives

On Tue, Apr 17, 2007 at 02:57:30AM +0200, Henrik Theiling wrote:
> Hi!
>
> Sorry for answering late -- traditionally, your posts are interesting,
> well-written and long, so I took the heuristic liberty to reserve some
> time before I could read your post with the necessary rest. :-)
Hehe, thanks!


> H. S. Teoh writes:
> >...
> > 1) _puru_ and _sutu_ may appear in adjectival position to indicate a
> > comparative quantity:
> >
> > 	tiki   puru sei tsuni baran   kana upi  ipai ira.
> > 	rabbit more CVY find  morning now  here at   COMPL
> > 	There are more rabbits here this morning.
> > 	['ti'ki pu4u sej . 'tsuni ba4an kana ?u'pi ?ipaj ?i4a]
> >
> > 	buneis   sutu sei tsuni upi  ipai ira.
> > 	mushroom less CVY find  here at   COMPL
> > 	There are less mushrooms here (than before).
> > 	[bu'nejs:utu sej . tsuni ?u'pi ?ipaj ?i4a]
>
> This does remind me of the Mandarin structures for 'many' which is
> different in structure from what I'd use in English or German:
>
>       Ni3 de  shu1 hen3 duo1.
> lit. 'you 's  book very numerous'
>      'You have many books.'
>
> In a similarly different way, Tatari Faran's 'less' and 'more' seem to
> map to English structures.
True. In Mandarin, the structure of a comparative would be something
like:
	Na4bien1 you2  bi3jiao4 duo1 xiang1ku1
	there    exist COMPAR   more mushroom
	There are more mushrooms there.
	(Lit. over there are more mushrooms. - bi3jiao4 = comparative
	marker, which seems to derive from the noun _bi3jiao4_,
	"comparison".)


> But in those sentences, the similarity of correspondance may also be
> due to the different predicate 'find'.  Of cause, using 'find' isn't
> far-fetched at all (Swedish is very similar (but uses middle voice)).
That's interesting. Tatari Faran has no verb to-be at all (not in any
tense or mood), and so substitutes various other constructions
idiomatically for its different uses. For the case of existential
statements, the verbs _tsuni ira_ (to find, to discover) and _kibas ham_
(to breathe) are used. For inanimates and locational statements, _tsuni
ira_ is used; _kibas ham_ is used for affirming the existence of an
animate entity.

	san    muras so  kibas   ham.
	person grey  CVY breathe COMPL
	Lava artists [certainly] exist.
	(Lit. "grey people breathe." - "grey people" = idiom for "lava
	artist")

	san    muras so  tsuni kapi  ipai ira.
	person grey  CVY find  there at   COMPL
	There are lava artists over there.
	(Lit. "grey people are found there.")


> Ok, this was probably impossible to understand because I just gave my
> raw braindump, but -- nice work! :-)
[...]

Thanks. :-)


--T

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