There are 2 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Mood and author opinion
From: Leonardo Castro
2a. Re: adposition cases
From: Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
Messages
________________________________________________________________________
1. Mood and author opinion
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" leolucas1...@gmail.com
Date: Fri Jun 28, 2013 5:11 am ((PDT))
Consider the following sentence groups:
"Tom guesses it will rain."
"It may rain."
"The author guesses it will rain."
"Dick doubts it will rain."
"It will hardly rain."
"The author doubts it will rain."
"Harry knows it will rain."
"It must rain."
"The author knows it will rain."
"Harry denies that it's raining."
"It's not raining."
"The author denies that it's raining."
It seems that the ideas of "may", "will hardly", "must", "not", etc.,
are logically equivalent to "the author <verb>". Naturally, instead of
explicitly writing "the author", the verb could simply receive a
particular form to mean that it's an opinion of the author or a fact
that doesn't depend on the text character's opinions. Apparently,
English can do this with adverbs:
"Possibly, it will rain."
"Hardly, it will rain."
"Probably, it will rain."
"Negatively it's raining." (I guess this one is not really said.)
Do any nat or conlangs express this type of ideas by means of a
specific conjugation of verbs such as "guess", "believe", "deny",
"affirms", etc., instead of using "might", "probably", "not", "yes",
etc.?
Até mais!
Leonardo
Messages in this topic (1)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
2a. Re: adposition cases
Posted by: "Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets" tsela...@gmail.com
Date: Fri Jun 28, 2013 5:22 am ((PDT))
On 10 June 2013 03:29, neo gu <qiihos...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Does anyone know of a natlang which marks spatial cases (locative,
> allative, ablative, perlative) on the adposition rather than the noun? It
> seems like this would be reasonable if the adpositions were originally
> nouns (although I guess the object of the adposition would have to be
> marked genitive?).
>
Basque is a typical example of what you're looking for.
In Basque, there is a series of nouns (with the exception of _kontra_:
"against", a loanword that may be the only true postposition in the
language) that is used where English would use prepositions. They are nouns
like _aurre_: "frontside", _atze_: "backside" or _arte_: "gap, interval",
that usually indicate locations. Give them a complement (in the genitive
case) and a locative case ending, and they turn into postpositions:
_etxe zuriaren aurrean_: "in front of the white house"
_eliza handiaren atzean_: "behind the big church"
_tenplearen eta aldarearen artean_: "between the temple and the altar"
(examples stolen from _Standard Basque: a Progressive Grammar_)
Unlike normal nouns, in some conditions (basically, when it is inanimate
and isn't completed by an adjective) the governed noun doesn't need to be
in the genitive case but can appear without ending, which makes these nouns
look even more postposition-like:
_etxe aurrean_: "in front of the house" (the alternative with the genitive
case _etxearen aurrean_ is still valid, just less common)
Those constructions are in fact usually analysed as compounds (and indeed
are pronounced as such in the spoken language), but written with a space.
And while so far I've only used those location nouns with the inessive
case, they can be used with any locative case:
_mendi atzean_: "behind the mountain" (inessive -an)
_mendi atzetik_: "from behind the mountain" (elative -tik)
_mendi atzera_: "(to) behind the mountain" (allative -ra)
_mendi atzeraino_: "all the way to behind the mountain" (terminal -raino)
_mendi atzerantz_: "towards behind the mountain" (tendential -rantz)
While those are kind of like what you're looking for, they are still
nominal in nature (_etxe zuriaren aurrea_: "the front of the white house"
is a perfectly normal expression and used as such). But as I mentioned
above, Basque also has the loanword _kontra_: "against". It's *not* a noun,
and is never used as such. Instead, it's used strictly as a postposition
(governing the genitive case or uninflected nouns like other location
nouns) that has both the oppositional and the spatial sense of its English
translation:
_hotzaren kontra_: "against the cold"
_hormaren kontra_: "against the wall"
Interestingly though, when used with a spatial meaning, _kontra_ *can* take
locative case endings, making it exactly what you were looking for: a true
adposition (rather than a noun used as one) that takes spatial cases rather
than the noun it governs:
_hormaren kontran_: "against the wall" (inessive, rather uncommon)
_hormaren kontrara_: "(to) against the wall" (allative)
_mendi kontratik_: "from against the mountain" (elative, an example I
actually found in the wild on the Internet :) )
--
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
Messages in this topic (14)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/
<*> Your email settings:
Digest Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
conlang-nor...@yahoogroups.com
conlang-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
conlang-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
------------------------------------------------------------------------
