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Re: [Latejami] UTILITATIVE Case in Ithkuil

Good day Veloer:

In the English sentence "Shemp charged into the room brandishing a sword while holding a gun", we can think the purpose of the gun is implied but it is not stated. What is clear from the meaning is that Shemp is in posession of a gun.

The semantic role of the gun need be no more complicated here IMHO than item posessed. I felt the need to complicate the sentence with the phrase "while" instead of "and".

Comrie documents aspect markers that would handle the "while". If we want to emphasize temporal order "Shemp held the gun while brandishing the sword" there is excellent material in Tense.

Have you considered a marker for the main verb in cases where agent is responsible for more than one? Excuse the bad English of my example, but assume the marker for this is "daza" and consider the following example.

"Fred sat laughed negotiated-daza Ethel-beneficiary."

I'm going to have to go back and re-read non-linking argument structure to speak intelligently about it or at least appear to.

FaqSphinx