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on 3/6/02 12:36 PM, Mike Wright at darwin@hidden.email wrote: > > I was thinking last night about the neatness of the Japanese and > Hokkien systems of demonstrative pronouns and such, and I have a > proposal. I'll just use made up sounds, without worrying too much > about whether they are available or not. > > The basic idea is to have four categories of compounds. Each compound > would start with one of four modifiers: > > ci - near the speaker > so - near the person being spoken to > tu - distant from both (not always applicable) > kwa - interrogative > > I picked these sounds for maximum distinctiveness. > > Then, there would be a variety of heads: > > jai - place > tor - manner, way > vo - one(s) > faq - direction > fwa - point in time > hu - (connector) > > These would combine to give: > > cijai - here > sojai - there > tujai - yonder > kwajai - where? > > citor - like this, in this way > sotor - like that, in that way > (tutor) > kwator - how? in what way? > > civo - this one > sovo - that one > tuvo - that one over yonder > kwavo - which one? > > cifaq - hither, hence > sofaq - thither,thence > tufaq - yon > kwafaq - whither? whence? > > cifwa - now > sofwa - then > (tufwa - way back then) > kwafwa - when? > > cihu kan - this dog > sohu kan - that dog > tuhu kan - that dog over yonder > kwahu kan - which dog? To elaborate, my original basis was flawed and you've fixed it. I had the 'jay' words basic. Ci, ca, cu. You have made the adjective-forms basic, and I like it better. Only teensy disadvantage is that we can't use kwa as much as before. Zi ten kwa? Has to be come kwadiq or kwavo. Or does it? In that position maybe it can be considered short for those terms, because there is no following noun for it to modify. -- >PLEASE NOTE MY NEW E-MAIL ADDRESS: rmay@hidden.email > Rex F. May (Baloo) > Daily cartoon at: http://www.cnsnews.com/cartoon/baloo.asp > Buy my book at: http://www.kiva.net/~jonabook/gdummy.htm > Language site at: http://www.geocities.com/ceqli/Uploadexp.htm >Discuss my auxiliary language at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/txeqli/