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on 3/18/02 12:54 PM, Mike Wright at darwin@hidden.email wrote: > Rex May - Baloo wrote: >> >> Okay, the way I see it, Ceqli needs four particles: >> >> 1. To become (Esperanto ig^i) >> 2. To cause (Esperanto igi) >> 3. To cease being (the opposite of #1) >> 4. To cause to cease (opposite of #2) >> >> Now, originally I had ho meaning become: >> >> Go ho dorm. I go to sleep, fall asleep. >> Go dormho. I go to sleep. >> >> And kaw meaning cause. >> >> Go kaw zi dorm. I cause you to sleep, put you to sleep. >> Go dormkaw zi. I put you to sleep. >> >> They can be used as suffixes, Esperanto style, or as words in their own >> right, a la English and Mandarin. I believe, tho, that when used as >> suffixes, the resulting compound will again form a pseudo-morpheme. > > I don't see the point of such suffixes. I would hold off on adding > complications to the syntax just on the off chance that they may > become useful. Why not wait until the need becomes obvious, then deal > with it? Maybe not all of them, but the Esperanto 'cause' word, -ig, is very useful in that language. It also has meaning as an independent word meaning 'cause,' but mostly appears as a suffix. > > And why suffixes rather than prefixes? When does the logic of Ceqli > syntax demand a suffix, and when does it demand a prefix? In this case, I think it's the head-last rule. I sleep-cause you. Sleep-cause is a kind of causing, not a kind of sleeping. One thing I think is important is color words. I redden. I blacken the wall. I whiten the screen. Etc. And I'm just prejudiced in favor of compound words, I guess. Does mandarin have a pattern of any kind here? I sleep. I go to sleep. I put him to sleep. I'm red. I turn red. I make him red. I sit. I sit down. I sit him down. In Esperanto, I think, all these take the ig and ig^ suffixes. > >> Now, there isn't much possible difference between dormho and ho dorm that I >> can see, but something might develop. > > And that would be the time to consider it. > >> Now, I think we need two more words which will basically work this way: >> >> Go X dorm. I wake up (Go dormX) >> Go Y dorm zi. I wake you up (Go dormY zi) > > Is the aim to have only "positive" morphemes, and to create all > "negative" morphemes by modification? Will "I vomited" be the "Go pa X > kom"? And will "I stood" be "Go pa X stu"? Or will it be "Go pa X pron"? > Well, no. I guess the aim is to find the happy medium between having super-terse ways of saying things, and learnability. That is, once you know 'un' and 'cause', you can make a lot of new words without learing them. >> These would also apply thus. >> >> Go jiY da. I kill him. > > And "resurrect" could be "jiYY". > > Another approach might be to create compound verbs like "kawbuji" for > "kill", "hobuji" for "die", "kawbudorm" for "wake up" (transitive) and > "hobudorm" for "wake up" (intransitive). I would be happy with these, tho I think they should be bujikaw, bujiho, budormkaw, budormho. -- >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/