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> Ray Bergmann wrote: > > Mike:-> > The emphasis in the first is on the dog, while the emphasis on the > latter is on the eating. (Is there a suffix that will explicitly > change an adverb to a verb, or vice versa?) > > I don't see any particular advantage in having adverbs follow verbs, > except to make Ceqli more like English--assuming that that would be > an > advantage. The trade-off would be the loss of a simple, uniform > modifier-head principle that applies in every case. > Ray:-> The last point seems good,....except, if you will have a > suffix to indicate an adverb then such a maked adverb would apply to > the verb regardless of its position, wouldn't it? Hmm. That might start us down the path to case marking, rather than using word order. We could end up more like Japanese than like Mandarin. Also, what if there were two or more verbs in a sentence? Which one would such a marked adverb apply to? Actually, I see no need for such marking. If a modifier immediately precedes a noun, it's an adjective (stative verb, actually, in Ceqli). If it immediately precedes a verb or another adverb, it's an adverb. Mandarin has a closs of "movable adverbs", which can go at the beginning of sentences. I don't see any need for such a thing in Ceqli. I think that the more rigid the word order, the better. No need to open the door to unnecessary ambiguity. Likewise, in case of multiple verbs, I would prefer to see an adverb repeated for each, if necessary, rather than ambiguously referring either to the immediately following verb, or to both. -- Mike Wright http://www.CoastalFog.net ____________________________________________________________ "The difference between theory and practice is that, in theory, there is no difference between theory and practice; in practice, however, there is." -- Anonymous