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on 3/24/02 9:23 PM, Mike Wright at darwin@hidden.email wrote: > Rex May - Baloo wrote: >> >> I found this all interesting, most especially the pidgin/creole >> habit of having adjectives precede nouns and adverbs follow verbs. >> If that were the case in Ceqli, we'd have. >> >> To bon kan ja kway. instead of >> To bon kan kway ja. >> >> Does anybody think that alternative maybe a better system? > > Doing some searching around the Web on various creoles, it appears > that several comments on the LANGX pages are a bit over-generalized. > Although there may be some trends, there are some very striking > variations among the various creoles of the world. > > One thing I recall reading on sci.lang is that "adverb" is a sort of > catchall term, and may not cover the same kinds of words from one > language to the next. In the case of Mandarin, adverbs precede verbs, > with the exception of what Li and Thompson (section 8.5) call > "quantity adverbial phrases". There is another construction where > adverbs of manner appear to follow the verb, but actually the verb is > nominalized, and what is translated as an adverb is actually a stative > verb (adjective). > > I guess the equivalent contrast in Ceqli would be: > To bon kan kway ja. > To bon kan(sa) javo kway. Yes. But I think it shd be 'jaka', meaning act of going, whereas 'javo' is 'one who goes' or 'goer.' I could see that Mandarian phrasing working very well in Ceqli. I'd think it would tend to mean that the good dog goes fast (as a rule), with the first sentence tending to mean he's going fast right now. But that may just be my English gut-reaction. > > 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?) No. As we have it now, the modifiers just line up as in Mandarin or Loglan. To pobon felin ga pokway ja. The bad cat very (largely) slowly goes. Now, in a sense, the addition of usually-optional 'sa' sort of makes it into an unambiguous modifier. To pobonsa felin gasa pokwaysa ja. And if we want, ever, the English word order here for any reason, we can use 'hu'. To pobon feliin ja hu gasa pokway. And I see that happening because: 1. It's comfortable for English speakers. 2. As an afterthought ? you say what happened and then you modify it as an afterthought. 3. Occasionally as a clarifier, when you have more than one adverb modifying the verb. To clarify _that_: Go gasa kwaysa soma. I very fast read. Gasa modifies kway, not soma. But in Go bonsa kwaysa soma. I well, fast read. Bonsa modifies the verb, not the other adverb. Now, context here is probably sufficient, which is in keeping with the basic Ceqli idea to keep it simple and terse unless you need to disambiguate. To disambiguate this case, you could say: Go bon kay kwaysa soma. or Go bonsa soma hu kway, or Go kwaysa soma hu bon. and I don't know how the latter two would differ in meaning, if at all. This could help, maybe, with the question of how to have an adverb apply to one verb or both. Da kwaysa skri kay pokwaysa soma. Is clear. But Da kwaysa kom kay ho dorm. Is ambiguous. does it mean he both ate quickly and went to sleep quickly, or just the former? I'd say it's ambiguous in Ceqli as is, but can be disambiguated thus: Da kom hu kway kay ho dorm. Here kway only applies to the first verb. Da kom kay kwaysa ho dorm. Here only to the second. Now, about these moveable adverbs: I've always felt that some adverbs are clearly verb-modifiers. Go fast, sleep well, etc., but that many feel more like _sentence_ modifiers. I eat today, Clearly, the dog is asleep, etc. Seems like the former have to be right there with the verb, the others can move around. Any thoughts? -- >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/