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Rex May - Baloo wrote:
>
> 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.'
Ah. That wasn't clear to me from the glossary definition.
> 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.
I'd say that in the Mandarin, the second puts additional emphasis on
the adverb, but they dont' seem to differ in tense or aspect. We
should be able to say:
To bon kan padei jaka kway.
One thing I've noticed is that the second pattern is normally used if
you want to add "very" (Mand. <hen3>) to an adverb of manner. I'm not
sure it's obligatory, though.
> > 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.
"The bad cat ran which very fast."
I don't get it.
> And I see that happening because:
>
> 1. It's comfortable for English speakers.
Not for me, apparently.
> 2. As an afterthought Ð 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
Don't care much for "gasa" meaning "very". It seems that it could mean
"mostly", as "largely" sometimes does in English. I'd rather see a
unique word here. How about "veri" or "strimli" from English, or "jin"
from Hokkien, or "muy" from Spanish?
> 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.
I much prefer the one with "kay".
Another way would be:
Gosa somaka bon kay kway.
> 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.
"He ate which quickly and went to sleep."??? To quote Pogo, "Ooog!"
Now I see why "hu" throws me. "Da kom hu" feels like a noun phrase to
me, with "kway" as a stative verb. This seems to divorce "kay ho dorm"
from "Da".
I thoroughly detest "hu". Perhaps it reminds me of Arabic "huwa"
("he"), which is sometimes used as a kind of copula.
> Da kom kay kwaysa ho dorm. Here only to the second.
You could use the nominalized version of the first verb:
Da komka kway kay ho dorm.
Or, the subject could be repeated in order to prevent the adverb from
applying to the second verb:
Da kway kom kay da ho dorm.
Or, we could simply require that the adverb immediately precede the
verb in order to apply--even if it means repeating the adverb:
Da kwaysa kom kay kwaysa ho dorm.
This last is the one I'd prefer. In most cases, the second adverb
could be omitted if the meaning would be clear from context.
Actually, for linking sequential actions, "kay" doesn't seem right. We
need a word for "then--next". We should avoid overloading words with
all the derived meanings that they might have in any particular
natural language. So, "then--next" should not be the same word as
"then--at that time". In many languages, verbs are not connected with
the conjuctions that are used to connect nouns.
> 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.
Reminds me of "Gladly, the cross-eyed bear."
Do you see any difference between the two following sentences?
"Clearly, the dog is asleep."
"The dog is clearly asleep."
It seems to me that it's simply a matter of emphasis. The situation
described is the same in each--the dog is asleep, and that fact is obvious.
One of the most common uses is with adverbs of time:
Gosa kan padei jaka kway.
Padei, gosa kan jaka kway.
The first is a simple statement of fact. The second emphasizes "yesterday".
> Seems like the former have to be
> right there with the verb, the others can move around. Any thoughts?
It's possible that an adverb in sentence-initial position is simply
the topic. If nouns and verbs can be topics, why not adverbs? If this
is the case, it may not be necessary to list which adverbs are
movable--it may just be obvious from the meaning.
--
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