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Rex May - Baloo wrote: > > About these sense words. Now, in English there's a difference between look > and see, the first having a sense of volition or intention, same with listen > and hear, but none with taste, smell, and feel. So I'm inclined to think > the distinction unnecessary for the most part. In Mandarin, it is clear from the form that "look" and "listen" are simple volitional verbs, while "see" and "hear" imply actual perception as a result: kan4 look kan4jian4 look+perceive = see ting1 listen ting1jian4 listen+perceive = hear Mandarin resultative verbs also have positive potential and negative potential forms: kan4dejian4 look+obtain+perceive = "can see" kan4bujian4 look+NEG+perceive = "cannot see" (You're going to get ahead of your class, Rex.) I doubt that the potential structures are appropriate for Ceqli (vs. a simple "able" adverb/co-verb), but I do think that simple resultatives could be useful. > If you have to make the > distinction, we have 'tray', from English 'try'. Xaw, tray xaw (xawtray), > tiq, tiqtray, smel, smeltray, and so on. Does that make sense to everybody? > So, xaw will be the default word for look and see, but can be xawtray when > necessary. I think that "look" and "see" should always be distinguished. They really are not the same thing. > Next question: The distiction between I smell the food and the food smells > good. What are those two 'smell's in Ceqli? > > Go smel to komxo. That's straightforward enough. Now, can we use 'be' for > the other word. > > To komxo besmel bon. And the 'bon' has to be there, I think, because it's > really an adjective, not an adverb. To komxo bonsa besmel would mean the > food does a good job of exuding odor, I guess. That's off the subject, tho. > > To xipe bexaw bel. The woman looks beautiful. > > To fawl betiq bel. The bird sounds beautiful. Not bad. Another approach for this particular case would be (again the Mandarin approach) to create stative verbs: To xipe belxaw. To fawl beltiq. And to negate them, simply: To xipe bu belxaw. To fawl bu beltiq. Or, as a variant, perhaps: To xipe pobelxaw. To fawl pobeltiq. Or does "po-" combine only with morphemes? If not, it's not clear to me that we need "po-" when "bu" would do. On the other hand, I suppose there's a difference (or could be) between "not beautiful" and "ugly". Ci xipe belxaw bu belxaw? (Is this how we'll do non-wh questions?) Da bu belxaw, bu pobelxaw. (We need a word for "but, however".) > So now we have a class of words that calls for an adjective as an 'object'? Sorry, I don't quite grasp this. (Even though I've already had my coffee.) Do you mean "adverbs"? Remember that Ceqli "adjectives" are really stative verbs. > I forget what the phenomenon is called in English. Are we agreed that this > system is optimum? Mike, does Mandarin have a more elegant way of doing > this? Mandarin, like English, tends to have unique words, rather than derived words, though you can negate any stative verb using <bu4> or <mei2>/<mei2you3>, and there are a few compounds that include various non-colloquial negatives: <wu2xian4dian4> not-exist wire electricity "radio" (probably a calque on English "wireless") <fei1chang2> is-not common "uncommon" <wu2> is the Classical Chinese for <mei2you3>, and <fei1> is Classical Chinese for <bu4shi4>. > Back to the main question. Are the be- words the way to go with the sense > words? "be-" should work with any verb, so why not? I'm coming to prefer the idea of forming compounds in this way, rather than simply coming up with unique loan words. It may take a lot of attention in order to avoid missing possibilities, though. This brings up another question. Can we attempt to define most, verbs as active, intransitive forms, then create passive, reflexive, and transitive forms as compounds? Obviously there will be some verbs that don't make sense as intransitives. I'd like to see it go as far as "give" being transitive-marker+receive, and "take" being transitive-marker+reflexive-marker+receive. Although it may seem odd at first glance, new learners would just see the compounds and their definitions. The advantage would be that one could figure out what a form should be logically, without necessarily having to resort to a dictionary. Having some unique words and some derived words is certainly messier--more like a natural language. But the goal is not to simply copy various natural languages--even Mandarin, is it? I mean, Mandarin is useful as a model, because of its analytical nature and lack of obligatory syntactic categories, but it's far from being totally regular. And I feel that we should avoid copying our native languages just because the forms are comfortable to us. After all, what makes us comfortable may seem totally illogical and bizarre to a native speaker of Tibetan, Korean, Turkish, or Tigrinya. But regularity provides predictability, whatever model we choose. -- 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