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On Thu, Apr 04, 2002 at 09:29:33AM -0700, Rex May - Baloo wrote: > Hm. That is a problem. Let's see. In Ceqli it would be > > Go vol pomo. which is short for. > Go vol ke go pomo. > > Now, to say I want asstance.... > > Go vol bepomo. I want to-be-helped. short for > Go vol ke go bepomo. > > Of course, pomoka is an act of helping, so could say > Go vol pomoka. > > If you mean some kind of tangible help, like money, could say > Go vol pomoxo. > > However, this whole thing leads me to wonder if maybe the thing to do is go > with the Loglan system, which started this whole thing anyway. If we did, > here's what we'd have: > > 1. Except for some grammatical particles, everything is a verb. > > Go pomo. I help. > > To pomo sa kan The help dog. dog who helps. > > To pomo. The helper, one who helps, which we now signify by 'pomovo'. > > In this case, the rule would have to change and there could be no more > sentences like > Kan pomo felin. Dog helps cat. > We'd have to make it explicit that a noun is a noun. > > Te kan da pomo te felin. Dog helps cat. > > Te being the default noun marker that can be definite/indefinite, whatever. > > And if we do that, why not go ahead and reserve CV(V) for grammar words that > do _not_ behave that way? I say not because it's just too darn arbitrary. > The number of grammar words should be small enough to memorize. > > Anybody want to Loglanize the predicates of Ceqli this way? Mike, this wd > maybe give it some internal consistency that you feel a lack of. This is what I have been hoping for all along. I find the whole 'kan pomo felin' structure of a sentence hopelessly ambiguous (as I said before, I would only consider it appropriate if space is really tight, as in a newspaper headline). I also dislike the fact that the border between nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs was so fuzzy, and there's no good way to tell which a word would be, and why (and it seems the vast majority of words were simply the same part of speech as their English equivalent). What I'd really like to see is for all the non-verbs to be CV words, and all the verbs to be something else. I don't know if this is possible. There would probably have to be exceptions. -- Rob Speer