[YG Conlang Archives] > [ceqli group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >
--- In ceqli@yahoogroups.com, Rex May - Baloo <rmay@m...> wrote: > The the-word thing that bothers me the most is the proper-name situation. > Now, a name would seem to behave exactly like a pronoun (correct me if I'm > wrong), but a pronoun has a clear-cut form and is easily recognized. The > problem is that the number of names is infinite, and therefore we have to > somehow label names. So far we're doing it with ti or ti...beti. Loglan > does it with the label 'la' and by requiring that all names end with a > consonant, while no other words in the language do. I think Gua/spi > doesn't make a distinction between names and nouns. How do other languages > do it? We need to keep open minds here. > > -- Well, Portuguese treats them like common nouns: "Onde esta o Jose? O Jose esta em casa." = 'Where is the Jose? The Jose is at home.'. But the article isn't always there...I can't say why, I just have a (rudimentary) sense for it. I think Ceqli is on solid ground here. The "tay/betay" marker pair works very well for foreign names (where by 'foreign' we mean 'does not conform to Ceqli morphotactics'). Using "ti" for native names tells us ahead of time that we can assume the end of the name when we reach the next Ceqli word boundary, so that's good too. If I want to identify myself very clearly, I can use my mixed Ceqli/foreign names like so: "Go bi ti Krawn tay Sulki betay." Which is the high-falutin' way to say the more everyday form: "Go bi Krawn Sulki." (Digression: The grammar rules say that "ti Krawn" and "tay Sulky betay" designate the same thing. They don't say that one name is the given name and the other is the family name, and I don't know if they need to.) What would be the difference between names operating like pronouns versus operating like nouns? They couldn't transform into adjectives: "ti Krawnse xyen" = 'Krawn's dog' Or could they? "Go" and "zi" can. --Krawn