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on 1/31/04 1:54 PM, HandyDad at lsulky@hidden.email wrote: >> >> -- > 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.) No, they don't need to, just like they don't need to in any other language. We can of course explain which is which, but I don't think we need any special formula to do it. And yes, but a name that is pretty much Ceqli anyway, like Sulky, would probably just come out 'sulki'. > > 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. Don't see why not. In case of confusion, it can of course be ti krawn beti se xyen. -- Rex F. May (Baloo) Daily cartoon at: http://www.cnsnews.com/cartoon/baloo.asp Buy my book at: http://www.kiva.net/~jonabook/book-GesundheitDummy.htm