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--- In ceqli@yahoogroups.com, Jim Henry <jimhenry1973@g...> wrote: > On 6/16/05, Rex May <rmay@m...> wrote: > > I'm not a real linguist, but I think you might be misusing the word > "transitive". If a *verb* doesn't have an *object* in a particular sentence, > it's being used intransitively, and is therefore not mandatorily transitive, > even if the *action* the verb refers to necessarily has a *patient*. > > Or maybe there is logical transitivity and grammatical transitivity, > and you're talking about one and I'm talking about the other. > Anyway, they shouldn't be confused. Indeed. You're right. I'm thinking of 'intransitive' as verbs that _can't_ have an object, whereas I think of "I read" as a transitive verb with an _implied_ object. I'll try to be clear about what I mean. Actually, as in the "go dorm cuaq" below, it's hard to think of a ceqli verb that can't have an object. Anyhow, this all comes from my musing about the "The food cooks" and "I cook the food" thing in English, which I've decided is too ideosyncratic to import into ceqli. So it's "go tunu komxo" and "komxo betunu". After all, the be- particle is (in my opinion) one of the neatest features of ceqli. It is, of course, inspired by Loglan nu-. > > > Then we have verbs that are, in English, capable of being both. > > Cook, burn, etc. > > > > In ceqli, I think maybe such verbs should be intransitive in the base > > form. > > to karn tunu. The meat cooks. > > go tunufa to karn. I cook the meat. > > > > But what do you think? Am I being anglocentric here? If "tunu" > > remains transitive, then we'd have: > > > > go tunu to karn. > > to tunu bekarn. > > > > And maybe that's better. Because when something cooks, or burns, > > something is almost always acting on it. > > Yes, I think the latter makes sense. > > You might have a rule that verbs which refer to > actions that necessarily have an actor affecting > a patient are always transitive, with the subject > being the actor and the object being the patient. > > My own preference is to mark all verbs explicitly for > transitivity (as in Rick Harrison's Vorlin), but that might > go against your design goal of concision. > > > And, while I'm at it, I think we can allow some ceqli verbs to be > > transitive in a Mandarinesque way: > > > > go dorm cuaq. I sleep bed. = I sleep in a bed. > > go ja parizo. I go Paris. > > go stu cer. I sit chair. > > Yes, that seems to fit the concise spirit of ceqli > pretty well. > > > > > But to say: > > This car seats six. > > I think we need > > ci tomo studon xei. > > Is this stu+don? I don't think the idiom > is terribly clear. > You're right. It's not. > I would render that in E-o as > "Cxi auxto havas ses sidlokojn" > or > "Cxi auxto sidigus ses homojn" > > Maybe the ceqli equivalent of the latter > would be something like > > ci tomo stufa xei [jin]. > I do like that better. And, it just hit me, that's another opportunity for a be- word. I don't have a word for "fit" yet, but when I do we'd have the pattern: xei (fit) ci tomo. ci tomo be(fit)xei. > > All that aside, my next project is to get back to work on the > > glossary. Anybody who has any good ideas for vocabulary, bring it up > > here. > > I've just downloaded the glossary from the Yahoo group > site. I'll look at it and see if I see any obvious gaps. > (It needs to go on your own site, BTW - you shouldn't > oblige people to subscribe to the listgroup to get > the glossary. And MyHTML.html is a terribly vague > filename.) Right in all respects. This stems from my inability to figure out to begin with how to manipulate Filemaker so as to make a glossary and turn it into html. I have it figured out now, and have most of it on Filemaker, tho I have to bring it up to date spelling-wise and make some other corrections, at which point I'll have something like the Ur-ceqli page, only a much bigger vocabulary. Many thanks for the good input.