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On Dec 5, 2005, at 7:05 AM, Jim Henry wrote:
On 12/4/05, Rex May <rmay@hidden.email> wrote:But how do I say "I see the man to whom I gave the book." go xau jino hu go pa don hon. Does that make sense?That might work, but it might be clearer with a resumptive pronoun: go xau jino hu go pa don hon da. I see man which I past give book him.
Yes. It would be in the Ceqli spirit to allow my shortened version but to use a resumptive pronoun (I hadn't seen that term before, and I like it) when thought necessary. BTW, I think Ceqli should follow English usage for unadorned direct objects, putting it before the direct one "go don zi hon." Of course, using "ko" it can be placed elsewhere. "go ko zi don hon," "go don hon ko zi" (and you can 'inflect' by using ziko instead of ko zi.
....Maybe you want a special pronoun other than "da" for resumptive use; you could try this out in a number of other contexts and see if "da" or a letter-name pronoun is always clear enough.
I thought about having a special pronoun for such instances, but hated to use up yet another short word. I thought about letting 'co' serve:
go xau jino hu go pa don co hon.But that's putting too much burden on it. Besides, there might already be a 'co' in the sentence.
Actually, I think this would be a natural place to use the letter- anaphora:
go xau jino hu go pa don j hon. or go xau jino hu go pa don j-ko honAt any rate, I think we now have enough possibilities to cover the need, and, again, in keeping with the Ceqli spirit, all would be permitted, and clarity of usage will pick one.
Also: are you still reading the AUXLANG mailing list? Have you been following the discussion about Risto Kupsala's Mulivo (multilingual vocabulary) project? It might be helpful to work with him on expanding his database and use it at the same time to improve Ceqli's vocabulary. His main interest in auxlang design is making the vocabulary systematically globally diverse for the sake of cultural/semantic neutrality; he says he would be just as happy to leave the grammar to someone else.
Alas, I haven't been. But I will now. go fala zi. Rex May rmay@hidden.email See some of my cartoons at: http://homepage.mac.com/rmay/ NOW UPDATED REGULARLY!