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On Jan 3, 2006, at 10:52 AM, Jim Henry wrote:
On 1/2/06, Rex May <rmay@hidden.email> wrote: ........go sel hon. I sell books. go honsel. I'm a bookseller. We don't need zer in this case, because 'sel' means sell, or be a seller, whereas 'tun' means 'is a cartoon'. I pick zer over kar because it's easier to pronounce as a.......I think I'll go wit 'zer' unless anybody can think of a better form. 'Ser' is available. Anybody prefer that?I am not particular about zer, ser, kar or fe; but I am curious about your using zer to mean both "to do" and "doer" instead of "to do" and "doing, action, deed"; similarly "sel" = "to sell" and "seller" instead of "to sell" and "sale, act of selling". To me the latter seems a more natural way to use verbs nominally; but either should work as long as it's consistent throughout the language.
This notion is based on the Loglan idea, whence Ceqli sprung, that everything is a verb. If I go with it in Ceqli, it means
jin = is-a-person to jin = the one which is a person. So you can say 'go jin' for I'm a person. And, logically, if kam = work go kam = I work, or I'm a worker so to kam - the worker.Of course, that doesn't distinguish between a human and a thing (tho in the case of worker it seems unambiguous).
But something like, say 'to flai' could mean 'the flyer', as a thing or a person, which, come to think of it, is ambiguous the same way in English.
So, I don't really know which way to go on this, but I'm inclined to say 'to flaijin' for a human and 'to flaidiq' for a thing.
I would also generally prefer consistent use of "pro" vs. "jin" for "habitual doer" compounds. E.g. "honselpro" instead of "honseljin".
Technically, I have pro meaning professional, so 'peljin' could be a fighter and a 'pelpro' a professional fighter, but I do have jin in many cases where pro would be better.
Rex May rmay@hidden.email See some of my cartoons at: http://homepage.mac.com/rmay/ NOW UPDATED REGULARLY!