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On Jan 17, 2006, at 9:45 AM, Jim Henry wrote:
On 1/14/06, Rex May <rmay@hidden.email> wrote:On Jan 14, 2006, at 6:16 PM, Jim Henry wrote:On 1/14/06, Rex May <rmay@hidden.email> wrote:On Jan 3, 2006, at 10:52 AM, Jim Henry wrote:it might be. If 'kam' means work as a verb, it seems that 'to kam' ought to be clearly derivable from it. I know how you're thinking,Yes, there should be a way to derive nouns from verbs, specifically a noun meaning 'the act of doing X' and a noun meaning 'a person/entity who does X' among other things. Which of those is the primary unmarked nominalization of a verb isn't so important as for it to be consistent throughout the language.
At this point, I do have 'ka', meaning an instance of. komka - meal, etc. And jin seems to work pretty well. It's a feature of Ceqli that a compound word has a specific meaning. That is, gun jin can mean a gun owner, a guy who looks like a gun, etc., but gunjin can only mean 'gunman' — someone who has and uses a gun.
And back to the above. I really want Ceqli to operate more the way I think Mandarin does, that is, using verbs as is many time where English makes a noun form instead. That is, where you might say, 'The flight of birds is beautiful,' Ceqli would have 'faul flai, da bel.' rather that 'faul sa flaika, da bel.' So there would be less occasion to make nouns out of verbs in that sense.
So, if 'jin' doesn't mean 'be a person,' it ought to have some sort of reasonable secondary verb meaning other than that, so as not to waste anything, so to speak, or maybe not if it's awkward."Be a person" seems like a reasonable verbal meaning, but I see what you mean about it's not being consistent with kam "to do" > to kam "deed".OTOH, I think a noun like 'pamo' could be allowed to act as a verb. go pamo da. I am father of him.And not "I beget him"? There's not much difference, to be sure.But can I say: ciba hon kanin. This is a book about dogs. I don't think so. Really too ambiguous. You'd have to say 'ciba hon hu tem kanin.'The latter is clearer, anyway. The first, "this [is] a dog book", sort of makes sense too.
It does. It could be 'ciba bi kanin sa hon,' and, more clearly, 'ciba be kanintem sa hon.'
OTOH, in Ceqli, 'go kala' would mean 'i'm a fish,' so 'kala' can't really have the verbal meaning that it does in English. That would have to be 'go kalafulu.' I fish-catch.Yes, "go kalafulu" makes much more sense.Well, at this point I feel talked back around to the Mandarin/English way of looking at things. go bi jin. go bi pamo hu da. go kala. go bi kalapro."go kalapro" makes sense as shorthand for "go kalafulupro", but "go kala" does not make so much sense as shorthand for "go kalafulu".
Agree! I like that kalapro. I think kalajin would mean a non-pro, right?
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