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| I've been revisiting Loglan (thru Steve Rice's book) and I'm agonizing again. Already adopted are the dual natures of pa-na-fa, as pa-do-fu That is, they're both tense markers and prepositions: go pa kom. I ate. pa fudey, go kom. Before tomorrow, I will eat. Well and good. Seems to work okay. Do I need to do the same thing with here-near-far (vi va vu) Right now, Ceqli has a different type of tripartite position words, as in Japanese and Spanish: ci - here ca - there by you cu - yonder Of these, only ci makes sense as a preposition: ci dom, da dorm. At the house, he sleeps. But, I realize, "sta" does the same job. sta dom, da dorm. Suppose Ceqli were to adopt sta-stay-staw, with the same meanings as vi-va-vu. They would be prepositions, position markers, just like the Loglan. Trouble is, they'd be verbs as well. go sta dom. I'm at the house. go stay dom. I'm near the house. go staw dom. I'm far away from the house. Is that a problem? It's not very Loglan-like. go sta dom dorm. Is okay, but is go sta dorm. Meaning "I here sleep?" Seems ambiguous. Perhaps, then, I need a set of positional "free modfiers" as in Loglan, and they might as well be a redefined ci ca cu, changed to the meanings of at, near, and far. They would -not- be verbs, but would behave like Loglan words. go ci dorm. I sleep here go ca dorm. I sleep near here. go cu dorm. I sleep far from here. I hate to lose the old cicacu idea, but I realized that compounds can partly cover the gap. da goci dwel. He lives with me, at me, at my place. That would differ from "da ci dwel" because the ci refers to where you happen to be at the moment, not where you habitually are. sta would continue to mean what it does, and be a verb, and you could say go sta ci. go sta ca, go sta cu. go sta ci zi. I don't know if all this would be better, or just more Loglan-like, but I like the notion of pa do fu being symmetrical with ci ca cu. In all this, remember (I try to remember) that I'm trying to cobble together a language that will be able to be as precise as Loglan, but free to be terse when preciseness isn't necessary. Oh, if I do all this, can I also import the Loglan notion of Levi bukcu. The-here book. This book. It would be toci hon. And of couse toca hon and tocu hon. Or should I stick with the form: cisa hon. If I go Loglan on this, we could also make possessives the same way: togo hon, tozi hon, toda hon. And, one presumes, if to=le, then te=lo. teci hon. A book here. Tho I don't really see any need for an indefinite thing like that. Rex May rmay@hidden.email 1-970-221-5528 Daily cartoon at: See some of my other cartoons at: Graphic novel I helped write at: |