Re: [ceqli] Digest Number 363 - ceqli messages

On Jan 29, 2007, at 2:03 PM, Larry Sulky wrote:

I'm getting the same brainglitch that I did from Loglan! But
this is fascinating stuff. But maybe you're right, and "teach"
should be the base form, and "learn" should be derived.

Truly it could be either way. One may seem more basic and the other
more derivable to us because of our English biases. Same with 'give'
and 'receive/accept'.

Backing off for a minute, I already have the preposition "ko," which I'm
thinking of doing away with and replacing with a verb, like "sila", meaning
towards or to. So let's use it as that form.

I think a general purpose preposition that means 'with respect to' and
serves simply to mark the second object of a ditransitive could be
useful. (For less common prepositional concepts, your
'verb-as-preposition' inclination is good, I think.) You know how you
have "sta" for 'be situated in the usual fashion given the context'?
"ko" could be redefined to 'with respect to in the expected fashion',
so it could serve in all these contexts:

Yes. When I got to thinking about how Mandarin does it, I thought

about verb-prepositions and how English has to add an "is" but

doesn't add one when it's a modifying phrase. To clarify:

ziqka ben jin. Singing benefits people.

go ben jin ziq. I sing for people.

da bi ziqka hu ben jin. The is a song that benefits people.

bad example. Let's try:

hon sur stol. a book IS on the table.

pri don ko go hon hu sur stol. Please give me the book on the table.

English needs an extra word in the statement, Ceqli needs an

extra word in the more complicated statement. It's a wash,

tersenesswise, but it's a plus for Ceqli that it eliminates a whole

part of speech, and makes prepositions into verbs.

Let's see. How do we say "The man to whom I spoke is here."

to jin hu go pa bol...

Well, it's easy to say. "The language I spoke is small."

to bol hu go pa bol, pi.

Because the hu just moves a 'sa' _expression_ to the end.

Got it. I think:

to jin hu go pa bol ba, sta ci.

The 'ba' fills the direct object slot, so the jin is modified by the

whole _expression_, filling the only available slot. Could also say:

to go pa bol ba sa jin sta ci.

And even set it off with a parenthetical besa for clarity.

to besa go pa bol ba sa jin sta ci.

But I rather thing actual Ceqli would tend to be more Mandarinish

and chop things up more.

Go pa bol ko jin. Da sta ci.

Or what do you think?

But trying to avoid marking the second object other than by position
might be a mistake. Ceqli has very few signposts and so could suffer
from overdensity as Loglan does. It was the dense predicate place
structure that more than anything fuzzled me about Loglan.