Re: [engelang] Xorban vocative, d- & m-

 

On Sun, Sep 16, 2012 at 9:43 PM, Mike S. <maikxlx@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> ca'iko grko ce'iko mlto, sa prna zmddjcaka'i sa prna zmddjcake'i.
>
> ... adds five and removes three, adding two syllables total. But we lose
> the informational structure suggesting that a'i and e'i are co-topics.
> Another issue is that for reasons I will explain elsewhere, I think it would
> be preferable to change the grammar so that only one illocutionary marker
> occurs per sentence. But that's a side issue.

There's no need to change it because the grammar already allows only
one illocutionary marker per sentence (ignoring parenthetical
sentences which get their own illocutionary marker).

What you have
there is actually four sentences:

(ca'iko grko) (ce'iko mlto), (sa prna zmddjcaka'i) (sa prna zmddjcake'i).

The current grammar will in fact parse each sentence as a
parenthetical to the previous one, which may be a good or a bad thing
depending on how you look at it.

> Here's one more interesting example with "e'e".
>
> co ptfe'e xe sme jnve'eke
> Father, what do you think? (vocative)
> = As far as you father, what do you think? (topic)

I notice that you are already doing what I expected would happen soon
enough, which is to use an indirect question form without an explicit
question illocutionary to turn it into a direct question. The 'proper'
way to ask a question would be something like:

(co ptfe'e) (ca'u xe sme jnve'eke)
O Father, I wonder what it is that you think.

These are two sentences, each with it's own illocutionary force, even
if you don't include the "ca'u".