[YG Conlang Archives] > [engelang group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >
On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 9:36 PM, Mike S. <maikxlx@gmail.com> wrote: > > Next two sentences: > http://www3.sympatico.ca/gaston.ringuelet/lepetitprince/chapitre01.html > "Ça représentait un serpent boa qui avalait un fauve. Voilà la copie du > dessin." > > http://home.pacific.net.hk/~rebylee/text/prince/1.html > "It was a picture of a boa constrictor in the act of swallowing an animal. > Here is a copy of the drawing." > > The E translation is a loose one. My attempt at Xb: > > lo je rnjo fo la je li dnli tnlaki qbo'aqa sinxa'iko. la tja la'i > cskxra'i fkpaka'i. > > "lo je rnjo fo" is my attempt at the imperfective [aspect]. Suggestions > welcome. I'm failing to parse the first sentence because "la je li dnli tnlaki qbo'aqa" is not a full formula. The way I would do it is: la je lo rnjo fo li dnli tnlaki qbo'aqa snxa'ika where "lo rnjo fo" can be assigned a unary operator for imperfective aspect. Although if "rnj" means "continuous", that's not really the predicate we want, we want "ongoing", i.e. "already started and not yet finished", rather than "uninterrupted", "without holes". To me "continuous" is not the same as "continuing". If you want the picture to represent an event instead of a boa, you can also say: lo je rnjo fo la qbo'aqa li dnli tnlaki snxa'iko But that doesn't have something we can extract as an aspectual unary operator. co ma'a xrxe