[YG Conlang Archives] > [katanda group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >
[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]
general epistemic and deontic disjuncts
- From: BestATN@hidden.email
- Date: Sat, 20 Jul 2002 18:45:40 EDT
- Subject: general epistemic and deontic disjuncts
- To: katanda@yahoogroups.com
Rick,
If a morpheme each were added to the bare modal classifiers to render the current meanings of "be" and "du", then "be" and "du" would be available to form words with a general epistemic or deontic meaning, something along the lines of "I make an impersonal judgment of a REAL/HYPOTHETICAL situation that ...", or they could be general terms covering any or all of the corresponding specific modals. In other words, "du" would include the meanings of current "du", "nidu", and "podu".
Why are the probability and obligation modals different from the others in not having a distinctive identifying morpheme?
In LS 16.3 you say:
>There are three characteristics of modality that we need to represent:
1. The modal concept (e.g. probability, evidentiality, etc.)
2. The degree of modality (e.g. 100%, high, negative, etc.)
3. The type of modality (i.e. epistemic or deontic)
>However, there is no need to explicitly mark whether the type of a modal
is epistemic or deontic, because the type is an inherent part of the
modal concept.
Re #2: Are there any negative degrees? I've seen only 0-100%.
Re #3 and the following remark: So even though there is no need to explicitly mark whether the modal is E or D, the modals are marked anyway (with "be"=E and "du"=D). They could just as easily be numbered too, like the compass directions (e.g. "sebe", "tube", "nibe", ... , "sedu", "tudu", "nidu"[!]).
Numbering the compass directions makes it very easy to add directions for additional dimensions. Since 1..4 are used for the plane, 5 and 6 could be up/down, and 7 and 8 could be some 4th dimensional direction, and so on.
Steven