[YG Conlang Archives] > [saweli group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >

[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]

Re: [saweli] ditransitive verbs: he called me a friend

I thought of an A/P/F verb, too. (I missed writing in this notation. :-) )
But I think it is not adequate, because there is no change implied in the action calling somebody a friend. Naming things, seeing things, thinking of things is "Focusing". 

Another example:
"He heard her." has "heard" as an A/F verb (please correct me if I'm wrong).
"He heard her in their garden." as well. But "in the garden" has two possible different meanings. "He heard her while she was in their garden." - This is the interpretation Ram always used - the only one that can be expressed in Saweli. "He heard her believing that she was in their garden." - This is the way the "He called me a friend" sentence works, and Saweli cannot encompass its meaning (as eloquently as it uses to be). 

I will think more thorrowly about this and will post it later.

Stefo



MorphemeAddict@hidden.email schrieb:
In a message dated 5/13/2007 1:10:20 PM Central Daylight Time, sts@hidden.email writes: 



you made me think and remember an old issue of saweli (since when it
used to be katanda). my "stupid" question has always been: how should
one adequately say "he called me a friend". i think i have a solution
now, and i would like to know what you think of it.

the part of the sentence "he called me" (or "he named me", "he labeled
me") actually changes it's part of speech from "sentence" to
"preposition". "a friend" is the argument of this preposition.

(end of solution)

nonetheless, "he called me a friend" is an entire sentence, even though
it is "just" a prepositional phrase. the transitive word "called" is
marked to be the root of the sentence, and this fact remains even though
the sentence may be linked with other sentences by conjunctions, or - in
this case - to the argument "a friend".
I think it could be a regular A/P/F verb, where "he" is A, "me" is P, and "a friend" is F. But I tend to think it would be better to use a case tag meaning "being, as" or just a secondary P or F. I'll have to look through ram's lessons to see if he has any such examples. I remember you bringing this up before. We never reached a consensus at the time. 

stevo