Re: Question about case names...

>>On Sun, 13 Dec 1998, Sam Bryant wrote:
>>
>>> -subject of transitive verbs
>>> -subject of intransitive verbs
>>> -object of transitive verbs.
>>>
>>> I'd like to call these ergative, nominative, accusative respectively.
>>>But that
>>> will probably deeply offend people's sensibilities. I could use agentive,
SCAVES replied:
>>But hey, you can break whatever rules you
>>want in your invented language, but you'll probably get grumbling from
>>those who think you are using these terms indiscriminately or without
>>thought to the structure of your conlang.
DGD said:
>My take would be that using any terms you want as part of a language
>description is OK -- but you need to clearly define the terms you've chosen
>for your own langauge so that people who haven't seen them will know that
>your senses are unusual.
>
>  -- David
>
>tagmemics], I'm still in the formalist tradition of Anglo-American
>linguistics [if that's a correct way to generalize over those competing
>traditions].
>
>I think people get huffy at theroretical claims (if they disagree) or use
>of standard terminology in non-standard ways, when it's not made clear that
>the usages are non-standard.
>
>Artlanging (at least) is art, and you have to do it as your taste and
>principles demand.
>_________________________________________
>David Durand              dgd@cs.bu.edu  \  david@dynamicDiagrams.com

While writing Vector Time Tense I had to come to grips with the English
Perfect Tense. I found I simply had to rename it and especially its
3 distinct senses to fit it into Native NGL VTT.  First I tried
NGLiztions which mean approximately, "really perfect, complete";
for a sharply ended action, "impossible"; for the perfect continuing
form, and "ambiguous" for the perfect that may be either. Finally I came
down to the forms,"cut tense", "stretched tense" and "forked tense" for
the three possibilites of the English perfect I put into NGL. Those will
get NGL words, and the job is done. My point here is that I believe it
is essential for one's conlang to get the grammar, new or old, well
named and well defined in the new idiom, as DGD avers. I just didn't
feel right about it until I came up with the primitive ideas, cut,
stretched, and forked, to describe the elusive and corrupted English
perfect tenses. So my advice would be, keep on conlanging until you get
that just right combination of word and concept for your new language.

Jerry
______________________
NGL advocate