Re: EXERCISE: Meanings of to be

On Tue, Jul 02, 2002 at 03:30:03PM -0400, Jake X wrote:
> I recently dealt with eradicating "to be" from elanagauo, replacing it with
> one of two
> different words depending on context. My choice was to use one verb for
> existance and one
> for equivalence.
I got rid of the notion of having a verb of being altogether. To the
Ebisedi, existence and equivalence are static concepts, and thus cannot be
represented by a verb. There is no word per se for equivalence -- all you
need to do is to juxtapose two locative nouns in a single sentence, and it
becomes a statement of equivalence. I haven't thought that much about
existence yet, except that *non*-existence is indicated by making a
statement about the non-existent thing being in a non-universe (the nullar
number of "universe".)

my'Perim   n3 `ww'm3       d0  m3ng3'.
loc,nul    -  cvy,sing     org cvy,sing
"universe" -  "aquamarine" -   "horse"

"There is no such thing as an aquamarine horse." Literally, "an aquamarine
horse is in no-universe"; or, "in no-universe there is an aquamarine
horse."

> But there are more meanings, and different ways to split
> it. For those of you
> who don't stick to the natlang definition, what do you use? I made a short
> exercise.
>
> 1. forming predicate nominative: He IS happy
In Ebisedian, this has nothing to do with existence or equivalence.
Happiness is a "contained" attribute, and hence this sentence would be
rendered,
        chi'di         Ta'l3n.
        dist-pron(loc) "Joy" (cvy).
        "In him [is] joy", or, "Joy is in him."

The locative-conveyant construct indicates containment.

> 2. equivalence: Today is Wednesday.
As I mentioned above, equivalence is indicated by a locative-locative
construct. I haven't worked on temporal nouns beyond tenses, so I'll
substitute my own example:

        uro  biz3tai'     `ylii'.
        this "woman"(loc) "Ylia"(loc)
        "This woman is Ylia."

> 3. existance: To be, or not to be.
See example above.

> 4. English use, for creating verb forms: He is walking.
Ebisedian obviously doesn't have anything resembling such a usage, since
it has no verb to-be. But for the particular gerund in this example,
Ebisedian would use a participle instead. Unfortunately I haven't made up
participial forms, so I can't show any examples. :-( However, so far it
has been determined that the participle would behave like an instrumental
noun, and the "he" in this case would be a conveyant noun, but in general,
the noun may be in any of the other cases, as appropriate for the verb the
participle is derived from.

> 5. Numerical equivalence: One plus one is two.
[snip]

Haven't come up with a number system yet. Not to the point of arithmetic,
that is. :-(

> Do you differenciate?
[snip]

Well, yes and no.

Yes in the sense that Ebisedian has different constructs to express these
different things that English has overloaded the verb to-be to express. No
in the sense that they are completely independent grammatical constructs
that have nothing to do with each other, and hence there is nothing to be
differentiated.


T

--
People say I'm indecisive, but I'm not sure about that. -- YHL, CONLANG