Re: Auxiliary verbs

On 5/8/06, Yahya Abdal-Aziz <yahya@...> wrote:

> obConlang:  The auxiliary and modal verbs of
> English present a useful model for the meta
> discussion of action: expressing attitudes and
> the like.  My feeling is that French, German and
> Spanish have equally subtle distinctions, as
> probably do most natlangs.  Although I was
......
> physical aspects of a language.  So, in the
> interests of naturalism, I'd like to encourage
> other conlangers to pay attention to providing
> an adequate stock of words and structures
> dealing with attitude and emotion, rather than
> overly focussing on teh tangible.
Expressing fine shades of attitude and emotion
was one of the main design goals of gzb, and
though it's not quite what it should be in that area,
it's less inadequate for that than for many
other purposes.

Specifically, for "want, may, will, need" etc, there are

vy - willing, intending, deciding on something.
gâw - considering, thinking about whether to do something
ĝĭj - hesitation, indecision
sru - desiring something (without necessarily intending to do/obtain it)
źu - wishing, hoping for something (implies it's something not
entirely in one's power)
bâň - being allowed, permitted to do something
dlu - having the right to do something
ĵy - needing, requiring

These normally take the stative verb ending
-van, except "vy" and "gâw" which may take the
active verb ending -zô depending on the
semantic context.

--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/gzb/gzb.htm