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Knowledge-related roots in sabyuk

From:julien eychenne <eychenne.j@...>
Date:Wednesday, August 7, 2002, 10:52
In this post I present a few roots about knowledge in sabyukà. To make things
clear, here are a few important words and their meaning I'll use when referring
to the world I'm creating :

- sabyukà [sab'juk@]] (the way leading to knowledge) : the language of the xayijà
- xayijà [Sa'jid^Z@] : (the ones descending from Xayà) : the speakers of
sabyukà. Their country has no name yet, but they consider themselves as
Citizens (mythology is coming soon).
- Xayà ['Xayà] (the ``Beingty'' : the french equivalent ``êtreté'' exists
(at least it was attested in one book, but I guess that doesn't exist in
English) : the Father of Human Kind (here again, I'll soon post about
mythology)
- sabyàjà ['sabjàd^Z@] (the keepers of Knowledge) : grammarians, who are the
only ones who can be teachers.

A sabyàjà is a general scientist : philosophist, linguist (of course ;)),
mathematician and so on...

A particular aspect of sabyukà is that it has an accurate set of roots related to knowledge.
Here are a number of them :



-----ROOTS-----



sabi : to know (something you learnt or you was taught, ``pure knowledge'')
qenu : to know (something abstract you didn't especially learn or wasn't taught (a
date for instance))
tlani : to know (someone or something concrete)

An exception is that you can't use |tlani| when speaking of a sabyàjà : you
must use sabi instead.

* 'On tlani-n  sabyàj-na'
   I  know-I     grammarian-ACC
but : 'on sabi-n (o)           sabyàj-na'
       I  know-I (article) grammarian-ACC (|on| is actually |o-n| 'article + I')
Both mean ``I know the sabyàjà'', except that the first one is not correct ;).


sluxà : to hear, to listen to
hirà : to hear, to listen to (someone teaching you something)


matà : to see, to look at
kath : to see, to look at (someone teaching you something)

 kivà : to teach (general meaning)  (french ``apprendre'')
 dirà: to teach (scholar meaning) (french ``enseigner'')


I havn't worked yet the words meaning ``to speak'' and ``to learn'', and I'll
certainly add more roots, but this is just to make you feel how knowledge is
important in xayijà's culture.



-----EXAMPLES-----


Imagine a situation where there is a father and his son. In both cases the father says
'Listen' to his son. But have look at the differences :
(i) Slux-ô-ki !
    listen-Prospective-2person
    'you will listen' == ''Listen''

(ii) Hir-ô-ki !
     listen-prosp-2pers
     'you will listen'  == ''I have something to tell you''

In (i), the father is just asking for his son's attention (you could imagine that
the son was speaking at the same time).
In (ii) however, the situation is more sentencial, more serious, the father is
about to say something important to his son.



(iii)        Ye-n      mat-ni        sabyàj-na.
definite_plural-1pers look-1pers grammarian-ACC
   ``We are looking at the sabyàjà (how he looks today, his cloths...)''

(iv)  Ye-n            kath-ni        sabyàj-na
definite_plural-1pers look-1pers grammarian-ACC
   ``We are looking at the sabyàjà (who's giving a class, telling us smthg...)''


I don't give an example for each root, but I hope it helps you to understand the
differences I wanted to introduce in the language. Comments are welcome.


Julien.




PS : as you probably noticed, I often borrow roots from existing ones, with
sometimes obsure derivations I keep secret :).

Replies

Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>
H. S. Teoh <hsteoh@...>
bnathyuw <bnathyuw@...>