Showing posts with label lexicon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lexicon. Show all posts

Thursday, May 22, 2014

Dairwueh: Verbs for possession

Dairwueh almost conforms to the average European way of having a verb primarily used for such constructions. However, it is not a direct translation of 'to have'. In fact, there is not one verb but two, with certain distinctions.

The two main verbs are gadek and surdun. Gadek is used when the possession of a thing is seen as something beneficial. On the opposing side, surdun obviously stands for ungainful possession.

By adding a reflexive morpheme, gadek and surdun become intensive. The intensive of surdun basically means 'being overburdened by, succumbing to', whereas gadek in its intensive form tends to be used to denote strategic, decisive advantages given by the possessed thing.

Certain things that English could express using have is not expressed that way in Dairwueh. Diseases are suffered, pusteg, you are born, imbet, for your relatives (who are in the dative), younger relatives are born to the status of having you as a relative, placing you in the dative. The verbs used for expressing relatives also are used to state other things about relations. These complications require a small diversion:

eme imbewis nesepalivit resepanivik 
I     born.past saints.dat criminals.dat.and
I have saints and criminals for relatives/my relatives are saints and criminals
 ver imbewis loparvit
I born.past brother.dat - I have a(n older) brother
lopar imbewiŋ vevit brother born.pastIIIsg me.dat - I have a (younger) brother 
If one wants to express a multitude of relatives, if there is a single one older than the person whose relatives are being listed, that person is the subject, if all are younger, he's the indirect object.
ver kar imbewis sopind
I him-dat born-1sg_past cousin - I was born his cousin
kar vevit imbewiŋ sopind
 he me-dat ... - he was born my cousin
Generally, ungainful but unharmful possession is expressed using gadek. However, if there is a need to distinguish neutral status from beneficial status - which does happen on occasion, more so in the literary and legal languages than in colloquial varieties, a number of periphrastic constructions are used, such as "X is Y-dat", "Y holds X", "Y took X" for the neutral type.
EDITS:
-ci is obsolete and replaced by -ivit. -k assimilates the -t in -ivit. 'wemi' replaced by 'vevit', 'eme' replaced by 'ver', komi by kar, kon by ker

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Dairwueh and Bryatesle verbs for counting

The verbs for counting in Dairwueh and Bryatesle all derive relatively transparently from verbs denoting physical actions in these two languages. Contact between Dairwueh and Bryatesle groups goes back to proto-D and proto-B times - neither of the language families to which they belong form a continuous geographical area, and contact between these families has been ongoing for centuries.

The first verb pair: - Bryatesle mbunerait, Dairwueh ruwekal. Bryatesle mbuneit is a verb that means 'extend the index finger, point at' depending on whether it's used intransitively or transitively. -ra- is an archaic, and currently non-productive morpheme signifying iteration or repetition. Likewise ruwel signifies "to point, to extend" in Dairwueh. Dairwueh has a productive iterative/habitual morpheme, -ka-. Both are used when counting small amounts, and probably relate to the common practice of extending fingers when counting.

The second verb pair is similar: B: vexrait, D: tsihkal, both iterative version of 'cut'. This is more often used in reference to larger numbers or the counting carried out by officials in various capacities - the reference being to incising numbers in clay tablets. The same verb can be used to denote writing.

Monday, November 19, 2012

Detail #5: Intrinsic, implicit referents

Does any natural language use obviative pronouns also to refer to nouns that have not been mentioned as such, but which are kind of intrinsically related to prominent nouns in a sentence?

Something like, say,

children look like them.obv = children look like their parents
house had no him.obv = the house had no master
sheep.plur know.3pl him.obv = the sheep know their shepherd

Not all nouns, necessarily, have their own associated nouns such as these; some have many, differentiated by gender and numbers.

When this is supposedly "normally" obviative or an indirect reference like this may be unclear from context.

Also, challenge #1 still stands. I have personally made no progress on it.