George Boeree | Re: [LFN] La gramatica completa

• Autor: George Boeree (“cgboeree”)
• Tema: Re: [LFN] La gramatica completa
• Data: 2005-05-14 13:28
• Mesaje: 1188 (a supra, presedente, seguente)

On May 13, 2005, at 7:36 PM, Paul O. Bartlett wrote:

>       Well, you had me fooled.  I would have sworn that the three
> verbal
>  endings -r, -nte, and -da were inflections.  If the endings for the
>  "ajectivo verbal pasiva" and "ajetivo verbal ativa" are not
> inflections,
>  I don't know what they are.

Sometimes derivational affixes look a lot like grammatical ones.  But
"dansante" is an adjective derived from the verb "dansa" and means
"engaging in dance" (and a noun "one who dances").  The -nte and -da
suffixes are no different than the -able suffix.

>       Then this is specifically a continuative verb form, identical in
>  structure to the English progressive tense.  If it looks like a duck,
>  has feathers like a duck, waddles like a duck, and quacks like a duck,
>  chances are it's a duck, even if we call it a moose.  And again, there
>  are many languages which do quite well without
> continuative/progressive
>  verb forms, however built.

"She is dancing" is not a grammatical structure.  It is no different
from a sentence like "She is beautiful."  It merely conveys a sense of
the continuative in that we are saying that dancing (like beauty) is a
characteristic of the lady in question.  Likewise with the passive:
"It was burned" says that it has a characteristic described by the
adjective burned, which is a derviation of the verb burn.  As I have
said, the grammar of LFN is almost entirely isolating, like creoles and
pidgins (and languages like Indonesian, Hawaiian, etc.).  That we can
suggest meanings expressed in western languages with constructions like
these only shows the breadth of an isolating language.
>
>       Again, I think that LFN is a perfectly legitimate entry in the
>  "conIAL sweepstakes" (if there were such a thing), as long as we
>  recognize that it is heavily weighted in favor of WENSA speakers and
>  might be considerably harder for non-WENSAns, especially non-I-E
>  speakers, to master.  For whatever it's worth, some conIAL designers
>  have tried to make their languages less weighted in favor of a single
>  language family in order to try to equalize the learnin burden.

That's the thing I don't understand about your critique:  LFN is not
weighted strongly towards the wensa languages, except in vocabulary.
It may seem so in that all our members at this point are in fact
westerners and so use LFN in ways that are influenced by their native
languages.  It may also be true that, as speakers of western languages,
we look for ways of saying what we are used to saying (such as looking
for a way to express the perfect/imperfect distinction most of us are
used to).  But LFN does not have a grammatical perfect/imperfect
distinction, nor a subjunctive, conditional, continuative, accusative,
etc. etc. etc.

Best wishes,

George

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