Sunday, March 4, 2012

Cause and Because and Therefore, etc.

I currently have zay to mean "cause," in the Esperanto "igi" sense.  Post HERE.  Definitely a verbish sort of word, derived loosely from the English -ize ending. And now I'm thinking of the word "because," and what it should be in Ceqli.  Seems like a related meaning, doesn't it?  Not a verb at all, though, but more of a conjunction, or maybe a preposition.  If it's a conjunction, it really should have the pyuvor CV shape. Right now, with zay, you can say:

Ke go komvol beke zay ke go kom beke.

That's in full logical Ceqli, the kind a computer can understand. That is:

The-fact-that I'm hungry causes the-fact-that I eat.  Or,
Because I'm hungry, I eat.

The 'ke' begins a phrase, the 'beke' ends it.  So the phrases can be arguments of the 'zay.'

You can also use the reversal particle 'be' to reverse the zay:

Ke go kom beke bezay ke go komvol beke.

The-fact-that I eat is-caused-by the-fact-that I'm hungry.

And in terse Ceqli, the kind you use when you talk to people instead of robots, you have:

Go komvol, zay go kom.

I'm hungry, so I eat.

Go kom, bezay go komvol.

I eat because I'm hungry.

That works, but I find the word zay a little clunky.  That is, when you're asking the why questions, it gets a little awkward.

Ka zay zi kom?  Why do you eat?  What causes you to eat?

You can also say it this way:

Zi kom bezay ka?  You eat because of what?

Or, making a compound word:

Kabezay zi kom?  Why do you eat?

That last feels clunky.  So I'm thinking of abandoning zay, because reversing it with the spelling method to get zya leaves you with a sound combination that's hard to say and likely to turn into /Za/ or something, and using this combo instead:

kaw - to cause, kwa to be caused by

Then you could say:

Kakwa zi kom?  Why do you eat?

Go kom kwa go komvol.  I eat because I'm hungry.

Then, of course, you can have this conversation.

Bum on street:  Go komvol.  I'm hungry.

Seriously, that would give me the word for because and the word for so, or therefore.

You:  Kakaw?   So what?

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