Wednesday, July 20, 2011

More on the Cause/Become paradigm

I've been thinking more about the possibilities for this paradigm.  All Ceqli predicates are indeed predicates, and a predicate like blu "is blue" is pretty straightforward when used with vey and zay "become and cause"

Go blu.  I am blue.
Go bluvey.   I turn blue.
Go bluzay zi.  I make you blue, color you blue.

So that's perfectly natural for adjectivish predicates.  For noun predicates it also seems to work:

Go poljin.  I am a policeman.
Go poljinvey.  I become a policeman.
Go pojinzay zi.  I make you (into) a policeman.

What about prepositionish ones?

Go dan to dom.  I am in the house.
Go danvey to dom.  I get into, go into, the house.
Go danjay zi to dom.   I put you, get you, into the house.

Because dan has a direct object, or an argument place, that third one is a little iffy, but is perfectly acceptable in terse Ceqli, which is what Charlie Chan would use habitually.  In more precise Ceqli, it would be

Go zay ke zi dan to dom.  I cause that you be in the house.

But the basic paradigm still works.

What about inherently verbal predicates?  Like "hit." As I have it, they don't fit the paradigm very well.

Go slo zi.  I hit you.  (I originally had blo for this, but I'm changing it, because, you know)
Go beslo zi.  I am hit by you.
Go zay ke zi beslo da.  I cause you to hit him.

There doesn't seem to be any room or function for a slovey form.

Now to cram this into the other paradigm, you'd have to make it this way.

Go slo.  I am hit — I'm in a state of having been hit.
Go slovey.  I get hit.
Go slozay zi.  I cause you to be in a state of being hit.  I hit you.

Awkward.  The paradigm just doesn't seem to fit with transitive verbs.  And it seems a little odd with prepositions, but works.  So the other, verbal paradigm seems to be the thing for transitive verbs.  Now, for intransitive verbs, it seems to work just fine.

Go dorm.
Go dormvey
Go dormzay zi.


I sleep, I go to sleep, I put you to sleep.

This leaves one glitch, or I think it does.  Let's borrow fraq, meaning 'break', from Latin 'frango.'

Go fraq to teler.  I break the dish.
To teler da fraqvey.  The dish breaks, gets broken.
Go zay ke zi fraq to teler.  I cause you to break the dish.

Now, how do I say "the broken dish"?  English and other IE languages seem to turn the past participle into an adjective in these cases, and it's clear as a bell.  But Ceqli to befraq teler just means the dish that somehow is broken, now, or in the past, or in the future.  In terse Ceqli, the meaning is obviously 'broken' as in it's already happened.  So, can I use the tense markers that way when I want to be specific?
To pa befraq teler.  To do befraq teller.  To fu befraq teller.
The broken dish.  The dish now being broken.  The dish that will be broken.

Is there a parsing problem with this?  I don't think so.  Loglanists, let me know what you think.

Of course, you have to leave the object (actually the subject, really) of that verb out.  But if you want to say "The dish broken by me," you just expand it a little, with sa or hu.


To go pa fraq sa teler.  To teler hu go pa fraq.


Without any need for the be- form.  So the befraq form is handy when you can't, or don't want, to name the breaker

The two systems aren't incompatible.  Let's say the difference between:

Go smer.   Go besmerzay.

I am dead.  I get killed.  In the first, it's just a state of being.  In the second, it says you are not only dead, but someone or something killed you, and use of the be- form means that you don't have to specify who or what.  This applies to all verbs that can take a be-

Go xaw.   I see.
Go bexaw.  I am seen (by something)

So now I'm thinking of the word

tayar  ready (adjective)  Maybe it should be a transitive verb:

Go tayar to xyen.  I get the dog ready.
To xyen da betayar go.  The dog is gotten ready by me.
To xyen (pa) betayar.   The dog has been gotten ready.
To (pa) betayar xyen.   The ready, or readied, dog.

And here I see I need a reciprocal pronoun.

To xyen tayar se.  The dog readies itself.  Unless maybe I just need a prefix for transitive verbs that makes them reflexive.  How about borrowing suy from 'suicide.'

To xyen suytayar.  The dog self-readies.
To jino suysori.  The man shaves himself.

Let me know what you think about all this.  Later:  I'm keeping tayar as an adjective meaning "is ready."

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