From robin@bilkent.edu.tr Sun Feb 22 03:32:33 2004 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Sun, 22 Feb 2004 03:32:33 -0800 (PST) Received: from manyas.bcc.bilkent.edu.tr ([139.179.30.24]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.30) id 1AurqV-0000Bg-1O for lojban-list@lojban.org; Sun, 22 Feb 2004 03:32:27 -0800 Received: from bilkent.edu.tr (ppp110.bcc.bilkent.edu.tr [139.179.111.110]) by manyas.bcc.bilkent.edu.tr (Postfix) with ESMTP id E596F26E44 for ; Sun, 22 Feb 2004 13:31:52 +0200 (EET) Message-ID: <4038939D.4040700@bilkent.edu.tr> Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2004 13:33:49 +0200 From: robin User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040115 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban-list@lojban.org Subject: [lojban] Re: preposition disposition References: <4035D629.11821.E91DA@localhost> In-Reply-To: <4035D629.11821.E91DA@localhost> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed X-archive-position: 7128 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: robin@bilkent.edu.tr Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list Philip Newton wrote: > On 20 Feb 2004 at 2:34, la_okus wrote: > > >>From personal experience, I know that Japanese sometimes disagrees >>with english as well. The verb "au" means to meet, but the japanese >>don't say "I meet friends", they say "tomodachi ni au", which is more >>like "I meet to friends". > > > *nods* and "dare-ka *to* kekkon suru" which is literally "to marry > *with* someone" rather than the English "to marry someone". Same with Turkish: "biriy*le* evlenmek" (literally "someone-with to-become-a-house"). Also in Turkish, you are angry _to_ something, but frightened _from_ something; you beat someone but hit _to_ them; you look _to_ someone, but wait them (no "for"). Languages have a limited number of prepositions/cases which are then extended metaphorically. The process is not entirely arbitrary, but produces variations of the type mentioned. robin.tr -- "Caesar non supra grammaticos." - Suetonius Robin Turner IDMYO Bilkent Univeritesi Ankara 06533 Turkey www.bilkent.edu.tr/~robin