From jcowan@reutershealth.com Fri Dec 07 15:07:17 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: jcowan@reutershealth.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_1_2); 7 Dec 2001 23:07:17 -0000 Received: (qmail 92361 invoked from network); 7 Dec 2001 23:07:17 -0000 Received: from unknown (216.115.97.167) by m2.grp.snv.yahoo.com with QMQP; 7 Dec 2001 23:07:17 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mail.reutershealth.com) (204.243.9.36) by mta1.grp.snv.yahoo.com with SMTP; 7 Dec 2001 23:07:17 -0000 Received: from reutershealth.com (IDENT:cowan@[10.65.117.21]) by mail.reutershealth.com (Pro-8.9.3/Pro-8.9.3) with ESMTP id SAA19376; Fri, 7 Dec 2001 18:08:12 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <3C114BE6.1040803@reutershealth.com> Date: Fri, 07 Dec 2001 18:08:22 -0500 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:0.9.6) Gecko/20011120 X-Accept-Language: en-us MIME-Version: 1.0 To: engelang@yahoogroups.com, lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Voksigid (was: Thoughts on numerical language) References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: John Cowan X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=8122456 X-Yahoo-Profile: john_w_cowan (I have cross-posted to lojban and engelang) And Rosta (Work2Home) wrote: > Can you give more examples? The Voksigid page is at http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3141/voksigid.html but unfortunately it is less than helpful with practical examples. I cannot remember the correct Patient tag, but I think it is ref. Definitely tor is Agent and tum is Recipient. So given the verb dona = give, we can make the nouns donator = giver, donaref = gift, donatum = recipient of gift. The tag for stative subjects is len, so given homo = to be human, then homolen = human being. (This is why "homotor" is legal but semantically perverse: what is the agent in the event of someone being human? We don't make ourselves human, nor does anyone else particularly make us human.) A trivial PS grammar of Voksigid: S = Verb S = S PP PP = Prep Noun Noun = Verb-Tag Tag = Prep So to use nouns, they must be preceded with prepositions which specify their case; these prepositions are isomorphic to the tags, but precede rather than follow and are independent verbs, not suffixes. Thus a tentative Voksigid sentence: dona tor homolen ref eskriberef tum amator Gives AGT is:human-ST PAT writes-PAT DAT loves-AGT The human being gives the written work to the lover. AGT = agent, PAT = patient, DAT = recipient, ST = thing in state. And of course we can say: Dona tor donator ref donaref tum donatum which I leave up to y'all to figure out. -- Not to perambulate || John Cowan the corridors || http://www.reutershealth.com during the hours of repose || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan in the boots of ascension. \\ Sign in Austrian ski-resort hotel