We've had the locative ne "in/at" and allative la "to" for years, but for some reason the ablative has always proved elusive. I think it's time to resolve this once and for all.
I would sort of like no for this function, a shout out to both Japanese and Latvian, but I think given the importance of this particle that for phonetic salience it should not contain any of the consonants or vowels of the other two spatial/directional markers. This leaves us the following options:
hi, ho, ki, ku, mi, mu, o, pu, so, su, to, tu
Well, now, what about o? It has a nice Gaelic feel, and would have the pleasing quality of occupying the same syntactic position as it did back in 2001 when I had it meaning something completely different. Note: this would be the end of our V morphemes.
Le Keoni i ma mene la ka talo.
NAME=John 3P=IMPF=go ALL=DEF=house
"John is going (in)to the house."
Le Keoni i ma nuku ne ka talo.
NAME=John 3P=IMPF=sleep LOC=DEF=house
"John is sleeping in the house."
Le Keoni i ma tule o ka talo.
NAME=John 3P=IMPF=come ABL=DEF=house
"John is coming from/out of the house."
It's unanimous (and I am apparently schizophrenic): I love it. I haven't been this happy with a particle choice in ages. Hooray!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment