Redaun wrote: ![Info [info]](./images/smilies/infic.png)
Glenrién has three different copulas, specifically for describing things with nouns, adjectives, or prepositions. (At least for now.)
I may also be changing how genitive phrases work soon, but at the moment, they use a genitive particle.
Redaun wrote:... prepositions.
The usual four functions that "to be" sometimes has some of (but are sometimes separated in some languages) are:
* noun in predicate also names noun/pronoun/nominal in subject
* adjective in predicate describes noun/pronoun/nominal in subject
* location in predicate is where noun/pronoun/nominal in subject lies or sits or stands or ... etc.
* subject exists
The example you* provided that has a preposition is a locating clause. The preposition "in" is one of the locational prepositions in English.
*(The original post provided it, I know. The original poster wanted responders to explore locating clauses and the "copula"'s function in them.)
Do you also want this copula to work with other prepositions?
For instance how would you say in Glenrién "I
am all
about that bass"?
And:
Does Glenrién have any other kinds of adpositions? Postpositions, or inpositions, or circumpositions, or ambipositions? (I think that list is exhaustive, but I may be wrong.)
Redaun wrote:... genitive phrases ... genitive particle.
"Of" is a genitive preposition in English.
And in many languages possession is treated like location.
I'm not criticizing your language, nor am I criticizing your post.
I'm saying that answering this translation thread doesn't tell us (well, doesn't tell
me) enough about (for instance) why you translate "He is my husband" with
shol instead of
borna.
By "why" I mean "how would someone learning the language know which one to use?"
And I'm hoping and asking that you'll tell us -- sometime and somewhere, but not necessarily now
(though that would be great!) nor necessarily on this thread.
And, as long as I'm doing this, I should say:
"Genitive" case is the case you put a noun in when you want to use it to modify another noun -- that is to say, when you want to use a noun as an adjective.
And if you have a genitive adposition (like "of" or "de" or "von"), one of the main things it does is create a PPhrase that can be used to modify a noun-phrase.
So, for some languages with cases, some grammarians call any case that can "turn a noun into an adjective" a "genitive case".
(Some of them are more precise, however. If a language has "attributive" and "possessive" and maybe "ablative" cases, then "genitive" is the case for a noun that tells what kind of thing some other noun is; for instance distinguishing "wooden coin" and "leaden coin" from "golden coin".)
So how would you say "He is mine"?
Would you use "troj"?
Because "mine" is an adjective; it's the genitive form of "I" that's used when the modified noun-phrase is a grammatical object (of a verb or a preposition or anything else that can take an object).
Or would you use "shol"? or "borna"?
And do you work from the inspiration that natlang examples give you?
I only know such examples exist -- I don't know what they are.
Maybe some other contributor to this thread knows some?
Maybe there are some early in this thread and I missed them somehow?