Comments on the Pictorial Dictionary?

larryf58 · **Posted:** Thu Sep 29, 2016 11:37 am

Mostly back up and running.

Next word is ūnrā... Hope everyone is familiar with the Harry Potter movies.

larryf58 · **Posted:** Fri Sep 30, 2016 12:27 pm

I'm not all that happy with the illustration for danger, and it may be changed later if I can find a better one. In the meanwhile, it's something for anyone who may like figuring out D'ni texts.

larryf58 · **Posted:** Fri Sep 30, 2016 1:39 pm

Going off-topic for a moment, here's a question. After making the sign for my "danger" illustration, I thought of a sign saying "D'ni spoken here". However, there's no word in the current lexicon exactly matching present tense "spoken". So how would that be phrased?

My own attempt is D'nE mEsinen tomet (D'ni mēsinen tomet). Does that make sense?

Talashar · **Joined:** Sun Dec 08, 2013 12:24 pm **Posts:** 91

larryf58 wrote:

Going off-topic for a moment, here's a question. After making the sign for my "danger" illustration, I thought of a sign saying "D'ni spoken here". However, there's no word in the current lexicon exactly matching present tense "spoken". So how would that be phrased?

My own attempt is D'nE mEsinen tomet (D'ni mēsinen tomet). Does that make sense?

Unfortunately, our D'ni texts show a lot of variety in how they form passives, and it isn't clear when one form might be preferred over another. Since the English "D'ni spoken here" is abbreviated and concise, an appropriate D'ni rendering might be the following, which doesn't have any extra kens lying around.

D'nE DomEsenij tomet
d'nee domeesenij tomet

larryf58 · **Posted:** Sat Oct 01, 2016 12:09 am

Talashar wrote:

Unfortunately, our D'ni texts show a lot of variety in how they form passives, and it isn't clear when one form might be preferred over another. Since the English "D'ni spoken here" is abbreviated and concise, an appropriate D'ni rendering might be the following, which doesn't have any extra kens lying around.

D'nE DomEsenij tomet
d'nee domeesenij tomet

Do- is listed as being the equivalent of -ing, so domēs means "speaking". How did you intend for that sentence to be parsed?

KathAveara · **Posted:** Sat Oct 01, 2016 11:02 am

do- is also used in the construction of passives, cf. xapo rezunu ril dolgelenij gaþ "perhaps the ending has not yet been written"

Edit: now that I've seen the picture...

[Reveal] Spoiler: translation

Danger: Unmapped and unstable tunnels.

larryf58 · **Posted:** Sat Oct 01, 2016 2:08 pm

larryf58 wrote:

Talashar wrote:

Unfortunately, our D'ni texts show a lot of variety in how they form passives, and it isn't clear when one form might be preferred over another. Since the English "D'ni spoken here" is abbreviated and concise, an appropriate D'ni rendering might be the following, which doesn't have any extra kens lying around.

D'nE DomEsenij tomet
d'nee domeesenij tomet

Do- is listed as being the equivalent of -ing, so domēs means "speaking". How did you intend for that sentence to be parsed?

To clarify what I'm pointing out, wouldn't the sentence work without the do- prefix? D'nē mēsenij tomet makes more sense to me than domēsenij. As an example, in the sentence khapo rezunu rildolgelenij gath, dol- is present to modify the tense to present perfect progressive, which has been translated as "has not yet". In the examples of the use of -ij in Kenen Gor, none of the words that have the -ij suffix have a prefix. Since there is no call for the tense of my sentence to be modified, I am wondering why there would be any need for an additional particle.

As for the use of -ij, I agree it's probably the correct choice in this case rather than my use of -in, since the sentence does not specify that a particular person speaks D'ni, just that it is spoken.

Talashar · **Joined:** Sun Dec 08, 2013 12:24 pm **Posts:** 91

larryf58 wrote:

To clarify what I'm pointing out, wouldn't the sentence work without the do- prefix?

The problem is that we don't know. Everywhere we see an -ij suffix, the verb either has a do- prefix or a preceding ken. Moreover, we have several examples where do- by itself seems to indicate a passive, as in the following from Aitrus's map (Cyan's translation).

.loymaht terelin ril kodobahrelen rebishtah kodolahsahen trefilahdh teflin teeget
Though contact wasn't made, the tunnel was sealed at the top in working order.

But if you disagree about do-, you could follow the model of Kenen Gor:

D'nE Kenen mEsenij tomet
d'nee kenen meesenij tomet

larryf58 wrote:

As for the use of -ij, I agree it's probably the correct choice in this case rather than my use of -in, since the sentence does not specify that a particular person speaks D'ni, just that it is spoken.

I hesitated for a while about whether to recommend an -in form. My guess is that d'nee kenen meesin, if it means anything, would be an assertion about D'ni specifically, that it is a spoken language. D'ni spoken here, on the other hand, is asserting something about the events occurring "here". But I don't have anything to back this up except my interpretation of the pragmatics of rekor oshahnin 'the lost book' and riltahgahmin 'Unknown',

KathAveara · **Posted:** Sun Oct 02, 2016 1:07 pm

I don't think I can add substantially to Talashar's post, but...

larryf58 wrote:

dol- ... "has not yet".

"yet" is actually the translation of gaþ, nothing to do with do-.

larryf58 · **Posted:** Sun Oct 02, 2016 1:17 pm

Talashar wrote:

The problem is that we don't know. Everywhere we see an -ij suffix, the verb either has a do- prefix or a preceding ken. Moreover, we have several examples where do- by itself seems to indicate a passive, as in the following from Aitrus's map (Cyan's translation).

.loymaht terelin ril kodobahrelen rebishtah kodolahsahen trefilahdh teflin teeget
Though contact wasn't made, the tunnel was sealed at the top in working order.

In that sentence, -do- has a specific function -- the addition of -do- modifies ko- from the simple past tense into the past progressive tense, changing it from "did, -ed" into "was, were". Is there another example that might make your point better?

Quote:

But if you disagree about do-, you could follow the model of Kenen Gor:

D'nE Kenen mEsenij tomet
d'nee kenen meesenij tomet

You repeated the pronoun suffix... was that deliberate or a typo? In Kenen Gor, the verbs with -ij never have a pronoun suffix as well.

Quote:

I hesitated for a while about whether to recommend an -in form. My guess is that d'nee kenen meesin, if it means anything, would be an assertion about D'ni specifically, that it is a spoken language. D'ni spoken here, on the other hand, is asserting something about the events occurring "here". But I don't have anything to back this up except my interpretation of the pragmatics of rekor oshahnin 'the lost book' and riltahgahmin 'Unknown',

I'll freely admit that I don't have my head wrapped around the concept of -ij, which is why I chose -in for my attempted translation.

Talashar · **Joined:** Sun Dec 08, 2013 12:24 pm **Posts:** 91

larryf58 wrote:

Talashar wrote:

The problem is that we don't know. Everywhere we see an -ij suffix, the verb either has a do- prefix or a preceding ken. Moreover, we have several examples where do- by itself seems to indicate a passive, as in the following from Aitrus's map (Cyan's translation).

.loymaht terelin ril kodobahrelen rebishtah kodolahsahen trefilahdh teflin teeget
Though contact wasn't made, the tunnel was sealed at the top in working order.

In that sentence, -do- has a specific function -- the addition of -do- modifies ko- from the simple past tense into the past progressive tense, changing it from "did, -ed" into "was, were". Is there another example that might make your point better?

The verbs don't seem progressive to me: "the tunnel was sealed," not "the tunnel was being sealed."

larryf58 wrote:

Quote:

But if you disagree about do-, you could follow the model of Kenen Gor:

D'nE Kenen mEsenij tomet
d'nee kenen meesenij tomet

You repeated the pronoun suffix... was that deliberate or a typo? In Kenen Gor, the verbs with -ij never have a pronoun suffix as well.

Sorry, that was my mistake. It should be:

D'nE Kenen mEsij tomet
d'nee kenen meesij tomet

larryf58 · **Posted:** Sun Oct 02, 2016 6:26 pm

Talashar wrote:

The verbs don't seem progressive to me: "the tunnel was sealed," not "the tunnel was being sealed."

Hmm... Let's see if anyone else has something to say about it. I just take is as "was" or "were" without trying to dig for a deeper meaning, for the reason I wrote earlier.

I'd say that "was being" would be kodoken, but the only example of it that I know contradicts me. Yeesha says kodokenen ferem ben tona b'rish in her first Cleft speech, which gets translated as "It was dry for so long" instead of "It was being dry for very long".

Khreestrefah · **Joined:** Tue Apr 06, 2010 5:01 pm **Posts:** 163

This is an case where part of the meaning is lost in translation. The basic distinction in using the prefix do- can be illustrated thus:

retelrov meesen d’nee ‘the guild-person speaks D’ni’ vs.
retelrov domeesen d’nee ‘the guild-person is speaking D’ni’.

A similar distinction can be made in talking about the past:

retelrov komeesen d’nee ‘the guild-person spoke D’ni’ vs.
retelrov kodomeesen d’nee ‘the guild-person was speaking D’ni’.

This distinction can also be made with predicate adjectives and the verb ‘to be’:

retelrov kokenen rahm ‘the guild-person was good’.
retelrov kodokenen rahm ‘the guild-person was being good’.

In English the second construction has developed an idiomatic sense where “being X” has a meaning we could paraphrase as ‘acting in a manner so as to be considered X’ and we don’t normally use the construction with adjectives like ‘dry’ that are felt to be outside the volition of the subject. But in D’ni the construction seems to be more factual. The simple form kokenen is used to mean ‘at some past time he/she/it was …’ while kodokenen means ‘at the past time or time-period referred to he/she/it was continuing to be …’.

In English we would not translate rekooahn kodokenen ferem **“the stream was being dry” because this suggests volition on the part of the stream; but we could translate it as “the stream continued/was continuing to be dry” to suggest the sense of the D’ni.

Shorah

larryf58 · **Posted:** Sun Oct 02, 2016 11:53 pm

So my idea that kodoken translates as "was being" is accurate, and the Yeesha's sentence was translated that way just to make sense grammatically in English?

KathAveara · **Posted:** Mon Oct 03, 2016 11:41 am

It depends heavily on the context how kodoken translates into English, and where it is used to render English, as Khrees just explained, but a "default" translation would be 'was being', yes.

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