GV syntax

[planetari]

Hi. I have two questions about syntax in Golic Vulcan.

First one, is the subject always necessary in a sentence when it is already implied? Nash-veh is an awfully long word to keep repeating in each sentence. I know an English sentence can never drop the subject, but in most European languages and Japanese (which shares quite a few similarities with

Comments

[lifeisaglitch]

I'm fairly certain that you can drop words much like in Japanese...

Aha! Found where I read it: "The language tends to be 'contextual' in that understood or previously mentioned things are seldom repeated, unless needed for emphasis." from VLI.

As for your other two questions, I'd be interested to hear those answers myself.

[planetari]

I thought I'd read that somewhere :) it's a very flexible language that way, but at the same way very prone to misunderstandings :p

Thank you!

[diane_kepler]

Definitely agree on the dropping of pronouns. Sometimes you can even drop the verb. This can happen when you're using nam-tor (to be). Orenau Gol-Vuhlkansu could be taken as either "study of" or "I study" depending on whether it appears in the heading to a Vulcan language lesson or you're communicating with somebody about your studies.

Where you put the question particle, I think, also depends on the context. I would write "When does she arrive?" as Lasha lu? and "(I) will have it when (she) arrives." as Dungi ma ish-veh lu lasha. because the second one is not a question.

But that's just me.

[planetari]

Did you mean to phrase it as Dungi ma lu lasha ish-veh or Dungi ma nash-veh lu lasha? Because I guess that would translate more as "She will have it when (I) arrive"? Or maybe I'm not understanding correctly. But if I am, the word placement sounds just right and you have just answered all my questions. Thank you!

[diane_kepler]

You're right. Dungi ma ish-veh lu lasha is just "will have that-one when arrive". So it could mean either "I will have it when she arrives" or "She will have it when I arrive." You'd have to hear other parts of the conversation to know what the speaker was saying.

Dungi ma lu lasha ish-veh ("will have when arrive that-one") doesn't make sense to me gramatically. I'm feeling like there needs to be a subject or object after "ma", the verb.

Dungi ma nash-veh lu lasha is "will have this-one when arrive", which my brain immediately translated as "(She) will have me when (I) arrive". And while that sounds pretty interesting, I don't think it's what you were going for :)

[planetari]

I get it now :p Thanks for clearing that up for me!

[kiwiken]

„I want to go" would be translated as "Aitlu nash-veh hal-tor" (want this-one go). Analogous I would think that it is "Nah-tor nash-veh hal-tor vi’sar-tak" (think this-one go into bed). There is a whole lesson about sentences with several verbs here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20061109092010/home.teleport.com/~vli/lesson28.htm

[planetari]

I hadn't thought about accessing the original VLI site like that. Thank you very much, this was extremely helpful! :)

[diane_kepler]

Also, the VLI reclamation project is here:

http://www.stogeek.com/wiki/Category:Vulcan_Language_Institute

[kiwiken]

Glad I could help :) I don't know what I would do without the internet archive ;)
It's still sad that the site isn't currently available, though - I really hope it will come back online with new updates. Since this isn't the first time it's disappeared, I guess there's some hope.

Now that I'm reading my above sentence again, I'm wondering whether "vi'sar-tak" sounds correct... maybe "na'sartak" would have been better, just as it is in english - after all, a bed isn't really entered in the way a house or a ship is. Or is it? In german, we do go "into" it...

[planetari]

That is a problem I run into a lot with GV, because different verbs and... things (what are things like "in" and "to" called in English? lol I bad grammer has) are used to refer to the same activities, depending on the language.

Maybe we just use the most logical verb! What do you do when go to to bed? You place yourself on top of it. So maybe you would say "I will go atop the bed" :B so maybe you could use fi'. There's no telling, really.

[kiwiken]

They're called prepositions. Yes, they're different in every language, and unortunately, we have few examples of their correct use in GV :/
You're right, the most logical thing to say would be "onto the bed", I didn't think of that one.

But "onto" doesn't seem to exist, and I think "atop" is a little bit different, since I'm not *already on the bed*, but *going there*. There is "up/upwards", but I think that's again different, since I'm not climbing a ladder or stairs to get onto the bed. So I'm still at a loss what preposition to use in this case :( Maybe I'll just keep writing "na'sar-tak" until I can think of a better solution.

[diane_kepler]

I made a list of the 124 English prepositions and their Vulcan equivalents for Selek earlier this week. It apparently boils down to 67 Vulcan prepositions. It makes sense. English probably doesn't need that many.

They have their own category over at the VLD now.