Charles wrote :

Garrett wrote:
> >
> > I've been hard at work on Malat (my logical language)
>
I had a good time reading your post. I'm really interested in the matter you've been dealing with in Malat.

> > All word roots are a consonant/consonant cluster, then an empty space, then a
> > consonant. For example, the word for exchange is "m-d". A vowel is put in the empty
> > spot to tell what type of speech the word is ('e' for verb, 'a' for noun, etc). When
> > an inherently verbal root is converted to a noun, the meaning is "a person/thing who
> > ~s" or "an ~er". For example, med = to exchange, so mad = an exchanger.
>

Same for my Dead-Easy Language, except that roots are triconsonantic.
http://members.aol.com/lassailly/del.html

Charles' Tomato sounds more *friendly* because it's plain vowel+consonant roots.
http://www.catty.com/~catty/lang/tomato.htm

> I like part-of-speech marking. You seem to be using "direct derivation"
> as in Esperanto, where a verb becomes a noun as easily as changing
> socks.

Except that Garrett apparently have made an aspect distinction inside roots : ongoing patient or agent // patient or agent as a result.
Problem is, Garrett : what is the resultative patient of *to cut* ? The wood carved ? The cutting ? Two twigs ? Sawdust ? :-)

> I've tried a way of showing de-verbal nouns by adding the nominal ending
> after the verbal, e.g. "-i" + "-o" = "-io". Now I'm looking into using
> 2-letter endings instead, as many natural agglutinative langs seem to
> do.
> (I've tried single consonants also.)
>
My opinion, Charles, is that you have enough vowel roles and you could achieve *focusing* with them alone (that's only my personal opinion).

> > In malat sentences, there are three types of objects involved: an agent (causes the
> > action), a patient (who is affected by the action), and a focus (which further
> > elaborates on the action).
>
Same in DEL, except that there is an agent (usually the instrument) and a patient. The patient is antipassive :
to receive (active) // to be attributed to  (antipassive);
Then there is a factor :
to make receive (active factitive) = to give to;
to make be attributed (antipassive factitive) = to give (something).
Like in Malat, the focus/patient and the agent  may be either in process (processive) or successfully processed (resultative) :  *to be milled* = *to be being milled* (processive) or *to be flour* (resultative). The agent may also be processive (*to get big*) or resultative (*to be big*).
Some actions and states are transformative, some aren't (like most of the lative actions and states).
Sometime it's difficult to say whether the patient is *transformed* in a result :
*to turn to* > *to be turned to* = *to be a direction*
Is a direction a plain patient or a resultative patient ?
This depends whether you take aspective into consideration. If you make a difference between *to turn to* and *to be directed to* then the patient may be processive or resultative : *to be turned to* and *to be the direction of*.
Same with *to give birth to* // *to be born of*.

So your focus is my patient or processed patient, your patient is my agent or patient and your agent is my factor, and reversely your patient... ;-) (kidding). But basically I can feel we solved the problem in a similar way.

> I just downloaded Rick Morneau's latest revision to Lexical Semantics;
> is that where you got the focus idea?
>
Could you give me that address please ?

> > On to what I wanted to explain. I made up a system where the agent and focus or
> > agent and patient could be switched.
>
This looks like the antipassive voice whereby the patient takes control of the action. Tomato and DEL work like that : *to go to* (active) > *to attract* (antipassive).
Sally calls that *volitional*. With your *focus* system you would have :
*to be given* > *I have myself be given something*. Then with a positive shift you would get : *I have myself be given something* > *I take something*.
DEL is flawed because many verbs with 3 actors are not factitive par essence : *to sell* does not equal *to make be sold* nor *to make buy* and reversely.
Does it also work like that in Malat ?

> > What this system basically is is a passive construction system, but applied to both
> > verbs and nouns.
>
Maybe an antipassive system.

> Seems workable, maybe even realistic.
It does work.

You aren't tempted to add
> ablative, allative, illative, comitative, combative, ... ?
>
>
Lative cases are different from essive or core cases to me.

Mathias


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