Re: VMs: Is it a human language? (was Moot points, getting long)

[Koontz John E <John.Koontz@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks!

On Fri, 6 Aug 2004, Pierre Abbat wrote:
> "reliquum, -qua, -qui" means "remainder, -s, -'s".

A u in this context ends up o, though I don't know if that always
happens in quu sequences.  One of my simplifications was not to address
cases of vowel shifts.

> ... but my Spanish is pretty limited.
>
> zumo azul

I should at least have been able to come up with azul!

> It might be that "qokedy qokedy" and "qokedy" are two distinct words which
> happen to both occur on that page. To give an example in Tok Pisin, "i gat
> planti sipsip longlong long dispela sip" means "there are many crazy sheep on
> this ship".

Nice examples, because sipsip and sip and longlong and long have different
origins.  However, modulo issues with word boundaries in the text and
underlying material, too, if different, the qokedy qokedy dal qokedy
qokedy pattern seems rather different, and I gather that repetitions of
some forms are very common.

Reduplication in various grammatical functions is also possibility, though
it's rare in Europe (but, e.g., English shilly shally and various verb
stem patterns in Proto-Indo-European inherited in, e.g., Greek).  Some
degree of partial repetition is more common than complete repetition, and
usually you only find one example in a clause, not pervasive examples
several to a line.

Anyway, since there are large sequences that are not repetitive I'm
inclined to address those and see what any solution there might imply for
the odd materials.  I'm inclined to suspect either numbers or something of
mystical significance, like the long inarticulate vowel sequences in some
early Christian literature, though I don't know anything about the
within-book or intellectual contexts in this case.

I believe this issue of repetition must come up a lot.  My apologies for
raising it again.
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