Author Topic: Some phrases I've made  (Read 11005 times)

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Qvaak

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Re: Some phrases I've made
« Reply #15 on: April 14, 2014, 11:17:21 am »
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Can you explain why you assigned ablative?
I think I can. I already gave a bit of an aswer in Words for genitals thread (of all the places):
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There's no magic. At the most basic level [ablative and allative] are equivalent of from and into/onto. So for a word meaning "cart" (rhaggat), you'd basically use ablative when you'd say in English "from a/the cart" (rhaggatoon) and you'd use allative when in English you'd say "into/onto a/the cart" (rhaggataan). But there is half bajillion uses for ablative and allative that are outside that basic use, and they are pretty much all fixed "it's just done this way" stuff that just has to be learned. Intuition may help a bit, but the use is not elective.
For example "I hit him with a whip." is said Anha loj mae ma orvikoon. The ablative case does not really add anything to the meaning of the sentence other than it clarifies that ma is used in the sense "with". That's just a rule: whenever ma is used as a preposition meaning "with", the noun following the preposition is in ablative. All prepositions assign the case of the following noun this way, and the case does not always mean much anything.
...so basically you simply go to http://wiki.dothraki.org/Prepositions and choose the correct case. Or go to http://wiki.dothraki.org/Vocabulary and use the case given after the arrow.
As for why ma happens to demand ablative for the "with" use, I think the source class gives a good hint. Or maybe it might be the continuation of the "growing from the source" theme that's behind the inalienable possession. But since we don't know terribly much about etymology, the more exact development can only be guessed.

I see I also have left one part of your Summertime Sadness still without commentation. I meant to go through the whole translation, sorry. Maybe I'll get back to it now.
« Last Edit: April 14, 2014, 11:45:04 am by Qvaak »
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