Laudative and Pejorative

Started by Tseyk Tìriuä, January 26, 2010, 07:27:05 PM

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Tseyk Tìriuä

So if a sentence is already positive or negative, is adding the laudative or pejorative infix redundant?

For instance if you said "This is really fun" would adding the laudative be normal or is it repetitive? 

What do you guys think?


Tengkrr tìsngä'i Yawäl peyä tsenget ulte kifkey Yawä'evangäti ngamop.

Nìwotxkrr Tìyawn

Well I suppose you could put a negative in if you would want it to sound more sarcastic like, not exactly sure on how Na'vi are with sarcasm though.
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wm.annis

Frommer has already said as much in his discussion of the vital question of how to say "I love you": "The laudatory infix (as someone has dubbed it) -ie- is possible but not necessary, and I've been omitting it here. "Love" itself is positive enough that it's probably redundant, and all other things being equal, shorter is better."

roger

There are a lot of things that we can say w/o much emotion; my take on it is that if you say s.t. instead with a smile, you might want to use <ei>, and if with a frown, you might want to use <äng>. But as William said, if you're telling s.o. you love them (or calling them a moron), there isn't much point to adding the affect—perhaps for the same reason we often wouldn't bother with smilies for those things. But I get the feeling that it's lexicalized in some cases: "thank you" tends to take <ei>, and "I apologize" tends to take <äng> (if that's what the <eng> is). Also, you can't use the affect if the slot is filled w s.t. else, like formality or an evidential. (I don't know how you would convey that you think s.t. is good or bad news, then.)

Personally, I'd add it to "This is really fun!". You might want to add nang or ko instead, or maybe as well.