English Idioms and "Mankind" Sentences

[wm.annis]

Also, regarding your link ma Tirea, while it has good information in it, I don't see how it addresses teri vs topical marker.

Teri is 100% absolutely not a topical marker.  It is an adposition that means "about, concerning."  It is a misfeature of English that it doesn't have a succinct and clear way to mark the topical, so we're stuck with translations that make it liable to confusion with teri when we try to translate.

Here's one possible syntactic test: can you use the about-phrase as an attribute of another noun?  If so, then you're probably dealing with teri, not a topical:

  fmawn a teri Txewì news (which is) about Txewì
  'uo a ngateri something (which is) about you

That said, "there's something about..." is definitely an idiom.  The French use je ne sais quoi ("I don't know what") to indicate a very similar idea.  In fact, I might suggest that someone feeling bold make a suggestion for such an idiom on the LEP board, if they can think through a good explanation of it.

[Stranger Come Knocking]

| Tirea | Thank you for the hug. I was following Ftiafpi's example about the movies if that can be Na'vi-fied. *thinks this should go to the other thread*

| WM | *facepalm* Both sentences look the same to me. But I do think a lovely idiom is in order.  Nose goes!

Also, as far as the mankind sentences are concerned, should I use just tute or tawtute?  I think tute is better, personally.