Triparic Conjunctions
- indicates a Shawn proposal (tuesday 12 april)
| English | Triparic |
|---|---|
| although, even though | |
| and | i |
| as if, as though | visi |
| because | bäsac |
| but | mäz |
| either ... or | ŏt ... ŏt |
| if | si |
| lest | *Complicated. See below. |
| neither ... nor | nä ... nä |
| once | ænfø (German has "einmal", French "une fois") |
| or | ŏt |
| rather than | *Complicated. See below for reasoning: anplåx or conque or something else |
| so that | *zo qe |
| than | que |
| that | qe |
| unless | *nisi |
| whether ... or | *veter ... ŏt |
| while | dum |
| yet, nevertheless | doc |
Shawn notes
lest: This is the opposite of "so that" in almost the same way that "unless" is the opposite of "if": "Don't go, lest you die" = "Don't go, so that you don't die". The weird gotcha is that the clause needs to be subjunctive to make it only a possibility. Latin and French do the same thing. French uses pour que or de peur que "for fear that". Latin has the conjunction nē (nē obliviscaris, "lest you forget"). I suggest we just use zo qe with a negative indicative: *Nac vade, zo qe ðŏ nac *mordest. "Don't go, so that you do not die."
Note: I starred *mordest because we didn't solidify "to die", but I starred the first *nac because some languages use a different negator on imperatives. Do we want to use nä there or is nac fine on imperatives as well as indic/subj? (I like nä, but the danger of it is that contextually you might split the command: nä vade! could parse as "Don't go!" or "No! Go!" Cf. "No. Don't. Stop.")
rather than: "I want to go to the store rather than stay home." When you use it prepositionally, it's just like "instead of". "Shawn likes dogs rather than cats." It means its object is less preferred. Therefore if other prepositions are doing double duty as conjunctions (see below) we could let anplåx do the same, rather than (heh) making up something new. But, if we want something different, I nominate conque ("against-than"). Wiktionary lists almost no translations for "rather than", but one it does have is Italian anziché, which comes from anti- "against" plus che "than".
On the other other hand, we may want "rather" anyhow as an adverb (rather small, rather good) and then the relexing principle would apply as with "so that".
so that: We have a "so" in the sense of "thus". We have a "that". English relexing, right?
unless: This is simply the opposite of if: "if ... not". German and Italian just do it that way: "I'm going to the store if you don't bring me cookies" = "... unless you bring me cookies" (wenn ... nicht, se ... non). French has à moins que with the subjunctive (moins = "less"). But Latin has ... nisi.
whether: This is just a lift, of course. In English you can say "Do you know whether he ate?" and it is identical to "if" grammatically, but it implies "... or not?" With geeks you can say "Do you know if he ate or not?" and the snarky answer is "Yes. He ate or not." Whether really forces the choice of two alternatives. And looking at WT, other languages don't have that so much. So the only thing I would say here is that we discourage veter without an ŏt option. If you're only presenting one option, use si.
Prepositional Conjunctions
Many prepositions also operate as conjunctions, such as ante "before", bis "until", post "after", sæt "since", etc.