Longer Views (60 page)

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Authors: Samuel R. Delany

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, you are using the assumptive voice. In old Glotolog texts, the assumptive voice was actually indicated by what is called, in that final appendix to most standard Glotolog grammars on outmoded traditions, a metaphoric dot, which was placed over the
and the
. When speaking in the assumptive voice,
and
were said to be in the metaphoric mood. No dot, however, in a sentence like “
” would be placed over
. The logic here is that, in the assumptive voice, one of the things assumed is that the rain, at any rate, is real.

It is interesting: Many native Glotolog speakers, when given transcripts of ancient manuscripts on which the dots have been left out (due to the customs of modern Glotolog printing), can still often place the date of composition from the manner in which sentences like “
” are used, whether in the indicative (“There are . . .”), the literal (“I see . . .”), or the assumptive (“Somewhere out of sight it is . . .”) voice. Apparently once the metaphoric dot fell out as archaic usage, the indicative and the assumptive were used much more informally.

Because of the tendency to use English analytic terms in Glotolog, many Glotolog terms are practically identical to their English equivalents (though, as we have seen, the grammar and the logical form of the language are quite different from those of English), so that a native speaker of one has little difficulty getting the sense of many Glotolog pronouncements, especially those having to do with logic and sensation.

Here is a list of words that are the same in both languages (that is, they are employed in the same situations):

if

can be called

at night

true

I feel

false

this/that

though

on my body

real

Also, logical questions are posed in Glotolog by putting the word “is” before, and a question mark after, the clause to be made interrogative. The fact that the semantics and logical form of the language are different from ours only presents problems in particular cases.

(To summarize those differences: Glotolog has no true predicates [“I feel,” as well as “can be called true,” for example, are the same part of speech as “
”]; in fact, Glotolog has no true subjects either. It has only objects, the observer of which is expressed as a description of the object, as is the medium by which the object is perceived; sometimes these descriptions are taken as real; at other times they are taken as virtual. And it should be fairly evident even from
this
inadequate description of the language—even without exposure to their complex religion, science, poetry, and politics—that this template still gives them a method for modeling the world as powerful as our own equally interesting [and equally arbitrary] subject/predicate template.)

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