Unexpected fun with a simple sentence

I mentioned in a previous post that I'd been working through the translation of this list of test sentences.  There was one sentence in the list that, despite its initially-simple appearance, resulted in the creation of both a new verb affix and a particularly pleasing translation.

The sentence was: "We should eat more slowly".  This caught me by surprise, since although Vetela already had a way of expressing "we should eat more slowly (than someone else does)"^[0], or indeed "we should eat more slowly (than we do something else)"^[1], neither of those fit here.  My first thought was to render it as "we should eat more slowly than before"^[2], but that seemed somehow both unwieldy and un-Vetela-like... so after some thought I decided to create a new aspectual affix -áyan-, expressing increasing degree over time (suggestions of names for this aspect welcomed).  I then used this to make two equivalent translations:

kisa antekáyanu nuynía talie
kisa   antek-áyan-u nuyní-a tali-e
we.ABS slow-INC-INS eat-ABS preferable-IND
"that we eat increasingly fast is preferable"

In this version, talie ("be preferable") is the verb, with the nominalised verb phrase kisa antekáyanu nuynía ("that we eat faster") as its object.  The middle word, antekáyanu, is the interesting one here - anteku would mean "quickly" and, with the new affix, means "increasingly quickly".

However, the second version is my favourite, and feels somehow more Vetela-like to me:

kisa nuynía antekáyana talie
kisa   nuyní-a antek-áyan-a tali-e
we.ABS eat-ABS slow-INC-ABS preferable-IND
"that our eating speeds up is preferable"

In this one, talie is again the verb, with the nominalised verb phrase kisa nuynía antekáyana ("that our eating speeds up") as its object.  However, that in turn breaks down into a nominalised verb (antekáyana) and its object, the nominalised verb phrase kisa nuynía ("that we eat").  It is this nesting of three verb phrases, and its elegant expression in Vetela as consecutive words in absolutive case, which I found appealing.


[0] kisa (volti neulai) anteku nuynía talie
kisa   (volt-i    neul-ai)     antek-u  nuyní-a tali-e
we.ABS (other-ADJ someone-ILL) slow-INS eat-ABS be_preferable-IND
"that we eat more slowly (than someone else does) is preferable"

[1] kisa (volti nyila velai) anteku nuynía talie
kisa   (volt-i    nyil-a        vel-ai) antek-u  nuyní-a tali-e
we.ABS (other-ADJ something-ABS do-ILL) slow-INS eat-ABS be_preferable-IND
"that we eat more slowly (than we do something else) is preferable"

[2] kisa akkotoai anteku nuynía talie
kisa   akkoto-ai         antek-u  nuyní-a tali-e
we.ABS previous_time-ILL slow-INS eat-ABS be_preferable-IND
"that we eat more slowly than before is preferable"