Re: a new project of conlang

At 18:12 15/11/98 +0000, you wrote:
>Christophe Grandsire wrote:
>
>> GENITIVES, ATTRIBUTIVES and ADJECTIVES:
>>
>>         These are three different constructions whose purpose is to
>> determine a noun with another noun, or the meaning of a root.
>
>I am currently trying to disentangle adjectives from stative verbs,
>without much success. As for genitives, I just run them together
>as normal nouns "John horse shoe nail" like a Germanic compound
>but with spaces to breate.
>
>> GENDER:
>>
>>         Gender is neither the unproductive system that we find in French,
>> nor the classes system of Swahili. It's rather a productive system of
>> derivations (roots have no gender in themselves, roj meaning for example
>> 'human' in a very broad sense) that can seem a little like Esperanto, but
>> with a "gender-like" flavour. As gender is used for agreement between=
 nouns
>> and their determinants (pronominal complexes with antecedents, genitives,
>> attributives and adjectives), I kept the name 'gender' to describe that
>> system. A gender can have subgenders, and subgenders can have=
 subsubgenders.
>> The tree of this system is:
>>
>> - animated: letter k.   - human: k'a.   (- masculine: k'a-n.)
>>                                         (- feminine: k'a-ti.)
>>                                         (- group: k'a-se.)
>>                         - animal: ki.   (- masculine: ki-n.)
>>                                         (- feminine: ki-ti.)
>>                                         (- group: ki-se.)
>>                         - other (gods, extraterrestrials...): k.
>> - inanimated: letter m. - plants: me.
>>                         - part of animated: mi-k.
>>                         - object: m'aj.
>>                         - 'material' (used with ingredients in cooking):=
 m.
>>                         - pseudo-animated (fire, planets, earthquakes):
m'a-k.
>> - conceptual: letter j. - idea, art, doctrine (everything in -ism): jer.
>>                         - abstraction (of something concrete): j'a.
>>                         - quality (in a broad sense): j.
>>
>>         I borrowed this idea from Carlos Thompson and adapted it in my=
 way.
>> He picked my curiosity with his idea of subgenders.
>
>Using genders that way is cool. What do you do to distinguish
>a habitual (not cases) "employ-er" from an "employ-ee" etc.?
>I might use noun classes (genders) for that sort of thing.
>
>
        I didn't think of that. I think it's because the French equivalents
'employeur' and 'employ=E9' are not that used (we use 'employ=E9', but=
 almost
never 'employeur'. We generally use the word 'patron': 'boss'). So I don't
think it must resort to grammar, rather to vocabulary. PL is made to be
'naturalistic' (well, at least naturalistic to my opinion) and I like
leaving some distinctions that could be made by derivation into the
vocabulary. When I have this language evolved, maybe such derivation will
appear.

                                                Christophe Grandsire
                                                |Sela Jemufan Atlinan C.G.

"R=E9sister ou servir"

homepage: http://www.bde.espci.fr/homepage/Christophe.Grandsire/index.html