Re: a new project of conlang

At 20:55 15/11/98 -0000, you wrote:
>Charles wrote :
>
>> I am currently trying to disentangle adjectives from stative verbs,
>> without much success.
>
>I think in term of integration.  You generally go : verb --> subclause -->
participial ---> adjective ---> agent (derived) noun. Like for : to sit --->
(that someone) sits ---> sitting x 3 ---> *sitter
>It's just how deep you want the action/state to be engraved into time from
instant to u-chronia.
>The more you go towards intemporality, the lesser aspect is available of
course.
>
> As for genitives, I just run them together
>> as normal nouns "John horse shoe nail" like a Germanic compound
>> but with spaces to breate.
>
>I differentiate 'inalienable' attributes from 'disposable' attributes, with
a hazy bordering fringe depending on specialization of the items : 'home'
and 'clothes' are inalienable while 'tool' is alienable.
>
        Alienable and inalienable possessions are cultural features. They
depend on how the culture sees the possession. If body parts are _always_
inalienable (well, I don't know any example of the contrary, and alienable
body parts seem very weird for me -not for a robot perhaps-), the relation
between a parent and her/his child is seen differently according to the
culture. In African tribes (as I read it), the relation can be seen as:
- inalienable for both parents;
- alienable for the father, inalienable for the mother;
- inalienable for the father, alienable for the mother.
It depends on the position of women in the tribe culture, etc...

        For the AP, possession is seen as:
- inalienable for body parts;
- often alienable for material things and inalienable for abstract ones;
- inalienable for things that you originated (when you construct your own
house, it is seen as inalienable even if the state takes it because you
didn't pay your taxes -in fact, for AP, something you constructed by
yourself can't be taken by anyone else, whatever powerful he may be. When
you buy an already built house, it is seen as alienable), alienable for
things you bought or found (or stole!);
- inalienable for the relation between a child and its mother (in both
directions: the mother's child or the child's mother are both seen as
inalienable), alienable for the relation between a child and its father
(again in both directions). It's a cultural fact: the AP's culture is _not_
sexist, with a matriarcal tendency (the family chief is generally the
mother, but the government system is open to both sexes).
- the relation between the AP and Nature (and their planet) is very special:
They see themselves as inalienable possessions of their planet, and the see
their planet as alienable possession of theirs.

        As I began to talk about the AP, here is some things I know about=
 them:
The AP live in a planet that seems like Earth, but is not Earth (different
continents, but nearly the same general climate and importance of the
oceans). It is the fourth planet of its solar system, orbiting around a sun
just a little bit hotter than ours, giving this planet a climate very much
like ours (maybe a little warmer). The evolution on this planet has been
close enough to the evolution on ours, creating animals that could live
without many problems on our Earth, with some surprises sometimes (I'll
think of them later).

        It must be a coincidence, but the AP are very much like us (but they
are a totally unrelated species, and if we could have sex with them, a
hybrid would be impossible). They have a human-like body, same average size,
two arms, two legs, hands with four fingers (one of them is a thumb), feet
with three toes (one is bigger, and its bones show that it's a fusion of two
toes). Their arms and legs are articulated as ours. Their skeleton is like
ours, with some little differences: their vertebral column has more
vertebrae, hence it is more flexible, their costs are larger than ours,
creating something like an armor with little space between costs -they have
less costs than we have-, and their skeleton is tougher than ours: their
bones break less easily. The arrangement of the head bones is also a little
bit different, giving them a strange face -in our opinion-: they have a
mouth and two eyes in the same relative positions than we have, but no nose
(just a hole that allow them to breathe when they can't use their mouth),
and their eyes are less in the front of their face (giving them a larger
vision field without impeeding them to see in 3D). Those eyes are not like
ours but much more like octopusses eyes. They can see nearly the same
spectrum as ours (just a little it derived in the direction of blue, so they
can see a little bit of what we call near UV). Their ears are only holes,
and function differently than ours. Their mouth is very much like ours in
shape and function, but their lips are thinner than ours and their teeth are
a little smaller. Their skin is generally clear, but with colors between sky
blue and very clear purple. It reacts to the sun becoming darker and more
purple. They have hair, generally with colours between yellow and blue
(never red), more or less dark, never very long (even for women).
        The shape of their internal organs is however very different from
ours. But as they are mammalians like us, and the difference between males
and females are like us, I won't talk about it anymore. I you're interested
in it, just tell me. Just a last thing: they have a little tail (at most 10
centimeters long) at the place where we have just the coccyx.

        They use the term roj to describe their own species. I translate it
as 'human' because it is simpler when I come to translate the genders and
because they are close enough to us.

        Well, so much for their morphology. I'll work on their solar system
and culture later.

>Mathias
>
>
>-----
>See the original message at=
 http://www.egroups.com/list/conlang/?start=3D18414
>
>
                                                Christophe Grandsire
                                                |Sela Jemufan Atlinan C.G.

"R=E9sister ou servir"

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