On Mon, 22 Oct 2001 03:50:56 EDT, David Peterson <DigitalScream@...>
wrote:
[...]
> Let me reproduce a list my pidgins and creoles teacher gave us about
what
>a language needs in order to be a language:
[...]
> That's what my professor, John McWhorter, says every language must have
>in order to be a language and not a Pidgin, or, in conlang terms, a sketch.
>I'm interested to see what comments there'll be (if any).
Interesting. Here's the list of what I've tried to do without at least in
one of my conlangs:
>1.) Definite/indefinite opposition (possibly via zero marking of one)
>2.) Nouns
(mainly, in the sense: no grammaticalized word classes at all; also with
a fixed list of 'nominoids' further specified by non-noun modifiers)
>3.) Adjectives (although in many languages the class is very small, with
most
>property items as verbs)
>4.) Verbs (claims that certain Native American or Southeast Asian languages
>have no disctinction between nouns and verbs is at present controversial.)
>5.) A dative/benefactive marking strategy
>6.) An oblique case marking strategy
- these two (not simultaneously) - using noun classes with some fixed
syntactic properties, plus class derivation; I think it was a bit
different from 'case' in whatever sense.
>7.) A plural marking strategy (although only used emphatically in many
>grammars)
>8.) Pronouns for three persons (there are languages which do not
distinguish
>number in pronouns)
- Yes, I did try to completely avoid 3rd person pronouns (formally, not
semantically).
>11.) One general locative preposition
- I read this as 'at least one'; yes, I tried not to use any, basicaly
same strategy as for 5.) - 6.) above.
>15.) Adverbs
>19.) A conjunction "and" (or a word with a broader usage subsuming the
domain
>of "and")
- Why a separate word? Why any marking at all?
I think, I must also experiment with (i. e., without) the following:
>12.) One modality marker of obligation and one of probability
>13.) Causative marking
>18.) Question words (e.g., WH-words)
Basilius