Re: A new, slightly bizaare, conlang

Hallo!

Elliott Lash wrote:

> --- Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...> wrote:
>
> >
> > Not very bizarre except for the creaky vowels.
>
> Well, yes, vowels aren't too difficult here. When I
> said extraordinary, I suppose I meant that it was
> unusual for me....Silindion after all is rather
> straight forward.
Yes.  A conlang need not be bizarre to be beautiful, of course.
For example, I am not trying to come up with something bizarre
with Albic, only with something original and beautiful.
There is nothing bizarre with Quenya or Sindarin (unless one
counts the latter's Welsh-style initial mutations as "bizarre"),
and yet they are among the most beautiful conlangs I know of;
Klingon is much more bizarre - and I find it rather ugly.

> [...]
>
> > >  Consonants:
> > >   /p_>/  (bilabial unvoiced ejective)    _p_
> > >   /b_</ (bilabial voiced implosive)      _b_
> > >
> > >   /d'/  (retroflex voiced plosive)       _d_
> > >   /t'/  (retroflex unvoiced plosive)     _t_
> > >
> > >   /q_>/ (uvular unvoiced ejective)       _q_
> > >   /g\_</ (uvular voiced implosive)       _g_
> >
> > Yeah!  That's wild.  But why aren't the retroflexes
> > glottalized?
>
> I suppose for extra randomness. My co-worker thought
> up the phonology, he's a phonetics guru...so, I just
> went along with it. We debated about having the
> retroflexes act the same as the others, but decided
> not too. However, in words where there are both other
> types of stops and retroflexes, the retroflexes
> probably become somewhat assimilated to the others.
A perfectly valid reason.

> [...]
>
> > > The role particles so far are:
> > >
> > >  o'   commitative   with
> > >  nga  benefactive   for, to (or untranslatable)
> > >  mi   experiencer
> > >  pe   source        from
> >
> > So these are, essentially, prepositions, it seems.
>
> Yes, prepositions, but also theta role markers. The
> "benefactive", "experiencer" and "source" especially.
> They can all be untranslated. And a sentence may have
> a subject or object preceded by any of the
> markers....as long as the semantics works out. It's
> sort of what I understand a fluid-s language to work
> out as.
It indeed reminds me remotely of the degree of volition system
I have in Old Albic, but only remotely.  What regards fluid-S
languages, what the term means is the following: an intransitive
subject is marked like a transitive subject if the verb denotes
an action performed by the subject (as in `The man runs'), but
like a transitive object if it is not (as in `The stone falls').
Some verbs allow either marking depending on whether the subject
acts out of itself (yes in `My brother arrived yesterday',
no in `Your letter arrived yesterday').

See also my post "Degrees of volition in Old Albic" from July 27, 2004:

http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0407D&L=CONLANG&P=R15311&I=-3

> ~~Thanks for your message, Jörg...but I wanted to know
> what you meant when you said it was unlikely as a
> natlang? Were you referring to the phonetics, or to
> the sentence examples?
Mainly the phonetics.  If your language was subjected to normal
linguistic evolution, I'd expect the glottalizations of the stops,
which carry no phonemic load, to wither away, for instance.

Greetings,

Jörg.

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