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Re: Conlang Irregularities

From:Joe Mondello <rugpretzel@...>
Date:Sunday, March 7, 1999, 21:17
> Sally Caves wrote: > > > of grammar. How many of you established > > conlangers, after having done that, deliberately > > introduce irregularities and contradictions into > > your conlang with an eye to giving it dimension > > > In other words, how many exceptions to the rules > > you' ve made will you tolerate? One of the > > criticisms leveled at invented languages is that > > they are too regular. Does that bother you? > >
in elv ned'm the pronouns are fused forms from old affixes. some of these affixes are no longer the standard. for example, the genitive case in pronouns is based on the suffix -esh, but most nouns use -od to represent the genitive. The use of -esh in nouns would indicate that a noun was replacing some other noun. e.g. yeniks nolod - the door's handle (lit. handle door-of) mimsh yeniks -the part's handle (lit. part-'s handle) This would indicate that mim is referring to something already mentioned, presumably in this example the door which is 'part' of a house or a building. ned'm also has a few euphemistic constructions, such as ecpressing the passive as a reflexive a la spanish, but with the agentive in the prepositional construction "with ___", e.g. n'tee aydaka foyt yay tajeng Jonee stick self-past break with hand-of-him Johnny The stick was broken by johnny's own hand