Re: New Conlang: Terkunan

Hi!

Dirk Elzinga writes:
>...
> "... the derivational system of Terkunan is still productive. It works
> agglutinatively, and stems never change when affixes are added."
>
> So what happened to all of the nifty stem changes from Latin?
> (scribere ~ scriptura, etc) I think it's a shame that it's gone, and
> also to my mind, slightly unrealistic.
Indeed, all gone.  Same for the verbal system: all morphology gone.

Unrealistic?  Well, it's a conlang -- it's not reality.  But ok, I
know what you mean. :-) Maybe we'd need a different word: plausible,
maybe?  Anyway, I don't know.  Afrikaans and English dropped most
Germanic morphology.  Maybe Terkunan is even more radical, especially
for derivation, but that's indeed what I wanted.

> Of course, if you're indulging your preferences, then there's no
> reason to include anything you don't want to ...
Ok, my reasons are as follows.  I like Afrikaans grammar a lot and I
like Tok Pisin grammar a lot.  A design goal was to exclude most
morphology and still let it look Romance by retrofitting from
structures found in Romance natlangs.  The derivational system is not
at all complete or finished and I will rethink quite a few things
since I'm not fully satisfied yet.  But the verb forms I think already
do look natural for a Romance language, although all morphology is
lost.

**Henrik

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