Re: TROLLS!!

Danny Wier wrote:
>
>My five-minute conlang.
>
>This is the language of the Trolls (species _homo erectus_ still
>surviving),
To me, the word "troll" suggest something rather broader, bulkier and
generally ungainlier than an erectid. While that, primarily, is my problem,
don't you think the name is more confusing than enlightening? Or is this
deliberate?

>which they call LANKA (the best way a Troll can say "language").
>
>First, the history. The Trolls didn't really have a language until an
>eccentric
>Jesuit, a Cajun from Beaumont, Texas, got on the wrong ship and ended up in
>Antarctica. Miraculously, he lived long enough to start a small church and
>teach
>the Trolls a language which turned out to be a mix of English, French,
>German
>and Spanish. So there's your vocabulary right there -- only greatly
>simplified.
>
>Now the alphabet and phonology. It's taken from the basic phonemes of
>Japanese,
>but you probably notice that already.
>
>A I U E O / K S T N P M Y L W
I guess these have pretty "standard" values? Something like

[a i u E O k s/ts/S/tS t n p m j l/r w]?
>
>Each of these can be short or long (i.e. doubled), but the only legal
>consonant
>clusters are either a nasal + consonant (and the nasal is homogenous with
>the
>following consonant) or a consonant + the same consonant. Long vowels can
>only
>occur in closed syllables; vowels in open syllables are automatically long
>though written single. The voiceless consonants have voiced allophones when
>between vowels or before nasals; when initial or doubled, they are
>voiceless.
You mean AFTER a nasal? What you write above seems to rule out clusters like
/kn/ ...

>Also, S is pronounced variously (from individual Troll to another) [s],
>[S],
>[ts] or [tS]. They really can't tell the difference so all values are
>legitimate. When voiced, they can be [z], [Z], [dz] or [dZ].
Eight free allophones? Yay! Remind me to create a conculture where
pronouncing a dental /t/ as alveolar will get you shot ...

>An increasing
>practice of writing a C instead of an S seems to be more popular (I speak
>in a
>timeframe of 40+ years in the future). Some also pronounce /l/ like an /r/,
>at
>least intervocally, and a /k/ > /h/ or /p/ > /f/ shift may be found here
>and
>there.
No corresponding fricativization of /t/, into say [s]? A nifty idea would
have to have a such change restrict the acceptable pronunciations of /s/ to
the affricates, unless you imagine the Trolls to be physilogically unable to
distinguish [s] from [ts].

>Notice that Trolls only write in capital letters.
They write? I'm impressed by the old erectids ... Do they have much use for
writing in their society, and BTW, how do they manage the survive in the
polar conditions down there? (Real-world erectids apparently never got
nearer to either pole than northern China.)

>Now the grammar. If there is much of one to begin with. Strict SVO word
>order,
>no noun cases, all verb forms are same for all persons and numbers, no
>genders,
>no "-(e)s" marked plurals, no real verb tense (auxilliary verbs are used to
>indicate aspect or adverbs for time like "tomorrow"), pure decimal number
>system
>(no "quatre-vingt" situations), no irregularities, the verb "to be" only
>used as
>copula -- in fact, no bound morphemes at all!
Cute. Rather pidginesque, I guess?

>Even ordinal numbers are formed
>from using additive words: the preposition TE "of" is used (e.g. TE TU
>"second",
>TE TILI "third").
>
>Now the most novice of all vocabularies: numbers....
>
>ON, TU, TILI, KATA, PIPU, SISU, SETE, ETO, NOPE, TISU
>
>Teens are TISU ON, TISU TU, TISU TILI etc. Multiples of ten are ON TISU, TU
>TISU, TILI TISU, etc. Hundred is SENTO, thousand is MILI -- but there
>doesn't
>seem to be a set way to express any numbers above 9,999. Fractions of the
>format
>X/Y are expressed as "X of Y", thus (ON) TE TU "(one) half", TU TE TILI
>"two-thirds", (ON) TE KATA "(one) quarter"....
>
Mathematically inclined guyz - I get more and more interested in what kind
of society made up by erectids needs a number system much more complicate
than that used in many Homo sapiens societies!

>Vocabulary and usage varies greatly among the estimated 6,000-10,000 Trolls
>living in Antarctica, to which they were banished as they didn't really fit
>into
>human society. Though forced into desperate measures, Trolls aren't violent
>by
>nature, just simple. But they're far more known for brute strength than
>intellect, for which humanity is party to blame.
I do find the scenario intriguing, altho' extremely implausible. More
explanations, please? Please?

                                            Andreas

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