Re: New language grammar--what needs work?

On 12/1/05, veritosproject@gmail.com <veritosproject@...> wrote:

> > I think this is called "pro-drop".
> Yeah, but there are no grammatical "pronouns", only
> inflections/agglutinations on the verb.
OK, I see how you avoid needing a subject or object
pronoun because you have the personal endings on the verb;
but what if you want to mark first or second person
or some previously mentioned third-person referent
as being in one of the other cases --- for instance,
"In spite of you I managed to escape your dungeon"?
Wouldn't you need a second-person pronoun
to mark with the obstructive case ending?

> >So are there just the two number marks -- paucal and plural
> >-- or is there a large (or even open-ended) set of quantifier
> >morphemes that can fit in between the noun radical
> >and the case ending?  Could you put in quantifiers
> >like "none", "all", "most of them", "enough", "enough", etc.,
> >and/or specific numbers like "two", "seventeen", or "pi"?
> Yes...there is no formal plural marking (cars v. car), but you would
> instead say "car-(a-few)" or "car".
Or really car-FEW-METHOD or whatever, always with
a case ending after the plurality marker?
Or

car-hundred-almost-OBJ sell-INDIC-PAST-1P-(given object)
I sold almost a hundred cars.

> "Voluntarity" does not matter.  There is a "null object" ending if
> there isn't an object, so basically "my dog sleeps" would be something
> like "dog-my-POSS.SUBJ sleep-INDICATIVE-PRESENT-(given-subject)-(no
> object)".
Hm, sounds like it could get verbose.  Can you show some
examples of actual text in the language?  Are some of these morphemes
just a consonant or a vowel or are some of them mutations
or whole syllables?


> >What kind of particle?  Are there different particles for
> >marking subclauses with different relationships to
> >the main clause, or with different evidentiality/validationality/
> >etc?
> Subclauses are functionally nouns.  So it would be somewhat like
> (going-to-the-store)-ness bothers me.  The ending particle is always
Neat.

> also a note on the cases--rather than acting like prepositions (like
> Finnish etc.) they instead fill relations, cause, effect, etc.  There
> will be no prepositions--instead of "to go" it's "to go to a place"
OK.  How would you express spatial relationships like
"under", "inside", etc?  Will they be marked by
affixing the location or motion verb rather than adpositions
on the noun phrase?

What about ditransitive verbs like "send" and "give"?
Would "I sent a letter to my brother" be something
like

brother-1P-OBJECT letter-ASSISTIVE send_to-INDIC-PAST-1P-(given object)

or

brother-1P-RESULT letter-OBJECT send-INDIC-PAST-1P-(given object)

--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/esp.htm
...Mind the gmail Reply-to: field

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