Re: New language grammar--what needs work?

>Curious!  All front vowels and no back vowels?
Yeah...I guess.

>Why not represent /&/ with |a| and /E/ with |e|?
Done.

> Dipthongs: ei, oi, uo
That is, I suppose, /E2/, /2j/, /y2/?
Um...sure...those are based on the vowels I listed.

> Consonants: c (s), v (f), h (_kh_ochu), l, m, n, s (sh), t (th)
All fricatives and nasal, and no stops?  I like the orthography,
anyway.
h BTW is like "X" in Russian.  I thought of this like something that
could be spoken quickly, and these can all just be "rolled over".  I
wanted to have an "r" sound, but there's too much difference in
pronounciation.  On the stops, I left them out because they just
seemed "slower".

I think this is called "pro-drop".
Yeah, but there are no grammatical "pronouns", only
inflections/agglutinations on the verb.

>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".

>This doesn't really tell us whether the language is nominative
>or ergative or active or what.  If an entity is described as being
>n a certain state or "doing" something involuntary like sleeping,
>would the noun referring to the entity be in the subject or object case?
>What if some entity is described as doing something
>voluntary described by an intransitive verb?
"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)".

>The method by which the action of the verb is done?
Yes...so "I went to work by car" would be something like "work-OBJECT
go-INDICATIVE-PAST-1P-(given-object) car-METHOD".

>I think this is usually called "instrumental case".
I didn't care about "real" case names.

>OBSTRUCTIVE: Interesting.  Could you use this case both
>in sentences like "I tried to read but the light(OBSTR)
>was too dim" and "I managed to read it although
>the light-OBSTR was fairly dim"?
Yes.  That would be something like
"read-INDICATIVE-NEGATIVE-PAST-1P-(null object)
light-dim-HASPROPERTY-OBSTR" and "read-INDICATIVE-PAST-1P-(null
object) light-dim-HASPROPERTY-OBSTR".  If the action did happen, it's
positive.  If not, it's negative.

>How is this different from Method case?
It's not.  This has been taken out.

>Hmmm... here the noun in the obstructive case is not hindering the actual
>action of the sentence, but hindering some other implied action
>which you would have preferred to be performing (driving) instead of running
>through the woods etc.
Good point.  This is more of an "indirect obstructive", which might be
a separate case.

>Usually tense refers to the time when the action
>of the verb takes place, sometimes also to the way
>the action is distributed through time (though the latter is
>more properly called aspect, but many languages mark
>both of them with the same morphemes).
Mistake--I meant pronoun.

>OK... separate morphemes for each of those, and they
>can be combined as needed?  Some of those are actually
>mood markers rather than tense markers.  Is there a
>required order to combine them in?
>E.g. is
>
>run-PRS-NEG-CMD
>
>equally valid as
>
>run-NEG-CMD-PRS
Yes.  First, I've more accurately classified these, so now there are
more categories.  These are _affirmativeness (positive or negative,
although there is no modifier for positive)_, _mood_, and _time_.  The
order that I usually use is the one in the last sentence.  This is (by
my decree at the moment :) mandatory.

>I think these are called "personal endings" (maybe there's a better
>term) -- they're not tense markers, anyway.  Some example
>sentences would help clarify what you mean about
>their use.
They are not tenses, but personal endings.  First, there's a null
object now, which is used if there isn't a real object.
Example sentences of pronoun use: "The dog goes to the store" =
"dog-SUBJ store-OBJ go-INDICATIVE-PRESENT-(given-subject)-(given
object)".  "I go to the store" is "store-OBJ
go-IND-PR-1P-(given-object)."  "We go to the store" = "many-SUBJ
store-OBJ go-IND-PR-1P-(given-object)."

>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
the same, but the opening particle is different, like because vs. but
vs. resulting in.

Thanks for all the constructive criticism.

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"

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