At 20:22 24/01/00 -0600, you wrote:
>
>Let me give you some examples of paradigms, and see what you think:
>
>l'ehef - to love
>ehefen - loved
>ehefendo - loving
>
> perfect
>1 ehefti ehefnu
>2 ehefta eheftem
>3 ehef ehefu
>
> imperfect
>1 ehef nehef
>2 tehef tehef
>3 jehef jehefu
>
Interesting: perfect shown by suffixes and imperfect by prefixes. I like it.
>
>Nouns:
>
>sad - demon sades - demons
>amijo - friend amiji - friends
>seme - seed semi - seeds
>miseri - mystery miseres - mysteries
>nimpa - nymph nimpaj - nymphs
>
Are there some mappings, or do we have to learn each plural with its
corresponding singular? (it's not implausible for a secret language to have
such strange feature - even non-secret languages like Arabic have it :) - )
>Pronouns
>
>There are three levels of formality in pronoun usage.
>
Definitely plausible, seen the origin of the language.
>
>Are these sound changes plausable:
>
>invocalic g -> j
I think so. I would see: g -> G (intervocalic g becomes fricative) -> J
(advanced) -> j (fricative becomes approximant)
>ng -> nc
>gn -> cn
Such devoicing is rather strange. I don't know if it's plausible to have
devoicing of a stop which is next to a nasal (normally voiced). Maybe a
kind of dissimilation.
>-us -> -o
Quite possible, it's happened in Latin :) .
>-s -> 0
>-n -> 0
>-m -> 0
>
Very possible. Latin is an example.
>Is it likely with a multi-source language that sound changes might only be
>applied to one of the source languages -- for instance, a different set of
>changes might apply to Hebrew roots than Latin ones?
>
If those are conscious changes made by the magi when developping the
language, yes. But for unconscious sound changes, it seems more unlikely.
Anyway, I'm no expert about that.
>
>I know most of these changes and mixings aren't plausible, but do you
>think they'll work -- or even better, any cool ideas to incorporate? I
>actually do intend to use this language at some point for magic, maybe
>even keep a grimoire in it.
>
I think on the contrary that most of these changes are plausible. And the
origin of the language can explain why it has a different evolution
compared to natural languages, at least in the first generations of magi.
Christophe Grandsire
|Sela Jemufan Atlinan C.G.
"Reality is just another point of view."
homepage : http://rainbow.conlang.org