Re: Unilang report

>associative i (and)            A = B and A = C
>deassociative on ("period")       A = B.    A = C
>hypothetical sje (if)             A = B if A = C
>resultative de (thus, then)     A = B => A = C
>intentive ge (in order to)    A is B so that A can be C
>contrative ba (but)            A = B but A = C
>rational konté (because)        A = B <= A = C
>alternative alté (otherwise)        A = B, if not, then A = C
>exclusive nemá (unless)           A = B unless A = C
>relative u...u (who, which, etc)  A u = C u = B
>                              (A, which is equal to C, is equal to B)
>comparative sjon (just as, like)  A = B just as A = C
Oops, the formatting got screwed up; there should have been a space between
the first column (the terms) and the second (the morpheme).

---

Anyway, I wanted to speak more about functional morphemes in Unilang.
Conjunctions aside, there are determiners (numerals and demonstratives),
classifiers,  pronouns, and finally a topic marker.

The numerals function pretty much as in Chinese, Japanese, or, if I
remember an old post of Raymond Brown's correctly, as in Welsh, and
probably lots of other langs:

11 = '10' '1'
20 = '2' '10'
99 = '9' '10' '9'

I have separate morphemes for '100' and '1000'; for larger numbers, I have
some schemes in mind for an effective system, but it's not quite
presentable yet.

In addition to the basic numbers, I group with numerals some other
determiners:

>1     essentially a plural
X      unknown or any number appropriate to the position of the 'x'
any    denoting 1, but no specific 1, out of the total
many   a significant part of the total (yes, vague, as we humans like it)
few    an insignificant part of the total (again, vague)
all
none

I've also toyed with other numerals, such as '>2', '>4', '<4'... But except
for '>2', which is essentially a plural within a singular-dual-plural
system, I'm not so sure about the usefulness, or naturality, of those.

The 'X' concept I get from Cantonese, though I'm sure it's common in
various natlangs; it's very useful. Its range of possible values can be
restricted by position, thus '10' 'X' means anything between 11 and 19,
and 'X' '10', means any of 10,20,30,40,50,60,70,80,90.


Demonstratives:

this-close        ti
that-far-away     tu

(I need ideas for other integral demonstratives - I know of some from
natlangs, but haven't yet determined their usefulness.)

Pronouns:

1st person    me
2nd           ni
3rd           ta

(Blatant borrowing here, first from IE, second from Chinese; and in fact
also in the demonstratives, being quite IE-ish (though their form could be
excused by similarity to the 3rd person); but I've never pretended that
this should be a *strictly* a-priori or a-posteriori language - just a mix
of the two in whichever way I find most convenient.)

There are no further forms needed for the pronouns; for further information
regarding number, numerals are added (typically the '>1' numeral, for
plural). Also, the pronouns can be combined with each other directly to
make clear the content of the whole; e.g. "me-ni" (me and you), "ni-ta"
(you and he/she/it). To that whole may also be added numerals, just as well.


Then there are classifiers. Just like numerals, they can be left out at the
speaker's discretion:

person              ga       (may extend to personified non-humans)
animal              le       (all non-human living creatures)
object              dje      (any "complex" item, e.g. sword, window)
panoramic items     nun      (buildings, mountains, rivers, etc)
liquid material     lau      (water, blood, lava, etc)
solid material      tas      (iron, ice, paper, etc)
collected material  hon      (sand, rice, salt, gunpowder, etc)
abstract            wo       (non-corporeal, e.g. love, spirit)

Specific numerals (e.g. 1,2,10,56, etc) are normally only used with the
first four classifiers above.

Also, lexical items may logically be used as classifiers - for example:

mista   male
maja    female
monta   mountain
hasa    air


Finally, there's

wa     marks topic (the form blatantly borrowed from Japanese)

I haven't yet determined if I want to allow for marking of other sentence
items in a similar manner, such as focus and comment.


The above are all the forms and items I have determined (though I didn't
present the basic numerals, as I'm not yet satisfied with the forms) for
the functional morphemes. In addition to the grammatical and affixing
morphemes, those constitute the main extent of the grammar (though I
haven't yet presented the relative order of those items); various other
grammatic data, such as tense, aspect, mood, voice, etc, is expressed
freely by a standardized set of lexical items conscripted for the purpose.
Those I will detail later; next I would go into the affixes, and some
syntactic rules.

Regards,
Óskar

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