Re: more blabbing about Tech, the eternally unfinished conlang

En réponse à Danny Wier <dawier@...>:

>
> Yeah, it's a major influence. In a way, Tamazight is "compressed
> Arabic",
> and that along with Hebrew and Georgian (and Quebecois French) gave me
> the
> idea of "compression", where the consonant-to-vowel ratio of a language
> is
> increased while number of syllables and utterance time is decreased.
>
Hehe, I use that in Maggel too (some of its inflections consist in getting rid
of a vowel or two ;))) ).

>
> I need to refresh myself on erotic French, true...
LOL. I cannot be of much help here, my erotic French is rather gay ;)))) .

 since Tech is in a
> way a
> "satirical conlang", it'll be well-suited for politics, religion and
> sex.
> Another feature is the fact that a word can have an alternative
> meaning
> completely opposite of its literal meaning. I've heard of some
> conservatives
> refer to themselves as "classical liberals"; there's an example. Or in
> the
> religious/spiritual sense, "life" can mean "death" and vice versa
> (evangelical Christians refer to the "born again" conversion experience
> as
> "dying in Christ").
>
I just need to use that in Maggel! From now on, the word |bltafj| ['bK\Ev] (now
*that's* a tongue-twister for me!!! ;) ) which until now meant "strange, weird"
will also mean "cool" ;))) (OK, not exactly an opposite, but you get my
drift ;))) ).

And now I'm expecting "bltafj" to be adopted by the list as a new synonym
of "cool" ;)))) (only if you can spell it correctly ;) ).

>
> The neuter gender, however, will be functional, since ergative indicates
> a
> subject/actor that's less "active" than a nominative. Only inanimate
> objects
> can be neuter (and the neuter is based on the masculine).
Do you mean that neuter nouns will be identical to masculine nouns, except that
they will have an ergative-absolutive rather than nominative-accusative
distinction?

 It could be
> a
> subject of an active voice verb that's really playing a passive role.
>
> Also, causative verbs would need an ergative. How would a car hit a
> pedestrian? Something would have to cause the car to do such. Driver =
> nominative, car = ergative, pedestrian = accusative looking for a
> lawyer.
>
LOL :) .

> So I need three cases.
>
Common among split-ergative languages. I know they usually use the genitive as
an ergative (IIRC). Is that an idea?

>
> I missed the post that defined "maggelity", so I'm not sure...
Now *that's* a mortal sin!!! ;)))) OK, once and again:

Maggelity /m@gE:lIti/ (noun) The state of being entirely unpredictable.
[from _Maggel_ a constructed language by Christophe Grandsire, which had
an unpredictable orthography +_ity_]

Etabnannery /r@mn{n@ri/ (noun) The state of appearing entirely
unpredictable, but, upon closer analysis, failing at even being that.
[from _Etábnanni_ a constructed language by Tristan McLeay, which was
*supposed* to have an unpredictable orthography, but ended up just
having a confusing one. Damn people trying to make patterns everywhere.
At least it's a bugger to typeset!... err... back to the derivation
+_ery_]

Both definitions by Tristan McLeay (hence the bitterness when referring to his
own conlang ;)) ).

 a
> dialect
> might have a mutation similar to modern Irish Gaelic, where /d/ lenites
> to
> /G/ rather than /D/ as in Old Irish. MST /s/ can mutate to either /z/
> or
> /h/, which isn't terribly original. ~Danny~
>
Oh well, having mutations at all is already a nice step ;)) . Who knows, if you
implement the mutations in Old Tech, maybe the sound changes until Modern Tech
will provide for insteresting Maggelish mutations ;)) .

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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