Re: yet another romance conlang

On Fri, 7 Jan 2000, andrew wrote:

>Am 01/04 18:41  Steg Belsky yscrifef:
>> okay...
>> now that i finally took out a book from my college library about romance
>> languages, (_the romance languages_ by rebecca posner; the others were
>> too technical for me), i started working a little bit on my Judean
>Posner is ok, but I think Elcock's book by the same name, although
>earlier, is better on grammar, especially verbs, and possibly more
>reliable.  At one point Posner says there is a trend among romance
>languages for VSO order, which made me go 'eh?'
I'm not surprised.  I hear (and use) VSO in Spanish with some
(moderate) frequency.  Harris and Vincent in "The Romance Languages"
support this about Spanish.  Han llegado en Madrid todos los pasajeros
del vuelo de Nueva York. Viven alla muchas familias pobres de nuestra
ciudad. (Have arrived at Madrid all the passengers from the New York
flight. / Live there many poor families of our city.) Both are VOS.
I'm not sure where I picked it up from, but I don't remember learning
it in a book.

H&V note all sorts of "deviant" orders in different langs; for ex.,
apart from the usual SVO, Romanian can do OVS (Pe Maria a vazut-o Ana
/ To Mary saw Ana).

>
>> Ju:dajca is spoken in an alternate-history conearth where the Romans
>> didn't succeed in wiping Judea off the map.  a bit nicer than the romans
>> in RL, these con-romans' plan for stopping judean revolts was to attempt
>> to swamp the country with imperial colonists.  contrary to their plans,
>> instead of the jews assimilating into the colonists, the colonists
>> assimilated into the judeans.  however, the romans won out linguistically
>> as the acculturated colonists continued to speak their own dialect of
>> Romance, which eventually displaced Aramaic as the vernacular of Judea.
>> of course, many people resented this "linguistic imperialism" and refused
>> to speak the developing language, which was still derogatorilly called
>> something along the lines of "soldier-speak" until the standardizing
>> developments (including orthography) and political changes somewhere
>> around 1400-1700.
>>
>Boy, do I wanna wander over to Conculture and discuss this!  The
>implications on Ju:dajca's alternative history are enormous:  the temple
>cult, the effects on Judaism and Christianity, the Eastern Romans, the
>Muslims and later invaders...
Please do! Shift on over to Conculture, that is.

>
>Brithenig exists in its own timeline.  This doesn't rule out
>co-existence with Ju:dajca, but it doesn't guarentee it either.
>Brithenig obeys its own historical trends and Ju:dajca will obey her
>own.
>
>If Ju:dajca wasn't standardised until rather late then I suspect there
>was a heavy borrowing from native Semitic languages, possibly heavier
>than what occured in Spanish, Ladino or Yiddish.
>
Sounds reasonable.

>
>> there are two cases, oblique (derived from genitive) and construct
>> (derived from nominative).  this is due to the hebrew/aramaic
>> sub/ad/super-strate influence re-interpreting the construction
>> (noun) (of noun)  ~  nominative genitive
>> as
>> (noun of) (noun)  ~  construct oblique
>>
>survival of the latin genitive is unusual but not unknown, it happens in
>Romanian.  Old French had a nominative case from the nominative and an
>oblique case from the accusative.
>
Same in Kernu; with a few additional oddities.

Padraic.

>
>> "even (though)" = _fi:lu:_, from Hebrew _afilu_.
>The survival of this word seems to be compulsary :)
>
>- andrew.
>--
>Andrew Smith, Intheologus                       hobbit@earthlight.co.nz
>
>                      "Piskie, Piskie, say Amen
>                   Doon on your knees and up agen."
>
>                    "Presbie, Presbie, dinna bend;
>                   Sit ye doon on mon's chief end."
>                               - Attributions unknown.
>