Re: Verb order in Montreiano

On Mon, 2 Apr 2001, Roger Mills wrote:

> Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
> >But seeing this made me want to ask: In what order do people like to
> >settle on grammatical features (whether or not said features are later
> >revised)?  I confess I've gone roughly from _Describing Morphosyntax_ and
>
> Kash phonology and word structure have barely changed since Day One.
You are a fortunate person.  :-)  I don't seem to be able to come up with
something I'm happy with in one go.  OTOH I haven't been doing this for
long, so perhaps someday I can aspire to more efficiency.

> Stress is 99% penultimate; most -CV suffixes shift stress but a few don't,
> so there are occasional antepen. stresses; and quite a few final stresses in
> the compound numbers.  Though the word base is mostly 2 syllables, affixed,
> derived and compounded forms make for lots of 3, 4 even 5 syll. words, with
> various secondary stresses.  It would be a syllable-times lang., but AFAICT
> isn't monotonous.  Poetry tends to be dactylic with occasional trochees,
> which does get a little DA-da-da-DA-da-da...DA-da at times.
I bet Kash poetry would sound great with drum and flutelike-instrument
accompaniment, though, if at all applicable to Kash-speakers.  :-)

YHL

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