Re: New Language: Zhyler (Noun Classes)

In a message dated 04/10/02 4:11:10 AM, christophe.grandsire@FREE.FR writes:

<< In X-SAMPA it's [2], representing IPA o-slash. IPA oe-ligature is X-SAMPA
[9]

and is open-mid front rounded vowel. >>

    Thanks!

<<The pronominal forms would be basically 3rd person pronouns? Do your 1st and

second person pronouns and/or affixes mark class too? (they could, since for

instance there are at least two classes humans could fit in)>>

    Yep.  The first and second person have their own pronouns, and while I
won't rule out the possibility of adding a suffix, it won't be obligatory.
For instance, you might add that one with the title (class v?  I'm still not
familiar...) for respect, etc.

John wrote:

<<I don't actually speak any noun-gender languages, but I think your
categories are too sharp, too perfect.>>

But then Christophe wrote:

<<Well, on the whole the system doesn't seem that unnatural for me. Eastern

counter systems classify things according to even more restrictive conditions

sometimes.>>

    I'll let you two battle it out.  ;)  Anyway, onto your specific
comments...

<<- make some exceptions, that can be culturally explained. There are
languages

where all animals have male nouns, except birds which have female nouns
because

they are thought to be the souls of dead women. I think it would be neat.>>

    Oh, indeed, I shall.  I don't actually have any words yet...  Funny how
both of you talk of Dyirbil.  That book was written by George Lakoff,
professor here.  He's quite the jolly individual, though not to keen on
hearing the ideas of "others"--especially his now much-more-famous ex-wife,
who's also here.  But you didn't hear that from me...

<<- leave out the "and all else" from the last class. I think it would be more

realistic if things that don't really fit in any class would be distributed in

all classes anyway, for cultural reasons again.>>

    The only reason I inclued an "all else" class, was because I thought
languages with noun classes were supposed to have an "all else" class.
Dyirbil does: Class iv (I think its something like "poisonous plants and all
else...").  However, I like your idea of leaving it out and taking all the
non-fitting words and fitting them somewhere.

<<- a nice thing is to have productive class changes. For instance, the same
word

could take the suffix -mUs to refer to a living crab and -bAn to refer to the

crab in my plate which has been cooked and is gonna finish in my stomach :))
.>>

    Oh yeah, I was planning on doing this.  It's basically a kind of
derivational morphology, and it's not a language I created unless it has lots
of complex derivational morphology.  ;)

<<- Where do you put things like rivers and roads? Though a road can be

considered to be a thing a human cannot lift (though it doesn't fit very well

in this category in my opinion...), what is a river? An indestructible natural

object? Well, the riverbed may be one, but the river itself is nothing else

than moving water (while a lake or an ocean have a more tangible quality).

Maybe a class for flowing things and paths would be an idea. And you could add

funny things in it like language names (since a language is metaphorically

something flowing from a person to another :)) ).>>

    Rivers would have gone into the "non-living, indestructible" class, and
roads into the "can't lift" class.  I thought about what you were saying,
though--like the Japanese classifier "han" (I still don't understand how that
works in Japanese.  It doesn't have noun classes, does it?).  Maybe I'll
conflate some of the animal classes and turn the more specific ones into
different, image-schema classes...  We'll see.  Thanks for your input!

-David

"fawiT, Gug&g, tSagZil-a-Gariz, waj min DidZejsat wazid..."
"Soft, driven, slow and mad, like some new language..."
                    -Jim Morrison

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