Daimyo morph. & Re: CONLANG Digest

> From:    Roger Mills <romilly@...>
> Subject: Re: Conlang Digest
>
> Muke-- I lurk on Cybalist (also e-groups), and note occasional strings of
> gibberish especially in Piotr's and Sergei's posts, when they cite
> Slavic/Lithuanian forms-- is that Unicode?  And (anyone) what is UTF-8 and
> how do I get it? (Do I want it?)
Hmm, it probably depends on your mail client.  UTF-8 is a Unicode encoding
system for systems that can't deal with full 16-bit Unicode directly (such
as e-mail): it uses the regular characters for basic ASCII (I _think_ the
first eight bits of Unicode) and anything higher is encoded specially, with
two (or more) characters per character.

If your email client technically can handle it, and doesn't, then you might
need to download a font; if your email client technically _can't_ handle it,
it's possible your browser might (view the file in your web browser)....  If
you're viewing in digest mode it's probably not likely to convert at all, as
the UTF-8 posts are usually HTMLized and digest mode strips HTML out (if
it's smart--if it's stupid, it'll be there but your mailer won't render it.)
This is why I have to have cybalist in non-digest mode :\

> From:    James Campbell <james@...>
> Subject: Re: WGL-4
>
> Muke:
>
> [Me:]
> > > This isn't Arial Unicode (the monster) but the "WGL4" character set
> > > (whatever that is) fonts. Probably sufficient for most needs.
> >
> > I think WGL-4 is the Windows character set.  It has codes 128 through
159
> > decimal mapped to unorthodox unicode positions.  [Respectively:  Euro,
>
> WGL-4 is, in fact, a much larger charset than the old Windows 8-bit set:
it
> contains Eastern European and Esperanto accented letters [and many many
> others], Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Cyrillic, symbols and ligatures.
Doh!  Well, I never said I was certain ;p

Okay, since I have the most abhominable hours at work--at least as far as
getting things done at home goes--I haven't been able to work on the
language I said I'd be working on.  Ah well.

But I did start another one (not _yet_ another one, because I had this one
marked out already!).
I wanted it to have a difficult, possibly unnatural morphology, as its
native con-speakers (the daimyo) have difficult, possibly unnatural language
habits. Um.

Anyway: this language is based on a system of CVC blank N roots, where N
represents gender.
     (Gender:  -m conceptual: people, thoughts, divinities, actions
               -n sensible: places, things
               -ñ feminine
               -ng masculine
      Gender 'change' is mostly productive except in some very common
words[1])

The "blank" is for the "interlocking morphemes".  Ooh.
An example root would be "daim-m" (= daimyo).

Suffixes have two basic forms:
V blank C blank N/S (nasal/s/z), like "æ-f-s" (accusative marker)
and just V, like "-e-" (singular marker).

Examples of how these would be used (monospaced fonts help...):
    daim---m  (daimyo root)
    +  -ø:r-  (plural)
    ========
    daimø:rm  (daimyo.NOM.PL)

    daim-m     (daimyo root)
    +   æ-f-s  (accusative)
    +     -e-  (singular)
    =========
    daimæmfes  (daimyo.ACC.SG)

The verbal system is similar, but uses prefixes more often;  prefixes are
CR(S), where 'R' is the basic vowel in the root, or CR(S)-R if they're the
only thing attached:

        me:d-m  (love root)
    + ke-  -e-  (infinitive)
    ==========
      keme:dem  (to love)

         me:d--m  (love root)
    +       -ye-  (present tense)
    + kes-        (optative)
    ============
      kesme:dyem  (love.PRES.OPT)

I still have not decided how the verb's person is indicated...  Is this
system complicated enough, or can it do with more?

     *Muke!
[1] such as daidj.-m "brother" and (marginally) d.oñ-m "daughter" (which
could also be interpreted as dissimilation from d.oñ-ñ, I suppose)

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