Re: Conlanging and Natlangs

> From:    Jim Grossmann <steven@...>
> Subject: Conlanging and Natlangs
>
> We may both live =
> to see the day when "whom" becomes unnecessary in formal discourse, =
> precisely because it's dropping out of the vernacular.
I was under the impression that whom'd moved to the formal register..?

> We may even see =
> further unplanned atrophy in the English subjunctive reflected in =
> educated prose.]  =20
No! If that happens I'll explode!
     "The committee requests that Smith **appears before them tomorrow."

Long live the subjunctive mood, even if only in mandative constructions!

>   [Finally, some grammatical norms are just B.S.    Nobody accepts the =
> double negative in formal discourse, but no one interprets it as =
> affirmative either;   the "two negatives make a positive" dictum is=20
>   simply untrue both in non-standard English and in standard Russian.   =
Sara Lee cries![1]

> Happily, not all scholars reject the use of =
> "hopefully" as a sentence adverb.  Sadly, some grammar pundits still =
> don't know what a sentence adverb is, but hopefully they will learn.    =
Yanno I was thinking about "hopefully" today and it took me a good few
minutes to see why someone would think it was bad usage in the first place.
Even now I'm not sure I've succeeded because I can't put it into words.
Hopefully I'll get the point hammered out sometime.

Anyway, ObConlang:  I've discovered the joys of databases (Access) to keep
track of conlang stuff... I've been able to start seriously on my Hadwan
project.  I've been mutating words and stuff to a middle stage of the
language after which the worser simplifications come in.  I haven't gotten
the verbs taken care of but adjectives and nouns are all okay.

For some of the current shape of it, numbers, 1-10:
Goinos, jvai, churgas, kchevôres, fenokês, hovihses, hfichmes, ihichgas,
inunes, jehmes.

I've been reading Berlin and Kay's Basic Color Terms book and have the main
color words worked out:
horisnom ("black", including dark grays and purples)
arogem ("white", with most other light colors)
erozhom ("red", with oranges..)
sholim ("yellow", with light greens)
zhomem ("blue", with middle grays)

"zhomem" of course shouldn't be there without a word for "green", but the
word is from daimyo "d`ömem" where the daimyo use that color quite much and
the word has integrated.   (The rest of the words are Indo-European...
sorta.)

Maybe I'll get the color diagram scanned to map the colors on...

     *Muke!
[1] I was gonna put a note here.  Now, I don't _not_ remember what I was
gonna put in it, but I'm gonna leave it blank anyway.