Re: Kew, a new modified English

On Tue, 17 Jul 2001 22:38:27 -0700, Jim Grossmann <steven@...> wrote:

>1.    One of the obvious issues that your future English brings up is future
>history.   Under what future circumstances will German, Italian, and Tok
>Pisin influence English enough to affect its syntactic fundamentals?   How
>will these three languages affect Kew's vocabulary?   What kinds of words
>will we want to borrow from German, and why?   Same question for the other
>two languages.
Given the regularity in word structure, the only reasonable answer to these
questions would seem to point to conscious design by someone who has some
basic familiarity with numerous languages. Perhaps it was designed as a
potential IAL, or the language of a micronation. Okay, I guess it's not
very plausible to think of it as a future variety of English (and the
reason these particular words were borrowed is that they fit the word
structure, which is blatantly artificial....)

>2.    Synchronically, Kew looks pretty interesting.    How do you mark
>number on the nouns?   Do you mark number on the nouns;   you probably
>already know you don't have to.   What tenses, aspects, and moods do you
>mark?
There isn't any morphological marking of number on nouns -- if necessary
you can use quantifying adjectives like "wona" or "soma". But plural
pronouns exist. I don't yet have a complete list of tenses, aspects, and
moods, and I'm not always sure where the difference between "adverbs" and
tense/aspect/mood markers lies.

--
languages of Azir------> ---<http://www.io.com/~hmiller/lang/index.html>---
hmiller (Herman Miller)   "If all Printers were determin'd not to print any
@io.com  email password: thing till they were sure it would offend no body,
\ "Subject: teamouse" /  there would be very little printed." -Ben Franklin