Re: My conlang: opinions welcome
| From: | Jim Henry <jacklongshadow@...> |
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| Date: | Monday, April 11, 2005, 20:44 |
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Gregory Gadow li toki e ni:
> I've taken my conlang, Glörsa, out of the box where it's been living for a
> There is still some work to do, of course (is a conlang ever really
> finished?) Right now, I'd like some feed back on the structure and whether
>2.1.3 Associative / dölha averze
From your description, it sounds like what is usually called the concomitative.
>2.1.4 Locative / dölha dünis
>This case is often used idiomatically to show "where."
I'm not sure what you mean by this.
>The objects of most postpositional and all actional phrases take the locative.
Does the locative with no postposition have a generic meaning of "at" or "in"?
>2.1.5 Collective / dölha aderas
>The collective case is used when the noun represents, not a particular
>item, but an entire category of that noun.
>2.1.6 Intimate / dölha benye
>The intimate case shows that the noun has an intimate relationship with another noun.
Interesting. Normally cases show the role a noun has in a sentence, and are
mutually exclusive, but you note that a noun can be in both the associative
and intimate cases at once, and I expect the collective case would often combine
with some other case marker as well. What about the distribution of these
latter two suffixes led you to describe them as cases rather than as a
quantitative suffix and attitudinal suffix respectively?
Can the collective case be combined with any of the quantitative suffixes,
while the quantitative suffixes cannot combine with each other?
Are there other cases that can combine with each other?
Interesting, too, how your set of declensions is orthogonal
to the set of genders.
>Except for names, declension shift is considered improper.
Do you mean improper as in "indecent" or as in "substandard"?
>2.6 Constructed nouns / dröve düvelze
This would be clearer with an example or two.
>The concluding word may be a specific number,
>a demonstrative indicator, a posessive or genetive noun
>or a postposition.
Is this list supposed to be exclusive - one and only one of
these can come after the noun and its case and quantity suffixes?
How would you translate "between three trees"?
Wouldn't it be something like:
[tree] [nïlis-quantifier] [number three] [posposition between]
>genetive
genitive
>2.9 Postpositional phrase / kinwes dröve nyömïshwa
>A postpositional phrase is a special noun phrase that expresses
>a spacial relation between two objects. It is formed by putting the
>noun into the locative case (with some postpositions, the associative case)
>and using a postposition as a concluding word. It is placed immediately
>after the noun phrase to which it is related and serves, in effect,
>as a qualitative on the entire phrase.
>2.10 Actional phrase / kinwes dröve lakaze
Generally, languages that use postpositions tend to put postpositional
phrases _before_ the words they modify - just as English, French and other
prepositional languages usually put prepositional phrases after the words
they modify. I vaguely remember that I read this in Greenberg's book
on universals of language, but I can't remember the title.
My own language gjax-zym-byn is postpositional; at first I put the
postpositional phrases after the words they modified, but found
that it was sometimes unclear where the base noun phrase left off
and the postpositional phrase began. Putting the postpositional phrase
before its head noun is clearer because the postposition itself serves
as a boundary marker.
You describe a postpositional phrase as relating to a noun phrase, but
then say that an actional phrase also involves a postposition. Why
restrict the word "postpositional phrase" to only a subset of phrases
formed with postpositions?
An English parallel with a prepositional phrase,
The dog crawled under the porch.
The prepositional phrase "under the porch" follows "crawled"
and is a spatial complement (I think that's the term) to that motion verb.
Similarly in gjax-zym-byn, with the postpostional phrase before the verb:
rix'max txoj zynx-zox vxaxw tu-i.
house under[motion] crawl-[V.ACT] dog [agent]
>3.2 Case / dölha
I like the extra suffixes used only for pronouns -- though,
again, I'm not sure "case" is the right word.
> [Pronouns] can also be used as qualitatives, conveying self-reflection,
> honor or insult from the pronoun to the noun.
This is a cool feature!
More comments later, maybe.
-- Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/conlang.htm
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