Re: Bowtudgelean

Jeffrey Jones wrote:
> On Sun, 27 Apr 2008 13:06:11 -0400, Carl Banks
> <conlang@...> wrote:
>> Bimo, dorahay,
>>
>> I have a brief description of Bowtudgelean (version 0.1) at
>> http://www.aerojockey.com/blog/bowtudgelean1.html
>>
>> I'm curious how common some of my "innovations" are.  I've read a lot of
>> conlang archives and never saw much discussion about these particular ideas.
>>
>> 1. Bowtudgelean has ten states of definiteness.  Most languages only
>> distinguish between definite and indefinite; mine distinguishes
>> different types of definiteness and inflects nouns, pronouns, and
>> adjectives accordingly:
>>
>> First Person: is or includes the speaker
>> Second Person: is or inlcudes the listener
>
> I don't understand how these are used.
The first person and second person pronouns(**) have distinct states
from all other nouns and pronouns.  That's pretty much it.  Adjectives
modifying the a first person pronoun have to have a first person state
ending to agree.

(**) - These are actually the first and second person states of the
demonstrative pronoun.


>> Nominal: the word is a name
>> Referred: something recently spoken of
>
> These are clear.
Ok.  A little more info:

Nominal state is more far-reaching than English proper nouns.  Any word
that self-identifies is in this state: this can include things like
abstract nouns.

Third person personal pronouns are usually translated by the referred
state of the demonstrative pronoun.


>> Indicated: a limiting adjective (or phrase) follows
>
> This seems to be purely a matter of morphosyntax, with no pragmatic
> component.
Whatever--it's still a distinct state.  And it does imply definiteness.


>> Local: the thing is near the speaker
>> Remote: the thing is distant from the speaker
>
> Demonstratives -- clear.
>
>> Past: the thing happened in the past
>> Future: the thing happened in the future
>
> These seem to be tenses and independent of the noun being definite.
No, they're not tenses.  These can be compared to demonstratives in
time.  These states are used mostly for events.  If I were to ask you,
"How was the party?" I would use past state, because the thing that
identifies the party was that it occurred in the past.  These states are
often used when constrasting to the present.


>> Indefinite: indefinite
>
> Clear.
Thanks for the constructive feedback.


Carl Banks

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