switching verbs, was Re: Orthographic Inferiority Complex

>From: Larry Schelin <lschelin@...>
>On a completly diffrent topic, my brain went a little wacky the other day,
>and the idea of a language where the verb changes position to determine the
>tense occured to me. I've been working on it, but what I want to know is,
>does any other language (natural or artifical) do this, or have I started
>something completly wierd? Does it seem like a reasonable idea? I'll post
>details when I have a little more worked out...
>
>
>Joe
Wow. Actually yes, I know of two. In my own most developed project, Asiteya,
the verb changes position in the sentence and the order of elements in the
verb phrase changes to show tense, and otherwise the tense is not
morphologically marked. On the natlang side, Duru, a language in the
Adawama-Eastern subfamily of Niger-Kordofanian (probably a disputed
grouping, I know; this is just hearsay) uses constructions like this to show
tense (Comrie, et. al. The World's Major Languages, pg.970).

The address for Asiteya is
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/7853/asiteya.htm


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