Re: New language: Tama-i

On Thu, Oct 02, 2003 at 07:13:52AM +0100, Joe wrote:
[snip]
> > a) The subjective case: a development which may be even more fearsome to
> >    those who thought Ebisedian's case system was odd. The subjective case
> >    is properly not a "case" (in the Ebisedian sense), because it is
> >    orthogonal to the other noun cases. It marks the subject of the
> >    sentence, but *independently* of the originative/receptive/... case it
> >    may already be inflected for. For example:
> >         pi'zd0i      tw'ma biztau'   -> the man spoke to the woman
> >         man-ORG-SUBJ speak woman-RCP
> >
> >         pi'zdi  tw'ma biztau'i       -> the woman was spoken to by the man
> >         man-ORG speak woman-RCP-SUBJ
>
> I see.  That makes things easier, on the whole.
I'm not so sure about making things easier... the subjective case has some
rather, shall we say, *interesting* interactions with verbs.  I won't go
into details here, but it suffices to point out the interaction of
pronouns with verbs:
        bistau' t3'masl0i.      - I spoke to the woman.
        bistauhi' t3'masl0.     - The woman spoke to herself.

t3'masl0i = t3'ma (to speak) + (s)l0i' ("I")
t3'masl0  = t3'ma (to speak) + sl0 (reflexive suffix)

The issue here is that both the 1st person pronoun and the reflexive
suffix comes from the same Ebisedian source, _sili_ (the reflexive
pronoun). When it has the subjective ending, the verb is non-reflexive;
when it doesn't, the verb is reflexive.

Other equally fun things happen with the pronouns, which I'll save for
another time. ;-)

> But where did it come from?
It actually came from the nominator (topical) sentences and the locative
case. Tama-i went through an early stage where multiple case inflections
were common. During that time, the Ebisedian relative clauses (esp. those
with single words) were replaced by inflected adjectives (of the form
_<noun-root>-<case vowel>-a_). The subjective developed at the same time
as _<noun-root>-<case vowel>-i_). The -a ending came from the instrumental
case, which had begun to take on adjectival meaning; and the -i ending
came obviously from the locative case. Inflected adjectives were soon
calcified, though, the case vowel became non-generative, and adjectives
became indeclinable. You could still see relics of the generative stage in
the final vowels of Tama-i adjectives, for example:

Ebisedian               Early Tama-i            Tama-i
---------               ------------            ------
ni Ta'l3n di bidei'     Ta'li-an bidei'         ta'lian bidee'
ni th0't33 du kapa'ti   T0'tu-a kapa'ti         T0'tua k3pa'ti
ni Pa'n33 d0 gura'ki    Pa'n0-a gura'ki         pa'nua gurki'

For comparison, the Tama-i noun forms of these adjectives are _ta'lin_,
_T0'ti_, and _pa'nai_ respectively.

The subjective case, however, remains generative in Tama-i, and combines
with the other case vowels to form diphthongs. A telling sign is that the
subjective locative is identical to the locative (remember how the
locative functions as a topical case in Ebisedian?) If the word already
has a diphthong ending, it sometimes becomes _hi_ (this seems to be
context dependent; I haven't finalized it yet). For example:
        pi'zd0  --> pi'zd0i     (from Ebisedian _pii'z3d0_, "man", org.)
        pi'zdu  --> pi'zdui
        bist0'  --> bist0i'     (from Ebisedian _biz3t30'_, "woman", org.)
        bistau' --> bistauhi'

[snip]
> > What do fellow conlangers think of Tama-i? Is it a worthy successor to
> > its Ebisedian heritage? :-)
>
> I think we should see your original relay text in it.  The one with the
> woman...
[snip]

OK, I'll try to translate that sometime today. Meanwhile, those who are
curious might want to figure out what the following Tama-i sentence means:
        ha'nt3mazd0i tamah3'?

;-)

(Hint: Tama-i _h_ comes from Ebisedian glottal stop (abrupt breathing);
Ebisedian _jh_ [Z] became _z_ [z]. The first word is a contraction of
three words. And I think you can recognize the subjective case there. :-)


T

--
It is widely believed that reinventing the wheel is a waste of time; but I
disagree: without wheel reinventers, we would be still be stuck with wooden
wheels.