Re: Romula: tense system - request for comments

Am 01/02 20:26  A. Artorius Arius Sarmaticus yscrifef:
 a few months ago I, called in those days ;-) Artyom Kouzminykh,
> ural_liz@hotmail.com, asked several questions in this list about romance
> natlangs (for creating my personal romance artlang). Thanks to all who
> answered, especially to Mr. Grandsire (is he still there?). It would be very
> difficult to menage with all this tenses without his big post about the
> "special features" of romance natlangs.
>
As he has just returned to this list after a brief absence, and after
your original message you may have to post it to him again.

> And now I ask for your advice about the tense system of my conlang, called
> finally La Lingua Romula (or, in some cases, simply La Lingua Romanica;-)),
> from Romulus Rex. To give you an idea of the lang, here's the Hamlet
> monologue from the Tragedy of Hamlet, in Romula, translated by me;-)
>
You appear to have developed a problematic facial tic during your
absense ;-)

> For that I need to be sure my tense system is OK for a romance-looking
> conlang, pretending to be a romance natlang;-) and am hoping for your
> assistance in this... Here it is:
>
The paradigms look very accurate and thorough to me and as I have found
Romance conlangs a productive field to be involved with, I intend to
store them away for further reference. Thank you. That is the good news. Thisis the
bad news; my quibbles:

Why -mus for the second person plural ending rather than -mos?  Short
Latin U tends to become O in most Romance languages including in this
position.

> For whose who's still wondering,;-) io=I, tu=you (sg), ille, -a, -o = he,
> she, it, nos=we, vos=you (pl), illos=they.
>
Ille for the masculine third person pronoun seems wrong to me.  It might
be good latin but it seems bad Romance to me.  Ille and illo should
collapse into a single form, illo.  Unless you have made a decision for
natural gender rather than gramatical gender the latin neuter is not
distinguished from from the masculine in later languages.  Spanish, at
least, has developed a neuter as a secondary development.

> Irregular verbs are only 4, as in Latino Moderne – ser, haber, vader, dar
>
Languages mix dar and donar?  Odd, I hadn't noticed.  But then for
Brithenig I adopted donar and ignored dar so that could have been easy
to do.

The spelling haber strikes me as unusual.  I would have expected
something like *aver.

> That's all. I'm curious, are all the inflexions correct for a "standard
> average ROMANCE" conlang? Must not be there more irregular verbs? If must,
> that the irregularities must be? And the main thing: is it all
> understandable for a native romance-lang speaker without explanations? I
> intended it to be so...
>
The inflections seem correct to me.  Although I have just realised that
past definate tenses can be irregular.  I shall have to check those.  My
caveat that I am a romance-lang conlanger, not a romance-lang speaker.

- andrew.
--
Andrew Smith, Intheologus                       hobbit@earthlight.co.nz

                      "Piskie, Piskie, say Amen
                   Doon on your knees and up agen."

                    "Presbie, Presbie, dinna bend;
                   Sit ye doon on mon's chief end."
                               - Attributions unknown.