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Re: yet another new lang sketch (sorry)

From:Doug Ball <db001i@...>
Date:Sunday, October 31, 1999, 2:03
> > Suggestions? Comments? It's meant to feel sort of Native American,at least > at first glance, so what else can I do it to this end? Does anyone actually > read these all the way through? >
Skim is probably a more appropriate word. I skim the whole post to get an idea of what's going on, concentrating on information that I can handle quickly. Some suggestions on how to feel Native American (although I'm no expert at these languages): you may want to add some more "exotic" sounds to your phonology such as ejective or implosive stops. To your morphology, I don't know if noun and verb structures like that are common among Native American langs. I do know that the polysynthetic type is common among Native American langs (Navajo is an example). Within this type verbs are the focus. New lexical items tend to be named through verbs, and verbs often can express the equivalent of a whole clause. Nouns seems to be in short supply in these langs, and the other class of words seems to be particles (adjectives are generally rendered as verbs). But this is not the end all in Native American langs, because Dakota (Sioux) isn't polysynthetic, just intended as some additional (and possibly incomplete) information for you to consider. -Doug