Re: niKòmbá: conlang sketch

David Stokes wrote:


>niKòmbá is inspired by Bantu languages with a little Tagalog thrown in.
>The vocabulary is entirely a-priori.
Interesting models-- that ought to confuse the "Language Identifier"!
Years ago I had a field-methods class with a W.African language called More,
spoken in (??- they've changed the name; capital Ouagadougou). According to
one student's research, it's in the Bantu family, but the word-classes are
indicated only by different sg/pl _suffixes_.  It also turned out to be
tonal, though we didn't get far with that since we only realized it in the
last two weeks of a 10 week quarter.
>
(big snip)

>niKòmbá uses serial verb constructions instead of prepositions. Multiple
>verbs agree with the same noun to denote a complex action.
>
>Ex. gyà "man", nàdlá "house", wím "to walk", zán "to enter"
>   kogyàlan panàdláblo kowíbya kozábya.
>   "The man house walked entered." or "The man walked into the house.">
There is an interesting discussion of serial verbs (in Oceanic langs. and
elsewhere) going on right now at the Austronesian Lang. list.  You can
access the archive at <http://linguistlist.org/list-archives.html>.

Kash does something similar, though I'd be more inclined to call them
"compound verbs" e.g. _mi/fosi mi/nopra roshen_ lit., we-sail we-cross (the)
sea, 'we sailed across the sea'.  So-called auxiliary verbs behave in much
the same way:  _mimelo minahan_  'we want to eat'.  Insofar as I've thought
about it, these constructions differ in that one of the subject pronouns can
be deleted in Aux+verb (so usually mimelo nahan, but melo minahan might be
OK too) -- but not in the Vb+Vb case.