Re: Voices

Thanks for all those fast and helpfull replies! I've decided to use a
voice system consisting of active, passive, reflexive, and applicative for
my new conlang, Iandal. This one I am intending to develope further than
my previous conlangs. I have almost finished ancient Iandal. This was a
puraly oral language spoken by the ian, the suns of night and the
daughters of day in the first 800-900 years of my coniverse. Classic
Iandal errupted after the invention of a script had caused a sound-shift,
and common use had caused considerable changes in the grammar. This is how
far I have come now in terms of my coniverse. The applicative was seldom
used in ancient iandal, but it's use increased in classical Iandal. I
think, that by the time of middle or high Iandal, it will have replaced
active sentences with objects in cases other than the accusative. Ancient
and classical Iandal are still quite similar, especially phoneticaly, but
hey, they are two neighboring language stages. So, eventhough they may
seem much to similar for you, remember that they are about as closely
related as, say, a southern german dialect and high german. Here are a few
sentences in ancient and classical Iandal:
Ancient Iandal: (|ï| is an i with a diaresis (did I spell that right?)and
is pronounced [y].|dh| is [D] and |x|is [x].)

deïd itha.
de-ïd itha.
fall-[active, simple past, simple verb class] darkness.
Darkness has fallen.

dhiendï xien.
dhien-edï  xien.
go-[active, simple past, weak verb class, 3rd person] light.
The light has gone.

iethes goniede i.
ieth-es gonie-de i.
dawn-[to, at] return-[active, simple future, simple verb class] it.
It will return at dawn.

Notes:
The simple verb class has no person inflections. The word order is OVS. The
accusative and the nominative are unmarked.

Classic Iandal:

deid ith
de-id ith
fall-[active, past, simple verb class] darkness.
Darkness has fallen.

dhienedin rien.
go-[active, past, weak verb class, 3rd person] light.
The light has gone.

rienithes gonedain i.
dawn return-[active, future, simple verb class] it.
It will return at dawn.

Notes:
After the (minor) soundshift caused by the invention of an alphabet, many
verbal and nominal endings were ambigous. In addition, an or an m had been
attached to many suffixes in the spoken language. The ians started to
change the vowels in the suffixes, and over time they had transformed them
into new affixes.
The simple/imperfect tense destinction had been lost. For some unknown
reason, the imperfect endings were used from now on.