Re: Syntactic differences within parts of speech

On 8/22/06, Amanda Babcock Furrow <langs@...> wrote:
> Also, who can provide similar examples from their conlangs?  Does your
> conlang have an extra part of speech (two separate kinds of verbs,
> perhaps, which operate differently)?  Does it contain subclasses within
> parts of speech (verbs, perhaps, that can't be nominalized?  Yes, I'm
> rather stuck on verbs...)  Words which don't fit into any part of speech
> in the language?  Any other relevant examples or thoughts?
>
Kelen has nouns, of course - an open class. And relationals - a closed
class. Then, we have prepositional modifiers aka case markers,
postpositional modifiers, 4 types of conjunctions, pronouns of various
types, clause-level modifiers, and mood markers - all closed. Usage
within each class follows certain trends, but can vary from word to
word. The biggest source of variation is that some members of a class
can only appear in clauses headed by certain relationals. For example,
the case marker 'ke' only occurs with the relational SE, as does the
relative pronoun 'ien'.

It took me a long time to figure all that out, too. For the longest
time I had 'ien' and 'ñe' as case markers, when one is actually a
relative pronoun and the other a conjunction.

-S

--
Sylvia Sotomayor
terjemar@gmail.com
www.terjemar.net