Re: OT: Another analytic question

On Wednesday, January 12, 2005, at 01:22 , Gary Shannon wrote:

> Another question regarding analytic or isolating
> languages. I know very little about them, but one of
> my current conlangs seems headed in that direction.
>
> What I'm wondering about is it seems like most
> analytic languages rely heavily on word order to mark
> roles, as in SVO, SOV, etc.
I doubt SOV unless there are other makers to distinguish the object. But,
yes, it does seem isolating languages tend to rely upon word order.

> What I have in mind is to
> always mark every part of the sentence with a particle
> so that word order is irrelevant to meaning and can be
> used to emphasize some part of what is being said.
An alternative, of course, is to have fixed word order with particles
marking words or phrases for emphasis.

> For example, suppose I used the particles "su", "ob",
> and "indo" in the sentence "Su John gave ob book indo
> (to) Mary." Now I can shuffle the pieces around
> without confusing the roles of the various players and
> write: "Indo Mary gave ob book su John." or "Ob book
> indo Mary gave su John." "su John" always tells us
> that John is the subject no matter where "su John"
> appears in the stream of words that makes up the
> sentence.
>
> Are there any analytic natlangs (or conlangs) that
> completely mark the roles of the participants so that
> word order is (relatively) free?
I do not know of any natlang that completely marks the roles, but the
Conlang Voksigid comes to mind immediately. The only thing fixed in
Voksigid was the verb - it had to come first. It was a language developed
by committee, which was formed sometime in 1991 and continued to work on
the language until May 1992. But the language was never finished - I
gather the committee failed to find agreement on certain features.

I feel certain there are probably other examples.

Also the auxlangs Frater and Glosa are entirely isolating and both make
extensive use of particles as markers. But neither AFAIK uses particles to
mark all participant roles. However, you might get ideas from then.

> Or am I venturing
> into unexplored (or unproductive) territory?
Not entirely unexplored   :)

I see no reason why it should be unproductive.

Ray
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