Re: OT: Another analytic question

On Tue, 11 Jan 2005 17:22:03 -0800, Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...> 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. 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.
>
>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? Or am I venturing
>into unexplored (or unproductive) territory?
>
>--gary
I don't know very much about this either, but I really like the idea. I am
not sure why, but reading your post brings to mind the term Ergative-
Absolutive. Thus, I started to think it might be fun to always mark the
parts of the sentance as such: "ab Mary walks", "walks ab Mary", "er John
sees ab Mary", or "ab Mary sees er John". I think your idea is great and
regardless of what people say, I think you should run with it.

- Adam