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Doing without relative, coordinate and subordinate clauses?

From:Jeff Rollin <jeff.rollin@...>
Date:Saturday, June 30, 2007, 15:44
Hi all

I've been trying to get back into conlanging. I was inspired by John
Crowe's "Deciphering Conlangs" thread into trying to compose a little text in
my conlang Vn for the members to decipher, when I realized that although I
wanted to do without relative, coordinate and subordinate clauses, and use
participles and the like instead, I had no idea how to go about it.

Using pseudo-English as a metalanguage, I got as far as abolishing relative
clauses, e.g. instead of:

"I saw the man who owns an Audi and lives on our street in the Post Office
today"

you would say:

"I saw the Audi-owning-CONN living-on-our-street-CONN man in the Post Office
today"

where -CONN marks a connecting particle attached to each of the phrases which
in English would be joined by "and";

But I'm having trouble working out what I would need in place of finite verbs
(and/or conjunctions) in examples such as:

"I'll always remember the tension in her voice //when she spoke of her late
father/as the train pulled out of the station and receded into the distance//

Or:

"Before I can get it for you, you need to find out how much it is and give me
the money, please."

Does your conlang do this? How do you do it? Are there natlangs which do this?
I'd appreciate any pointers.

TIA

Jeff
--
"Please understand that there are small
European principalities devoted to debating
Tcl vs. Perl as a tourist attraction."

                            -- Cameron Laird

Replies

Eugene Oh <un.doing@...>
Lars Finsen <lars.finsen@...>