Re: A conlang idea rolling around in my head

--- Nokta Kanto <red5_2@...> wrote:
> On Tue, 2 Dec 2003 13:24:59 -0800, Gary Shannon
> <fiziwig@...> wrote:
<snip>

> > The first thing mentioned in a sentence will the
> thing most affected by
> the
> > action that takes place in the sentence. For
> example, in the sentence
> "John
> > gave me the book." the action of giving caused the
> book to change hands,
> > and so the book is the thing most affected by the
> "give" action.
> >> "Book John give me."
>
> So, if I give John poison (and he dies), would I say
> "John I give poison"
> rather than "Poison I give John"? Interesting, we
> don't see semantic case
> too often... though there have been others mentioned
> on the list...
>
Hmmm. I'm not sure about that one.  I might actually
have to study grammar a bit before I get too deeply
into the design.  On the other hand, the initial
"designers" of natlangs like Enlgish knew absolutely
nothing about grammar when they built the language.
It was all seat of the pants.

<snip>
>
> I've done a little work on an ideographic conlang
> (no pronunciation). One
> thing I learned, to my surprise, is that written
> shapes can be surprisingly
> malleable. So far, I have a few outfix words, some
> agglutinating graphemes,
> and some shape changes. Here's a short poem
> tranlsation: http://
> www.geocities.com/noktakanto/samples/salvini.html
Some one else pointed me to your site a while back.  I
am really impressed by that Salvini translation in
particular.  That's high art!  I REALLY like the look
of it.  It's beautiful and elegant, and would be
interesting even if it didn't mean a thing.

--gary