Re: Language policy

> ObConlang
>
> Have any of your conlangs been banned at any point in their histories?  If
> so how did that effect their evolution??
>
> Adam
I dont know if this will make sense to anyone else, but I will give it
a go...

Gevey is part of my conculture, based on a continent (Ewlah) on a
planet (Kalieda) which has no contact with other human species.
Humans had tried to colonise the planet on a number of occasions (it
looked very inviting), but most colonies had been wiped out by
plagues, ice ages, etc. The latest dramas are an extended ice age
forcing the surviving colonists to migrate from their various
landmasses to Ewlah, the most inimicable continent to terran life
(about 1000 years before my point of view [POV])

On the continent there are four surviving "tribes", one of which - the
Vreski - are heading towards extinction.

Gevey originated as a bastardisation of the various Vreski languages
as spoken by the Vreski slaves. The Vreski slaves staged a series of
rebellions about 300 years before my POV, and migrated en-masse from
the south east of the continent into the central highlands.

Thus there are a number of features of Gevey which developed as a
direct result of opression and slavery:

- the development of "focus" in the language for emphasis - when you
don't know how long you have to talk, you better make sure the first
three or four words you say are important, and carry sufficient
information to make your meaning clear to listeners.

- the stark differences between subject, direct object and indirect
object words, to allow the free word order required by focus

- the requirement in words that voiced and voiceless consonants hardly
ever combine in a consonant cluster (hard to differentiate d and t
when you are whispering)

- lots of different pronouns

- the ability to divorce relative clauses from the main clause - to
allow interrupted conversation

Rik




--
http://homepages.enterprise.net/rikroots/gevey/index.html
The Gevey Language Resource.