Re: TERMINOLOGY: Re: another new language to check out

On Thursday, July 1, 2004, at 09:04 , Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:

> Hallo!
>
> On Thu, 1 Jul 2004 20:29:24 +0100,
> Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> wrote:
>
>> [...]
>>
>> -arum/ -orum fall down on every test of agglutination. They are flexions.
>
> Right.
>
>> Cf. Volapük, which is agglutinating:
>>                 Singular                Plural
>> Nom.    fat (father)    fat-s
>> Gen.    fat-a                   fat-a-s
>> Dat.    fat-e                   fat-e-s
>> Acc.    fat-i                   fat-i-s
>>
>> (They are, of course, normally written without the hyphens).
>> [snip]
[snip]
>> Agreed - tho rather oddly Esperanto has the plural marker _before_ the
>> case marker in the accusative plural (bela-j-n dom0-j-n "beautiful
>> houses"
>> ), whereas in all the agglutinative langs I can think of the plural
>> marker
>> comes after the case marker (as, indeed, it does in Volapük).
>
> No, it is Volapük that's odd here.  Most agglutinating languages
> I have seen have the plural marker between the stem and the case marker,
D'oh! Of course you're absolutely right. I guess I was having what some
call "a senior moment"  :)

> e.g. Turkish:
>
> ev        `house'
> ev-ler    `houses'
> ev-de     `in the house'
> ev-ler-de `in the houses' (not **ev-de-ler)
Yep - and other agglutinating natlangs normally do likewise. My apologies
to any Esperantists on the list: it's E-o that follows natlang practice
here and Volapük that doesn't.
 =======================================================================

On Friday, July 2, 2004, at 12:43 , Doug Dee wrote:
[snip]
> There's a proposed universal "Where morphemes of both number and case are
> present and both follow or both precede the noun base, the expression of
> number
> almost always comes between the noun base and the expression of case."
Which means there must be at least one natlang that does it the Volapük
way. It appears to a linguistic universal that a linguistic universal will
always have an exception or two   ;)

> In _Mixed Artificial Languages_, Alan Libert notes 2 other conlangs
> besides
> Volapuk violating this universal: Dil and Bopal.
Not surprising - these two were among the several 'offspring' of Volapük
that followed the latter's demise.


Ray
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