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

* Nik Taylor said on 2004-07-02 05:21:06 +0200
> Ray Brown wrote:
> > 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).
>
> Isn't plural usually closer to the noun than case?  It is in Japanese,
> if you analyze -tachi as plural and the clitics as case, as well as
> Turkish and Finnish, for example.  In fact, I don't know of any where
> the case affix comes closer to the noun than the plural affix.
Case closer to stem seems to be quite usual in conlangs, Taruven has it
too. Those in the know claims this is simply because the plural suffix
was the last noun-only clitic to become a suffix ("adjectives" agree in
case but not number). In Taruven's sister language, Charan /xArA_~n/ it
is still a separate phrase marker, {n} /n=/, as the very first word of a
noun phrase.


t., who now leaves for Stockholm for the weekend and hoping for great
weather there (as it sucks here, rain, rain, more rain and cold winds).