Re: Creative ways to form relative clauses?

Nauradi can use the same type of construct (see the informal at the end of
this email). It would also be able to use a participle to accomplish the
same effect.

Nauradi verbs are only inflected for aspect and mood. In this case, "the man
who hit me" would begin with a perfective realis participle.

The verb xetsblaut means to hit or to strike. To make it perfective, you
would add the prefix "u-" : uxetsblaut.

To become a participle add the suffix "-in": uxetsblautin

You now have participle that means "struck" or "hit"

Now add  on the animate adjective ending "-a": uxetsblautina

You now have an adjective built on a participle. In order to indicate "me"
as the "hit one" just add in the accusative prepositional phrase "het au"
where "het" is the accusative preposition and "au" is the first person
singular pronoun.

"uxetsblautina het au"

Now modify this phrase with the adverb "saujirkes" (yesterday)

"saujirkes uxetsblautina het au"

This becomes an adjectival phrase to modify the noun "klidauk" which means
"man"

"saujirkes uxetsblautina het au klidauk."


Hrar is the imperfective realis verb "to hate" + prefix "u-" = perfective
realis form of hate


"Au uhrar saujirkes uxetsblautina het au.klidauk.".


I hate [the] hit-me-yesterday man.

The above is a bit cumbersome for sure. It would largely represent "formal"
speech.

Informally it would be

"Au uhrar klidauk eus saujirkes uxetsblaut het au."

I hate [the] man who yesterday hit me.






-----Original Message-----
From: Constructed Languages List [mailto:CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu] On
Behalf Of Daniel Bowman
Sent: Saturday, December 20, 2008 6:39 AM
To: CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu
Subject: Creative ways to form relative clauses?


Hello fellow conlangers,

I've been a lurker on the forums for some time, but I thought I'd break my
silence with a question that's been vexing me for some time:  How should my
conlang form relative clauses?

Currently, my conlang follows the English model, and thus the relative
clause structure of the sentence  "I hate the man who hit me yesterday"
would be quite similar in my conlang.  I'd rather do it some other way since
the rest of my grammar is decidedly non-English.

How do your conlangs handle this type of construction?  Any creative (read:
non English and romance language) ways to handle this?

And lastly, some background on my conlang.  It's called Angosey and I've
been working on it for about 10 years now.  It's not meant to be
particularly naturalistic.  It has a Verb-Subject-Object order but with
postpositions where English would have prepositions.  Word order is very
important.

Thanks a lot!