Re: Terkunan revision (adding a lot of Rhodrese)

Hi!

Shoot!  I wanted to work.  And now your post.  I *must* answer
*now*. :-))))

Benct Philip Jonsson writes:
> Henrik Theiling skrev:
>...
>  >   a) I unified the demonstrative pronouns _kul_ 'this' and
>  >      _kus_ 'that' into only one, _kul_ 'this; that'.
>  >      Further adverbs may be used to clarify, if necessary
>  >      (but due to limited lexicon, those do not yet
>  >      exist...).
>
> Assuming that these may be from HÎC and ILLÁC you might
> end up with _kulí_ and _kulá_. I don't know what you think
> of accent marks for Terkunan; ...
>...
The stress is totally regular so far -- otherwise, this seems like
what I had in mind, yes.  The only difference would be that the words
would not melt together, but 'here' and 'there' would stay separate
words.

I'll keep your post for later consideration when I make those words.

Currently, I am struggling whether I really need the distinction
between 'here' and 'there'.  If 'this' and 'that' is missing...

>...
>  >      This helps my German brain when translating into
>  >      Terkunan...
>
> I guess _dieses_ has gone out of spontaneous usage, but hasn't
> it been replaced by _das hier_ vs. _das da_ rather than just
> merge into _das_?
Colloquially, 'das da' can be used emphatically even for 'das hier' --
e.g. when you ask 'Das da oder das da?' for 'This one or that one?'.
Must sound quite strange to speakers of languages that actually
distinguish 'this' and 'that' strictly.  Further, without emphasis,
I'd say 'das' is used most often. But of course, 'das hier' is not
missing at all, but just not as frequent.  At least, all this is my
impression.

>...
>  >   b) I unified the relative pronoun _ki_ and the
>  >      interrogative _ke_ into _ke_.
>
> I'd expect relative _ke_ and interrogative _ki_.
>
> The Romance thing to do would be to have no distinction
> between relative and interrogative, but have _ki_ for
> animates/humans and _ke_ for inanimates/nonhumans.
I considered this, but a single 'ke' won.

>...
> Or pronominal _ki_ 'which/who' and conjunction _ke_
> 'dass/that'. That would seem to me an important and sensible
> distinction to make.
Why?

>...
> But then you have Spanish _aquí_ in the mixer too, which may become
> Terkunan _ki_. Which means that under (a) above you might get
> _kul-ki_ and _kul-la_ -- might this analogize to _kul-ka_ as if <
> ECCU'LLE ECCU HAC.  To practically have _kul_ + _a_ vs. _kul_ + k +
> i_ IMHO calls for an analogic _kul-ka_! Cf. It. _qua_ 'dort' (Meyer-
> Lübke #3965).
Noted for later consideration! :-)

>...
> Have you considered putting the main onus of distinguishing
> number on the article?, as modern French does and as I've
> found Rhodrese to do to no small degree.[^1] You might have
> a system like
>
> | 			Indefinite     Definite
> |
> | 	Singular  un kan         le kan
> |
> | 	Plural    kan            li kan
>...
The article is not mandatory in Terkunan.  Of course, that's no reason
not to put the number distinction there, it would just mean that
number might go unmarked in many cases.

I might consider this indeed because currently, plural markers
drop when you add numbers.  And it might look better to have

        kan   'the dog; the dogs; a dog; one dog; dogs'
   le   kan   'the dog'
   lez  kan   'the dogs'
   un   kan   'a dog, one dog'
   nez  kan    < un+z  with normal special contraction rules for 'un'
               (or would it be 'nuz'?)
              'dogs'
   do   kan   'two dogs'

This looks probably looks more regular than the current system:

        kan   'the dog; a dog'
        kans  'the dogs; dogs'
   le   kan
   le   kanez
   un   kan
   un   kanez
   do   kan   -- a bit strange

Right?  Because then, number is always marked at the same place.

The only thing that remains would be the 1st and 2rd p. pronouns:

   mi  ~ miz
   no  ~ noz
   tu  ~ tuz
   vo  ~ voz
   tor ~ torz

What about 'the two of us'?  Currently 'mi do' (not 'miz do').  This
might still be ok, don't you think?  Your idea of suppetive 'mi' ~
'no', 'tu' - 'vo' is tempting.

For some reason, even if I avoid French actively (I don't like the
sound of it), Terkunan grammar becomes Frenchish, it seems.  I noticed
recently, too, when I made a change I forgot now.

>...
> Old French and Old Spanish had forms like _uns_ and _unos_
> meaning 'some, einige', and I thought it be a nice touch for
> at least some Romconlang to develop plural indefinite
> articles from them.
>...
Terkunan has them, too. :-)  I like 'unos'.

>...
> I'm a bit worried about _one_ as an indefinite article form,
> as it must look silly to English speakers, but I can't make
> myself believe a stress-change ÚNA > UNÁ and then > _na_
> to be realistic. The U of UNA used to be long after all,
> unlike the I of ILLA.
>...
I have the same merger in Terkunan (as many languages).  You'd still
be able to add phrase stress to the number, as in German.  (Ok, ok,
colloquial German does distinguish _ne_ /n@/ 'a' vs. 'eine' /'?aIn@/
'one'.)

> As for the gender syncretism in the plural: if German and
> Russian can do it, so can Rhodrese. The corresponding
> pronouns have a case distinction too:
>
> | 			Masc.     Fem.      Plur.
> |
> | 	Nom.      el   	elle      il        (_ll_ /l\`/)
> | 	Acc.      le        la        li
> | 	Dat.      leu       lai       laur
>...
Note that Sicilian/Calabrese dialects merged noun plurals when they
merged all unstressed vowels into /a i u/.  You now have three
regular declension classes:

    sg.    pl.
    -u     -i
    -a     -i
    -i     -i

I am not sure about the pronouns, though.  I *think* it has:

f.sg.   idda    _dd_ = /d\`/
m.sg.   iddu
pl.     iddi

So there would be your Romance natlang that does it.

>...
> Since you have _es/fu_ you are not totally averse to
> suppletion, and the Romance thing to do would be to have _su
> kan_ for 'his/her dog'.
There is *also* _se kan_ in Terkunan for 'his/her dog', but it is
restricted to reflexive usage (Swedish 'sin bil' vs. 'hans bil').

>...
>  >      namely the perfect participle _fut_ instead of the
>  >      regular _esat_.
>  >
>  >      The reason for this is that I found _esat_ really
>  >      ugly.
>
> Really, and I guess you know that everyone will be thinking
> of FUTUTUS/A!
'Everyone' might be an exaggeration.. :-)

*_futus_ is the basis for that participle in Þrjótrunn and in
Terkunan. An analogical reconstruction of _futurus_, of course.

BTW, the regularly derived past tense according to my GMP would have
been 'fi' (like Romanian).  Maybe I'll use 'es' - 'fi' - 'fut'.  But I
also like 'fu'.  We'll see.

>...
> I spotted a typo there, I think:
>
>...
> That should be /o: U/ > /o/ if I'm not wholly mistaken.
Oops, of course.  Thanks for spotting it.

> BTW I've lost my source for the Corsican system. Any help to
> come up with a citeable source will be greatly appreciated!
>..
I haven't worked on Corsian yet, so I'll also be interested. :-)

**Henrik