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Re: PHONO: feature theory (was: vowel harmony)

From:Stone Gordonssen <stonegordonssen@...>
Date:Saturday, June 21, 2003, 17:56
>IMO you should make up your own features, describing your conlang on >its own terms. Some of the most interesting conlangs are those that >are systemically coherent but not analysable in terms of models >developed to handle the major natlangs.
I second this opinion. Though the work I've done on my 3 (now 4) conlangs doesn't even remptely approach that given many of the members here to their conlangs, I found that Bes Dis'z began to shape more of itself, and many features I first thoujght I had to include became redundant or unnecerssary. E.g. Thinking of the prefixes "s-", "t-" and "ts-" as marking "acquired", "associative", and "intrinsic" instead of present/punctual, habitual/frequentive, and "so habitual it would be considered a part of the subject". Thinking of the low tone given a work as marking a "table" for the sentence rather than calling it a "modifer/adverb/clause". - I thought that this thread was dead. - ripìs'sh rakót rus both'ts fat'ch - (intr)-I-believe-(completed) (intr)-it-kill flow opinions-(composing) here-at _________________________________________________________________ The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail