An early morning introduction (semi-long)

I should be in bed, but I got 4 hours of sleep and woke up so you all must
suffer from an introduction which may or may not make sense, hopefully some of
both so I will be allowed a second go around to clarify any parts which make
sense when they shouldn't.

I'm not new to the list, well at this time I am, but this isn't my first return. I
left at least once before, but I've been mostly a lurker. Some of you might
recognize the name (not the email) as the guy who ran some statistics of users
on the list, other's may not.

I'm 19 year old and a 1st year student at Georgia Tech, I began working on my
current Conlang (then Durana now it is NOntrOsa) back in 10th grade, nurturing
it through a linguistic growth without any true lessons other than what the
Toolkit online provided me and my limited knowledge of Latin afforded me.

There are 31 different letters at this time, I have yet to make an alphabet for them
so it is hard to say if it is 31 letters in the alphabet or 31 sounds, we'll
see one day.

I've written a fair deal of the grammar rules and such, (the folder of information
on my language and world is around 8 megs of data) but I won't make this a long
entry so I'll give highlights.

English: I have a yellow pencil.

NOntrOsa: PAta sedadas wIsamA nuldalkalmA.

For the linguist geek in me I had to take the classic sentence and use it, now to
break it down. The capital vowels signify the long songs O = Oh, A = ay (as in
pay) etc... I never got the hang of using the // values for their sounds so
bear with me.

Pa = Pronoun I
-ta = ergative ending

seda = verb "have" (the root form is imperative, not infinitive)
-das = present tense ending

wIsa = adjective for the color yellow, normally color adjectives are prefixed to
the word they modify, but if the writer fears the word will be too long (such
as wIsanuldalkalma) they will separate it and treat it as a non prefix
adjective)

-mA = absolutive ending for direct objects

nuldalkal = noun for stylus

-mA = again the absolutive ending for the direct objects. 

The other high light I love about NOntrOsa is the system for noun number I came up
with. There are three set of "number" endings, Normal, Emphatic and Incomplete.

Normal has Singular, plural and nullar. Nullar, as some might remember or just plain
recognize, is to show the number is zero.

Nullar: -O/-wO
Singular: -- / -- --
Plural: -ir / -r

The endings rely on whether the noun ends in a vowel or not.

Emphatic numbers are to 
Nullar: -A/-wA - translated: absolutely no --
Singular: -nO/-nO - translated: only one - or the -
Plural:  -in/-nin - translated: infinite - or unlimited -

Also there is a suffix -lon which is not number specific but may be considered an
emphatic indicator, a neutral emphatic if you will.

And finally the incomplete numbers,
Nullar: -E/-wE - Almost none -- 
Singular minor: -nE/-ne - Almost whole / full / complete
Singular major: -du/-das - slightly more than whole / full / complete
Plural: There is no incomplete plural number

A brief note on pronunciation, the uh sound is not in the alphabet, so any u
(lower or uppercase) is the long U sound. I tend to be inconsistent on what I
write in that case so I wanted to catch that.

The lexicon I currently have is nearing the 1000 word mark, but I've refused to
let myself publish it online before that mark.

Blessedly I am feeling the tappings of sleep, so I shall wrap this up.

Any questions?

Sincerely,
Patrick R. Jarrett 
Georgia Tech 

"Blaze your trail."

www.ronincyberpunk.com
AIM: RoninCyberPunk

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