Marcus Smith wrote:
> Daniel Andreasson wrote:
> > So I thought I'd try creating a language I'm not very used to.
> > It's ergative, agglutinating, noun-incorporating and has a very
> > small phoneme inventory.
> Yay!! Another conlang with noun-incorporation! I love this feature!
Me too. *slaps my forehead* How stupid am _I_? I just realized I have
the book "The Polysynthesis Parameter" by Mark Baker at home. It has
quite some stuff to say about noun incorporation. Okay, It's Mark Baker,
and it's written from a _very_ minimalist POV, but there should be some
good examples.
> No /f/. I like that. I find that I tend not to use /f/ very often when I
> invent words.
Hehe. Actually I had an /f/ originally. I thought it'd make a nice labial
series. But I don't really like /f/ and when I started creating words I
noticed that none of them had an /f/ in them. So I decided to skip it.
> > * THE PRONOUNS *
> >
> > SG PL
> > 1 mis pak
> > 2 ti wix
> > 3 u kan
>
> [snip]
>
> > PERSON AGREEMENT (always with the ABS)
> >
> > SG PL
> > 1 mi- pa-
> > 2 ti- kat-
> > 3 0- uk-
> Hmm. I see connections here. And do I sense a historical remnant in the
3pl
> agreement?
Yeah. I wanted there to be connections. Though not too obvious everywhere.
> > incorp:noun - pers:agr - ROOT - (CAUS) - tense - asp/mood (- evidence)
> Um. You seem to change your pattern later.
> > 2. "pilik wikkulanxut"
> >
> > pilik-0 wik -0 -kulan-0 -xut
> > boy -ABS wood-3SG-cut -PAST-PERG
> > 'The boy cut wood.'
> Incorporation then agreement, just like you said.
> > 3. "pilikin mikulanxut mis"
> >
> > pilik-in mi -kulan-0 -xut mis-0
> > boy -ERG 1SG-cut -PAST-PERF 1SG-ABS
> > 'A boy cut me.'
> >
> > 4. "pilik miskulanxut"
> >
> > pilik-0 0 -mis-kulan-0 -xut
> > boy -ABS 3SG-1SG-cut -PAST-PERF
> > 'The boy cut me.'
> Agreement then incorporation. Opposite order.
Oops. The incorporated pronoun in combination with the zero-morpheme
for 3SG must have confused me. This should of course be:
pilik-0 mis-0 -kulan-0 -xut
boy -ABS 1SG-3SG-cut -PAST-PERF
'The boy cut me.'
Though, if I had said the example out loud you wouldn't have heard
any difference. :)
> Nice. I like it. Especially the incorporation. More conlangs need "cool"
> features like this. :)
Thanks. I kinda like it myself. :)
Daniel