Re: New language Noygwexaal

Hi!

Geoff wrote:
> y           /N/
> yw          /Nw/
Haha! :-)

> q           /D/
Hahaha! :-)

> I was thinking of transcribing /S/ as k, but that's just a little too perverse.
Well, Swedish comes close.  The above romanisations are much more
special I think. :-)

(Why do the orcs use Latin characters, btw?)

> There are 6 noun classes: warm/bright, hard, soft, liquid/wet,
> abstract/immaterial, and magical.  Most living things are in the
> warm/bright category, but so are fire, hot rocks, the sun, the moon
> and so on.
So I take the classes are grammatically assigned and sometimes
unexplainably illogical, right?  I mean, there are warm *and* hot
things, just to give one example.  And the moon -- well -- it is
neither warm nor bright -- at least it's not bright by emitting it's
'own' energy.

> However, there are 4 levels of evidentiality: direct knowledge,
> direct report, tradition and hearsay.
Hmm -- 'tradition' is interesting.  Maybe I will have to include it
in Qthyn|gai.  It has quite a few evidentialities including 'belief' and
'general fact', but 'tradition' is really interesting.

How do you distinguish 'direct report' from 'hearsay'?  Qthyn|gai does
not do this [1] -- it generally seems impossible for the listener to
decide at least if evidence is optional.  Is it if the reporter uses
'direct knowledge' that you are allowed to use 'direct report', but if
he uses 'direct report', you'd need 'hearsay'?  What if evidence is
missing in the report?

From Qthyn|gai, I explicitly eliminated any levels of hearsay, since I
didn't want politicians to have a means of expressing 'from liable
sources' in grammar. :-) Futher, anything you know from media is
'hearsay' in Qthyn|gai, never 'directly witnessed'. [2]

I see from your examples that evidentiality is optional.  So you
don't have to think about what evidentiality to use for:

   'Drink the water!'
   'What's that?'

Qthyn|gai has mandatory evidentiality, but it is the same category as
speech act, so for anything but propositions, you'd use a speech act
infix instead of an evidence infix.

I love evidentiality! :-)

> [2] modifiers, especially adjectives, are usually conjoined to the
> front of their head to create long compound words. The exception is
> in sentences like "the dragon is black".
I like this!  How do you say:

  'Green is beautiful.'

Or may 'green' be used as a noun, too?  Would you have to say:
'Green-colour is beautiful'?

> [3] future events are usually couched in less certain evidentiality,
> as (prophecy notwithstanding) the future is uncertain.
I haven't thought too much about future and evidentiality in Qthyn|gai.
I should do that!  Good idea! :-)

> What do you think? I'm currently vocabulary-generating as a prelude
> to working on a Babel translation.
Nice!  (Only I don't like Elvish phonologies much, but that's personal
taste.  Some clicks, uvulars and pharyngeals are just so nice!)

I have another question: what's orkish about this lang?  Is it your
definition that it's spoken by orcs?

Bye,
  Henrik

[1] For 'direct report' you could periphrase:

      '[own perception:] told me, (that) [hearsay:] pope is.ill.'

    or in direct speech:
      '[own perception:] told me: "[own perception:] pope is.ill."'

    (Qthyn|gai is pro-drop, so anything is dropped, e.g. 'someone'.
    Further, definiteness is not directly expressed.)

[2] If Cyberspace finally becomes real, this might change: in
    Cyberspace, you would use 'perception', while outside, you'd
    report about the same event as 'hearsay'.  However, if you never
    leave Cyberspace, there's no issue anyway. :-)

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