Re: A Conlang, created by the group?

I'm thankful to you for fixing the phonology because I'm not very interested and
quite ignorant in it myself. From reading your conlangs I'm confident you will
make this language agriable ` entendre.

Herman wrote :
I think noun stems should end in a consonant, so that all cases =
> can be
> >vowel-initial inflections. This is not very original, tho. What do you =
> think?
> Sounds okay.
Sounds great.

 We have enough -V and -VC suffixes for cases, and many of =
> the
> most common noun roots could then be CVC-. Noun stems ending in vowels
> (such as proper names) might add a consonant such as -h to make them
> consonant-ending stems.
Yeah. Cool. It makes the language more parseable without needing much stress (I mean
'strhss', not 'striss':-)

 It might be more exotic to use prefixes for =
> cases,
> but suffixes are fine with me.
Ok. How may of us prefer suffixes and how many prefixes ? If no majority :

Maybe we could split like : cases are postfixed and tags showing parts of speach
(verb/adverb/adjective -if any/noun, etc) are prefixed. I've never tried it but
I know Japanese heavily use demonstrative front-topics resuming to different
part of speach everywhere.

Otherwise : long ago my language could EITHER PREFIX or POSTFIX tags. Prefixes were
changed into postfixes by nasalising them : mock example : (kun = noun ; cv =
affix)
'ta le kun' = kun ta^ le^'
Or else we could have :
ta le kun = kun el at
Or/and we could have infixes.
I mean : that way you REALLY train for any natlang ;-)

> >Also, how about word order? SVO, OVS, VOS, what? Head-final or =
> head-first?
> >I think everyone should take some piece of the language and work out a =
> sketch.
You're perfectly right, it makes things go faster. However I think head/final pattern
should rather be a collective decision precedent, however long it may be. Let's
vote.

> I think it would be interesting to try SOV, with Japanese-like syntax for
> things like modifiers and relative clauses,
Japanese ? Where are my valium pills ? :-{
Just kidding :-)). I vote YEAH, PROVIDED we can actually speak the language like
Japanese, i.e., there is a VERBAL SUSPENSIVE form like Jap '-te, -i/ri' to
allow some relief in speach. Actually, I'd like different suspensive forms for
concomitant and successive actions. That'd be very handy. Otherwise some will
have trouble putting ALL connectives and adjectives ahead (I don't anymore like
many here I guess, but I'm sure we can remember how this was difficult in the
beginning : 'Gosh ! I've said the verb already : I'm stuck now')

 if only because I need more
> practice with that word order, and most of my projects have been SVO or
> VSO. OVS would also be interesting. I've been considering OVS for
> Hlererhoi, but I'm still in the initial stages and changing my decisions
> every day.
Try no verb root some day. It makes you think of what is actually process,
attribute, result, processed agent, processed patient, antipatient.

> >We have
> >
> >1 noun inflection
> >2 verb inflection
> >3 adjectives (like nouns? like verbs? comparatives?)
> >4 word order
> >5 stress, tone, vowel length (?)
> >
> >
> >--Pablo Flores
>
> I like the case system in the Slavic languages, where adjectives take the
> same cases as nouns, but the case endings for adjectives are recognizably
> different from the noun endings. It would be nice to be able to tell from
> the ending whether a word is a noun, verb, or modifier
Why not POSTFIX cases and PREFIX tags showing adjective/adverb/noun/verb like a
kind of articles ? Or reversely. It's only a suggestion...and we could postfix
the cases to these articles, so that it's all prefixes and we can still pretend
it's alI suffixes :-) I'm kidding.
More seriously, tags of parts of speach as prefixes would make a language designed
on Japanese pattern easier, because maybe you've noticed, it's sometime
difficult in Japanese to know whether a word attaches to the main phrase, a
connective phrase or even to an adverb (like in 'kore wo kikkake ni')

 (which implies =
> that
> verb tenses/aspects/moods/voices/etc. would also be realized as =
> suffixes).
I suspect the first word for 'pasta' will be 'udon' or 'raamen'. And how do you
say 'carry' in ur-Dravidian ? Yum. :-(=)

> Should we have grammatical gender? It wouldn't have to be as traditional =
> as
> masculine/feminine/neuter (one of my neglected language sketches has four
> genders of "north, south, east, west"), but it's something to consider
> before we go very far with the morphology.
>
'Genders' may be classes like 'thought', 'feeling', 'material phenomenon', 'action',
'physical state', 'yellow strawberry' (rare occurence), 'conlanger' (rarer
occurence), etc.:-)


Mathias


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