Re: A Conlang, created by the group?

Herman Miller wrote:
>On Thu, 8 Oct 1998 11:46:42 -0300, Pablo Flores
><fflores@...> wrote:
>
>>I forgot about genitive! Right, genitive too. How are we going to render those
>>cases? 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. 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.
(Just an idea) Why not use different consonants as stem endings when we
have to add one? We could have nasal harmony (i. e. if there's a nasal
in the penult syllable of the stem, use -n, else use -h or -l or whatever).


>>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.
>
>I think it would be interesting to try SOV, with Japanese-like syntax for
>things like modifiers and relative clauses, 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.
SOV is fine. The only disadvantage, of course, is that you can pile up
a lot of stuff before getting to the verb. The advantage is the same.
I remember something about a Japanese joke where you go on and on with
modifiers for several minutes, and then you get to the verb, but it's in
the negative form, so everything you said is reversed. ;)

Well, Mathias pointed out that should be decided. I vote for a non-rigid
SOV order. I mean, let's use case to make word order free, but then let's
prefer SOV as the standard order.

>
>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 (which implies that
>verb tenses/aspects/moods/voices/etc. would also be realized as suffixes).
I don't know. It seems a bit rigid for verbs. We should decide which
distinctions are going to be compulsory, and which optional. Then the
compulsory distinctions would be suffixed, and the optional could be
either suffixed or prefixed.

Also, it'd be a bit confusing to have different case endings for adjectives
and for nouns. Maybe ones could be a subset of the others. Anyway, we could
also take the approach that only the last element in a phrase carries the
inflectional markers (I remember something posted about this). So if you
have "this big horrible monster", only "monster" is inflected (the word order
could be the other way round).

>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.
What makes a noun "northern" or "eastern"? I'm curious.
Indeed we have to consider that, but there's no need to morphologically _mark_
gender on nouns. We could leave it on articles (are we having them?).

Also, Mathias M. Lasailly wrote:
>> 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.
Could you explain that? I have an idea about the -te form in Japanese,
but haven't actually seen it used; -i/ri is new for me. It seems a good idea,
but what exactly do you have in mind?

--Pablo Flores