Re: A Conlang, created by the group?

I'll try to sum up some of the proposals and opinions so far.

* The part of speech, case, and gender marks:

1. Cases postfixed, PoS tags prefixed
2. Cases prefixed, PoS and gender tags postfixed
3. Case system:
>  agent
>  patient
>  undergoer
>  theme
>  static predicate
>  dinamic predicate
>  modifier
>  clasifier
>  determinant
Could we have English examples of those, please?
I have an idea about this too, tho only for nouns: a mixed ergative
system:

 . ergative: a subject controlling an action (THE DOG bit me)
 . unergative: a subject causing a state or not controlling its own actions
  (THE STOPPED CAR is blocking the highway) but partly responsible
 . absolutive: a subject not doing anything to an object, or an object
  not receiving an action or entering a state (THE DOG sleeps, I read THE BOOK)
 . accusative: an object receiving an action or changing its state
  (I burned THE BOOK)
 . copulative: an object or subject being equated, compared or directly
  modified by another thing (THE DOG is BROWN, HE got TIRED)


>
>and some small particles (prepositions?) to extend some meanings.
>
Pre- or post-? I think they should be in the opposite end of the noun
with respect to case markers (i. e. cases postfixed > prepositions,
cases prefixed > postpositions).


* Number: how many of them? Any of them, or just separate words like "many",
"various" or numerals?


* Word order: SOV seems to be ahead so far, provided some Japanese-like
syntax and suspensive verbs. Agent-Patient-Theme-Predicate, Modifier-Main
proposed. Also a quite interesting free order scheme (see Mathias's post).


* Mixing speech parts:
>A way of mixing them?
>Tense could be used in either nominal phrases (Agent, Patient, etc) or
>predicates.
>Aspect: perfect aspect mark = definite article mark?, how about other
>aspects?
>Gender: animate/inanimate gender = dinamic/static predicates?
I agree with the idea of perfect (verb) = definite (noun). It's original
and sounds excellent. I don't like that gender idea...
We could have tense markers on nouns.

* Adjectives: the only proposal so far is to have them behave like verbs,
which also gets rid of copulative "to be" and allows many derivations.
I agree on the proposal.

* Tone, stress, length: tone is difficult (we could use pitch, but
that would definitely make this a Japanese clone ;). Vowel length is
easy for me. For English speakers, we could certainly allow variants
such as long /e:/ being both [e:] and [eI]. Someone proposes stress
rules? Possible ones are: final-syllable, first-syllable, Latin-style
(before penult if short syllables, penult otherwise), irregular (more
difficult to remember, but could be used to mark roots or to make
grammatical distinctions). Votes?

* Grammatical gender: none, logical, or arbitrary? Proposals:
1. masculine, feminine, neuter (extensible)
2. north, south, east, west
3. thought, feeling, material phenomenon, action, physical state, yellow
strawberry, conlanger (*very* extensible ;)
4. sounding, yelling, white, wet and sourronding (interesting!)
5. (thorough classification, withdrawn as a proposal, but still useful
for semantic fields:

> Animate
>   Person (any thing able to speak, wath ever speak would mean)
>     Human being
>     Deity
>     Corporation
>     Alien
>   Animal
>     Domestic compaining animal
>     Cattle
>     Wild animal
>     Insect and other small animals
>     Microscopic animals
>   Weather and natural phenomena
> Inanimate
>   Living inanimate things
>     Parts of animate beings
>     Plants
>   Tangible non-living things
>   Intangible things
>
My idea:
6. round, square(d), flat, convex, concave, smooth, rough, big, small,
tall, short, wide, narrow, etc. (a logical physical gender, at least for
inanimate things, with several dimensions; maybe only optionally marked)


* Gender agreement: where do we mark gender? Possible ones:
1. nouns
2. nouns and adjectives (whatever they are)
3. nouns and verbs
4. everything modifying a noun
Rhyme, rhythm and alliteration are easier with agreement.
This is important for me -- I like singy-songy sentences and
spontaneous (as well as planned) rhyme. Do we have a poet in
this group by any chance?


* Harmony: nobody mentioned vowel harmony so far. I mentioned nasal
harmony (for consonants, not for vowels), i. e. some affixes could
have two allophones, one nasal and one oral (for example -pi and -mi)
according to the neighbouring consonants.

* Phonology:
1. Vowels: i y e a o u (agreed so far I think)
2. Consonants:
stops   p b t d k  g  q qg
frics   f v s z kh gh       h
nasals  m   n   ng
approx  w   j
others      l r

where <qg> = /G"/ (voiced uvular stop) (my transliteration). /q/ and /G"/ can be
left out if someone really can't manage to pronounce them (speak now or forever
hold your complaints :). Clusters /tj/, /sj/ also [tS], [S]. /h/ is inconsistent
with the rest, I think. <r> pronounced trilled, flapped, retroflex or whatever
you please.

* Syllable structure: C[w, y, r]V[V][F], where [F] = a generic nasal, a fricative,
or /l/ or /r/. A generic nasal should assimilate to the next place of articulation,
thus /m/ before a labial, /N/ <ng> before a velar, /n/ otherwise.

I think that's about it. Anybody can make corrections now... If something here
is not discussed any further, I think we should consider it approved and settled,
do you agree?


Just to finish this, we haven't said much about verbs. The Japanese
-te verbal forms Mathias explained seem fascinating, as well as the
other verb inflections. In my opinion, there should be a way to
derive these aspects:

"I do"
"If I do"
"Regardless that I do"
"I'm done"
"I make do"
"I'm made to do"
"As a result, I do"
"Because I do"
"At the same time I do"

etc. (plus perfective, progressive, etc. in all tenses). Some of
these should be combinable by simple agglutination.

BTW, I've been reading some Georgian grammar and I found a term
that maybe you don't know and would be useful for all of us:
_screeve_ (English pronunciation, /skri:v/), from a Georgian
word meaning "row". A screeve is a unique combination of aspect,
tense, and whatever inflections you attach to a verb. Just
FYI (I'm taking it up from now on ;)


--Pablo Flores