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Re: Universal Translation Language

From:Charles <catty@...>
Date:Monday, May 31, 1999, 13:32
Joshua Shinavier wrote:
> > Charles wrote: > > In my experiments it seems impossible to have part-of-speech terminal > > vowels and SVO order without eventually gravitating to adjective-noun. > > Aroven uses terminal vowels and -VC suffixes for all parts of speech > except the subject (although the subject often gets a suffix as well, > 'specially if it's plural, or has an article, etc.) and is firmly > noun-adjective.
> In my language, adjective-noun seems very awkward, so I'm wondering how > you came to the above conclusion!
Genitive chains, e.g. "the king's messenger's horse's hoof's shoe's nail" vs. "nail of shoe of hoof of horse of messenger of king". I like the 1st, can't tolerate the 2nd, so it has to be GN ... then that drags the adjectives leftward as well, though some natlangs do have GN with NA order. But I've been putting adjectives-with-objects to the right of the noun, e.g. "bona minfemo vadia xolo = pretty little-girl going-to school", which is likely incorrect or inoptimal in 12 different ways. Also I end up compounding in modifier-modified order, maybe not so good. It's a sort of relexed New Jersey 1960's English after all.