Re: New Conlang

On Tue, Oct 12, 2004 at 06:54:38PM +0100, Ray Brown wrote:
> On Monday, October 11, 2004, at 08:44 , Mark J. Reed wrote:
[...]
> Not as far as I am aware. I dare say some odd linguistic school may use
> one or other term in an esoteric way. But 'topic' is used as a
> conventional label in the Philippine languages for an overtly marked NP
> that exhibits some, but not all, of the typical properties of subjects. As
> H. S. Teoh writes only of NPs, I wonder if he has that usage in mind.
> However, by making 'topic' and 'focus' synonymous, I'm not at all sure
> what he does mean.
Yes, I guess what I meant was this usage: i.e., exhibiting some of the
typical properties of subjects. I was trying to avoid using "subject"
because the case system of the conlang doesn't really have that
concept, being essentially a reduced form of the Ebisédian case
system. But in retrospect "subject" is probably more appropriate than
"topic" or "focus".

[...]
> >I *believe*,
> >however, that a "focus" is a new element in the conversation, appearing
> >for the first time in the sentence in question, while a "topic"
> >is an already-established element that may not even be explicit
> >in the sentence under discussion.
>
> That's basically it.
I see. Now the NP in question, although it's sorta like a subject, can
sometimes behave a bit like a focus. For example:

	san tse ka  hamra huu na  aram.
	man you ORG see   I   RCP see-COMPL
	"I see you, sir." Lit. "You sir, I see."

Another example:

	tse nei     haara sa  dutan?
	you RCP-fem noise CVY hear
	"Do you hear that noise?"

	haara sa  tse nei     dutan?
	noise CVY you RCP-fem hear
	"That noise: did you hear it?"

This looks like the fronting mechanism you describe later in your
post.


[...]
> In short, I was puzzled by H. S. Teoh's description of his new conlang
> because:
> (a) topic & focus have different meanings in a linguistic context;
> (b) neither topic nor focus need be a NP;
> (c) the analysis of a sentence into topic/comment is not always
> straightforward;
> (d) sentences do not always have focus.
I guess it should be "subject" then. Perhaps I should just accept that
subjects in this conlang necessarily behaves in odd ways sometimes,
because of the fact that it uses an Ebisédian-like case system. :-)

In conclusion, perhaps I can say (in a loose sense) that the
indicative is SVO (or more precisely SVOC, where C is the verb
complement), the interrogative is SOV, and the subjunctive is VSO.
With the caveat, of course, that the distinction between S and O is
blurry, as they can be interchanged without changing the meaning of
the sentence.


T

--
INTEL = Only half of "intelligence".

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