Re: New Conlang

As I mentioned on #conlang (at priscilla.ath.cx), I've decided to work
on a more "normal" conlang instead of my original 4D idea. After
thinking about it, I think I don't understand 4D enough to be able to
make a convincing conlang for it. So instead, I'm going to start on a
conlang situated on (gasp!) Earth, at an undisclosed, isolated
location, somewhere in the middle of a continent. This land, called
Fara ("the Plain"), is a highly volcanically-active land, cut off from
the rest of the world by a ring of mountains (stratovolcanoes). I'll
mention more about the conculture in the future, but first, some ideas
for the conlang:

1) I still like Ebisédian's case system, so I decided to hijack and
   adapt it. Instead of Ebisédian's 5 cases, though, there will only
   be 3 cases: the equivalent of the originative, conveyant, and
   receptive. I will probably rename them, since their functions may
   not be completely analogous to Ebisédian. There may be a 4th,
   unmarked case as well, tentatively called the "absolutive"
   (although I might rename that to avoid confusion with ergative
   langs, which this conlang is not).

2) Case is marked by optional postclitics, which are inflected for
   gender. They are:
	ka	masculine originative
	sa	masculine conveyant
	na	masculine receptive
   For feminine, /a/ becomes /ei/ [ej]; for neuter, it becomes /o/
   [o]. Unlike Ebisédian, grammatical gender does not necessarily
   correspond to biological gender.

3) An interesting feature of this conlang is that verbs "inflect" for
   mood by changing position in the sentence. The first NP in a
   sentence is always the "topic" or "focus" (ala Tamahí), and
   subsequent NPs are "arguments" (for lack of a better term). The
   word orderings for the moods are:
	indicative:	topic-verb-arguments
	interrogative:	topic-arguments-verb
	subjunctive:	verb-topic-arguments

   I haven't decided whether or not word order alone suffices to mark
   mood; currently, I'm considering having an interrogative and a
   subjunctive clitic attached to the verb in addition to the change
   in word order.

4) In the indicative, there may be a "finalizer" or "verb complement"
   (I don't know the term for this) tacked on at the end of the
   sentence. This is sorta a half-verb that complements, or completes,
   the action described by the verb. Roughly speaking, it functions
   like the "up" in the English phrase "shut him up", except that it's
   more verb-like. I don't have any concrete examples yet, but it
   could be something along the lines of "he burned the log charred"
   (he burned the log until it was charred), or "he smashed the rock
   shattered" (he smashed and shattered the rock). The English doesn't
   do justice to it, since the "finalizer" isn't describing a second
   action but is a complementing description in apposition to the
   verb.

   (Any natlang precedents for this? What is the proper terminology
   for it?)

5) As far as phonology is concerned, I've decided to keep it simple,
   and stick with the most basic phonetic inventory. So far, not
   really worked out yet, except that its affricates are [dz] and [ts]
   instead of [dZ] and [tS]. Stress placement will probably be a fixed
   distance from the end of the sentence (no local stress).

What do people think of this conlang so far? :-)


T

--
There are three kinds of people in the world: those who can count, and those
who can't.

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