Re: What is needed in an conlang classificatory system?
| From: | jesse stephen bangs <jaspax@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Wednesday, January 31, 2001, 23:25 |
|---|
Rik Roots sikayal:
> For what it's worth, my views are that the system could be
> extended, but not necessarily along the hierarchical system
> employed in the current classification.
>
> Languages can be artificailly divided along the lines of
> arbitrary, but significant properties of the language. For
> instance, a system could ask for each languages to be classified
> for three or four significant features. eg:
What you have here looks like a good start, but I'd add some stuff to it
to make it more universally applicable, and more informative. The
additions I'd suggest are shown below
A. is the language...
1. Spoken by humans or human-like creatures (such as elves) in an
alternate timeline of Earth
2. Spoken by humans or human-like creatures in a fictional/fantasy world
unrelated to Earth
3. Spoken by non-humans in a fi setting that includes Earth
4. An artificial auxillary or constructed language
5. Other (eg a language for communicating with machines)
B. is the major source of the language's words...
1. mostly developed from natural languages
2. mostly constructed a-priori
3. neither of the above
C. is tone used in the language to convey...
1. mainly grammatical features
2. mainly instances of emphasis within the spoken flow
3. none of the above/not spoken
D. is the interaction between objects and actions mainly shown
through a grammatical system of...
1. SOV variations
2. ergative
3. active
4. something else/not applicable
and possibly:
E. Are most of the grammatical relations in the language shown by . . .
1. Positional characteristics (word-order and prepositions)
2. agglutinative affixes
3. flexional endings
4. other/doesn't apply
F. For indicating existential statements or nominal statements, does the
language use
1. A copula
2. Zero-copula
3. A copular affix somehow incorporated into one of the other sentence
constituents
4. Other/doesn't apply
etc, etc.
> etc.
>
> The classification would thus be A.B.C.D (in this system Gevey
> would classify as 2.2.3.1, rather than the ubiquitous 2.1.2 of
> the current system)
>
> I'm sure the professional linguists could come up with a better
> set of properties, while keeping the system as simple as
> possible for amateurs like me to follow...
I hope the things I added aren't too difficult. It makes Yivríndil into
2.2.2.1.2.3--which is a lot of 2's and a long string of digits. Hmm,
maybe something simpler should be used.
Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
"It is of the new things that men tire--of fashions and proposals and
improvements and change. It is the old things that startle and
intoxicate. It is the old things that are young."
-G.K. Chesterton _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_