Re: New Language Sketch (was Re: Conlang Gender)

Nik Taylor wrote:
>
> nicole perrin wrote:
> > abstract concepts, men, women, children, animals, other living things,
> > fantasy-type creatures/things, inanimate objects
>
> This is a really odd hierarchy.  Abstract concepts should probably be
> just before inanimate objects.  Human is usually the first item in a
> hierarchy.
The hierarchy was almost arbitrary, but I think it was somehow
influenced by studying transcendentalism in English class and
discussions about defending ultimate truths, or something.  But also, I
thought it would be sort of cool to imply that abstract concepts could
be more important than men.  But if I'm going to take so much abuse for
it...no, but I've never cared *too* much about making conlangs
naturalistic, but I like to make them do fun things, like count
abstracts as more important than people.

> Very interesting that there's a distinction between adult and child, and
> between fantasy and "real" animals.
Yes, because I couldn't decide whether I'd count something like a
unicorn as an animal or an abstract concept...then I said hey, why not
just come up with something altogether different?!

Also, I vaguely remember some idea about people who believed in god(s)
using them as abstract concepts so they would be above everything else
and people who didn't believe using them as fantasy creatures, putting
them low on the hierarchy list and being pretty darn disrespectful -
thought it could make for some interesting concultural
discussions/disagreements.  And I came up with the conlang during church
one Sunday.

>
> > SVOA  where A is the auxiliary.
> >
> > Comments?  Especially about the case marking stuff, I really want to
> > know what I was trying to do so I can clarify it in my own mind - these
> > notes are pretty old and illegible.
>
> Why have a strict word-order with case-marking?
It's not strict, just neutral.  If you wanted to stress some other
element of the sentence you'd put it first, like latin i think, right?

Nicole