Re: Saprutum & Meltyish

 On Thu, 31 May 2001, "Pavel A. da Mek" <pavel.adamek@...> wrote :

 > Morphology of an Semitic language inspired by Old Babylonian,
 > but heavily influenced by Meltyish
 > http://www.volny.cz/pavel.adamek/lang/jekr/mluvnice/morf.htm
 > but it is yet rather heap of notes than a synoptic document.

Well I get the general idea. Lots of parallels with Saprutum. I went for
a simpler phonology only three vowels /i a u/ (plus the recent /e/)
with the distinction of length lost. In the plural ending length was
replaced by doubling the vowel and filling the hiatus with a semi-vowel.
Then the dual was formed in the same way but with /r/ as the filler, and
the collective by analogy reworking the semitic -at- affix so that the
vowel changed with the case -atam -utum itim.

Whereas you've gone in for a complex case system, Saprutum keeps the three
basic Semitic cases, nominative, accusitive and genitive/dative. However
the enclitic prepositions could be viewed as a set of secondary cases :
be- (in at on) locative
le- (to for by) dative, instrumental
me- (from out of) ablative
ke- (like as) -- what's that called "conformative" ???

For more precision compound prepositions (prep. + noun) are used e.g.
betaHti - under, beneath (lit. "in the lower part of")
metaHti - from beneath
etc.

I couldn't figure out your verb system in any detail, too many Czech words.
In Saprutum only the Semitic "imperfect" conjugation has survived in a
modified form, there is no trace of the "perfect".

 > (Conculture: the Meltyish myth "Of Disappearance of Meltyland":
 > http://www.volny.cz/pavel.adamek/lang/meltj/zmizeni/disapp.htm )

Very interesting indeed. It looks like the Meltyish could have come from
the same stock as the Saprutum speakers, going south rather than north
once they got through the Straits of Gibralter and into the Atlantic.

I should write up my theories about their origins and migrations. Trouble is
I'm still sorting out their number systems, so that I can understand their
complex lunar calendar, so that I can understand their dating system ...
But I promise to write something soon.

Meanwhile my (unfinished) grammar is at :

http://home.clara.net/carrot/saprutum/grammar.html

and the writing system is explained in a postscript file :

http://home.clara.net/carrot/saprutum/alpha.ps

If you want to see how I've defined the font, view this file in a text
editor and scroll down about three pages.

Pavel, I realise it's probably not the sort of thing the Meltyish would
be interested in, but just for an exercise, would you like to try
translating "The Dog's Grave", it would bring out some of the differences
and similarities between our two languages. My version is at

http://home.clara.net/carrot/saprutum/dog.txt
http://home.clara.net/carrot/saprutum/dog.ps

Keith

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