Re: R: Re: Spoken Thoughts ( My second, better formed, non crappy Language)

On Fri, 29 Dec 2000, Mangiat wrote:

> > Nothing wrong with that. My current project Igassik (name to be changed
> > soon) has no case distinctions. Furthermore, I've done work with a couple
> > natlangs that have no case.
>
> Many modern European languages do not have case: Romance languages, Germanic
> languages (except German, Icelandic and Faeroese), even a language which was
> so inflective in the past as Bulgarian has today lost its case system,
> iirc - Vasiliy?
Yes, but all these languages still have case distinctions in the pronoun
system, from what I recall. I'm talking about languages that have NO case
anywhere.

When I was younger I thought that cases were a strange
> feature only two ancient languages had: Latin and Greek (the ones I knew
> something about). How is the situation worldwide? Are there more languages
> with or withour a case system?
I think case is more common than no cases (counting languages that only
distinguish cases in the pronouns). But that is only a gut reaction to
what I've seen. I've never seen it discussed explicitly.

> > My conlang Telek only distinguishes verbs, nouns, and particles. No
> > adjectives, adverbs, or adpositions. That isn't unheard of at all in the
> > natural language sector -- some people even claim there are languages that
> > only have one part of speech, ie. verbs. (I'm skeptical - I think you
> > need at least verbs and nouns))
>
> Are these languages Amirindian ones? An old book of mine describes the
> verbal system of some Amerindian tongues as 'so powerful that nouns do
> appear as diminished.' It says that some langs use verbal phrases as 'I live
> here' to translate 'my house': is this true?
Yup, it is quite common for words in American Indian languages to be
nominalized verb phrases. For example, the word for table in Pima is
_nolaftakudh_ which breaks up as _nolaf_ 'eat', _ta_ 'result of X-ing',
and _kudh_ 'thing used in X-ing', so literally something like 'that which
is used in eating'. I cannot recall the exact word, but in Chickasaw TV
means something like 'see oneself on it'.

> > There are a few things you can do.
> >
> > 1) don't have either. Lots of languages don't have either.
> > 2) have the indefinite _a_ but not _the_.
> > 3) have both, like English.
>
> Why can't I have _the_ but not _a_?
Oversight. I've seen many more languages that have an indefinite but no
definite, but that is probably just an accident.

Marcus