Re: Active, Was: Help with grammar terms

On Mon, 24 Jan 2000, Christophe Grandsire wrote:

>At 15:12 21/01/00 -0500, you wrote:
>>
>>namsit fraatarfraataruwiruáhucos harcaahacaawapucaranimamaatara-
>>paataracalcaracerwhoarathuutantas.
>>
>>Namum means take or scrape together (namsit is, surprise surprise,
>>past aorist). The next word is a compound of brother, brother, man,
>>horse; which means "twin warriors". The last word is a compound of
>>hound, horse, cattle, weapons, wives, mother, father, household goods,
>>and daughters (apparently in order of importnace). Cos and tas are the
>>ubiquitious articles "this" and "that". Thus: "The Heroes got together
>>all their goods and relations." Or literally: "Got together
>>twinbrotherhorsewarrior-the houndhorsekinespearwifemamapapa-
>>bowlhorndaughters-the."
>>
>
>       Wow! What a strange kind of compounding! Any natlang
>precedent? It looks nearly polysynthetic to me :) .
I read somewhere later that Sanskrit can compound this way. It's an
artistic element of the language, as I can't imagine "I'm shifting me
dog-horse-cow-wife-etc.-etc. to the next valley over" as an answer to
"So, what's up with you then?"

>>This sentence is VSO only because it's the first sentence in its
>>section of prose, and also happens to be the first sentence in the
>>story. Other sentences are regularly SOV.
>>
>
>       This is also a strange feature. Does it mean that word order
>is relatively free, and only stylistic constraints of literature ask
>for VSO at the beginning of prose? Or is it more a grammatical
>constraint?
>
That's a feature borrowed from one of Tallarians adstrate languages.
At first it was probably a stylistic or artistic convention. But it
has in recent centuries become a part of everyday speech. The "word
order" isn't quite as free as the "phrase order" in Tallarian. In the
sentence

   Ahamst potros-cos vellanus-tas-te; tos-he watar helum wewelti.
   (Came man-this hills-the-from; he-and water-to-drink he-wanted)

there are 11 words or 6 "phrases", which are unbreakable word groups.
One can rearrange the phrases but not the words:

   OK:
   Vellanus-tas-te potros-cos ahamst; wewelti watar helum tos-he.
   Watar helum wewelti tos-he; potros-cos ahamst vellanus-tas-te.

   Not OK:
   Cos potros ahamst te vellanus-tas, etc.

Most grevious is putting the postposition (te, from) in front of its
word. Twould be like saying "I am England from" in English. Even so,
SOV is still the most commonly used order.

>[snip of a very interesting conjugation]
>
>>
>>Tallarian doesn't have conjugations like Latin or Kernu (thank God);
>>only this distinction of thematic and athemiatic, the latter of which
>>is a rather small group of verbs.
>>
>
>       It's an interesting kind of Indo-European language. Where is
>it supposed to be spoken?
>
It shares a number of features with Hittite, because it is quite
archaic, not because of proximity. It is spoken, from the perspective
of someone in that world's European landmass, in the farthest reaches
of the Inscrutable Orient.

Most notably, it shares the two gender system (animate/inanimate); 3
numbers (S/D/Pl) where S & Pl are not completely distinguished and
pure dual usage is much reduced (i.e., the dual can be used for any
two things, not just natural pairs (cf. the paral in Tocharian which
is for natural pairs)); 8 cases in singular nouns, 4 in plural; two
personal pronoun forms (emphatic/unemphatic); two tenses (pres. and
past), also shared with Germanic; two verb types; two voices, though
the medio-passive is much reduced; postposing (noun+postposition).
With Tocharian, another "eastern" IE lang, and other IE langs, it
shares several verbal moods and familiar person endings (-o, -s, -t
like Latin, etc.), SOV order and articles like many modern languages.

The family to which Tallarian belongs was an early IE migration, the
people of which ended up in their present location some 2200 years ago
or so - only 600 years before the Eastern branches of what would
become Celtic, Germanic and Italic. There are Tallian-related langs
spoken over a fairly wide area, but with small populations that are
increasingly melding with other tongues.

Padraic.

>                                                       Christophe Grandsire
>                                               |Sela Jemufan Atlinan C.G.
>
>"Reality is just another point of view."
>
>homepage : http://rainbow.conlang.org
>
>