Re: Active, Was: Help with grammar terms

On Thu, 20 Jan 2000, andrew wrote:

> Am 01/19 09:37  Vasiliy Chernov yscrifef:
>
> > Vokhoman... where can I learn more about it?
> >
> At the moment only on this list or conculture as I haven't set up a page
> for it.  I think I'm going to have to start doing more work on it.  What
> started off as a project to design a possible conreligion is turning
> into a project on the relationship of a religion within a culture.  Its
> lexicon comes from the American Heritage Dictionary, its grammar is
> based on a recent Indo-European grammar translated from Dutch (I forget
> the author and title but it has been referred to on this list
> previously), and its culture is based on _Indo-European and the
> Indo-Europeans_.
Hmmm. Seems I've been scooped! I also have a PIE conlang,
Shemspreg, which uses many of the same sources (the Dutch
grammar must be the one by Robert Beeke; it's a very nice
summary, IMO).

Shemspreg actually started out life as a mock-IAL, but quickly
wandered away from an "IAL esthetic" to a (more-or-less) fully
fledged language complete with grammatical idiosyncracies. And
if I ever get a stretch of time away from class obligations, it
will appear on the web.

> On top of that it has some really fun sandhi stolen
> from Sanskrit.  They don't exist in this history but seem to exist in a
> kingdom in the equivalent of Central Asia in a fantasy world I explored
> some years ago.  I don't know if they will thank me for that - looks
> very dry and cold, but it has to do with a parallel interest in the
> story of Prester John.  Because of this connection they use Aramaic for
> the basis of their script.
I really like this, especially using Aramaic as the script. I
roughed out a Greek-derived script for Shemspreg, but the
language doesn't have a fictional setting yet since it was
originally intended as an IAL. I guess I'd better get on the
stick and put one together.

> Now I shall go and sit down and try and write up some verb paradigms
> which I've been meaning to do.  Enough rambling for now, I'll come back
> and ramble later!
I can do that for a common Shemspreg verb:

nem- 'take'
        nemes 'takes, is taking'
        enmi 'was taking'
        nenmi 'took'
        nement 'taking'
        nenment 'taken'

There are no separate person/number inflections. Tense is
distinguished by stem gradation* as well as suffixation: full
grade (nem-) and the suffix _-es_ mark present tense, and
reduced grade (-nm-) with the suffix _-i_ marks past tense.
Aspect (perfective/imperfective) is only distinquished in the
past tense; the prefix _e-_ marks the imperfective, and partial
reduplication* (in this case _ne-_) marks perfective aspect. The
participle ending _-ent_ is the same for both the present and
the past participles; the present participle is built on the
present stem, and the past participle is built on the perfective
stem (reduplicated reduced grade).

Dirk

[*] See my earlier post on morphological processes.

--
Dirk Elzinga
dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu