Re: OT: Punctuation

* Gustavo Eulalio (guga@guganet.8m.com) [991205 14:36]:
>         How do you guys deal with punctuation in your conlangs? How
> do languages that don't have punct. marks express the same thing? How
> could we possibly improve or simplify our punctuation system?
Much of the punctuation in English is expressed with words in ta:ruven,
there's the word-class 'frontwords' that serves this purpose. They
cannot be preceeded by anything, hence the name.

An example is <vren>, the ordinary imperative.

Words are separeted with spaces, but no period is needed as sentences
are supposed to be short, only one line each. Instead, continuation of a
line is marked by indenting it somewhat, so you might have (mock-up
example):

fghfgh ghjgjh hjkhjkh klhjkhhjkhjk h liuluioio
    ghjghj lkjkljk lkjlkjkl lkjkljkljk lkjklj ljlk
    hjh kljkljkl =F8k=F8kl=F8 =F8kl=F8kl=F8 =F8lkl=F8k =F8lkl

in potential legalese for example. I don't have many examples of reported=
=20
speech, those I have sorta avoids the question of quoting as they all use
experiencer-verbs meaning 'speak' or 'sing' etc., and as I might have
said before, the experiencer-verbs functions as complementizers and/or
subjoiners:

    =EFa=ECa ule=ECne s=EFa=F2yel  =20
    =EF-   a=ECa   ule=ECne s=EFa=F2y -el
    FOC- never sing   wind  -EXP
    "never!" sings/sang/sung the wind

Marking it in the transliteration... with pipes, perhaps?=20


tal.