Re: New Ideas... group project?

At 15:11 06/10/98 -0500, you wrote:
>I've been thinking in some new ideas about a new language with no part of
>speech disctintion for words themselves but a functional inflection.
>
>The idea is not having a verb-noun disctintion, any word would function as
>either subject, object,  predicate, location or modifier.  The disctiontion
>in a phrase would be held by an inflection, like a case afix, and other
>modifiers, like tense, number or evidence would be given as afixes.  A word
>acting as object could have a tense mark, as a word acting as predicate
>could have a number mark.
>
>Any sugestions to this?  I wouldn't like it to be too aglutinative... I've
>think in biliteral or triliteral roots.
>
>Idea is to make it speakable for human beings, and roots should be
>selfsegregating from modifiers.
>
>_____
>  Carlos Eugenio Thompson Pinzsn
>  http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/9028/
>
>
        My last project, Notya, is exactly what you're trying to do. It
doesn't make any difference between verbs, nouns, adjectives and even
postpositions! It is made of roots, that can be concatenated to create new
words (for instance: zheco: book can be analysed as zhe: related to the
reading, and co: thing) and only four terminations:
- n: existential terminative: the concept is being, and it is the end of a
phrase (it so can determine another phrase after it).
- nu: existential conjunctive: the concept is being, and it can't be the end
of a phrase (it can mean 'and' or can mean that the word following
grammatically determines it).
-m: processive terminative: the concept is acting, and it is the end of the
phrase.
-mu: processive conjunctive: the concept is acting, and it can't be the end
of the phrase.

But existential doesn't mean 'noun', nor processive means 'verb'. You can
use the processive with a root to make it an action noun (zhem: the act of
reading) and you can use the existential to mean 'to be' (zhen: to be the
reading). Moreover, you can use processive with what we would call the
subject to mean it is _really_ acting.

        The basic structure of the sentence is theme+rheme where:
- theme is what we're talking about, it is generally already known.
- rheme is what we say about the theme, it is the new information (so a
sentence can lack the theme when it's obvious, but can't lack a rheme).
The theme comes always first in the sentence, than we've got the rheme.

        The most important feature in Notya is that what we use as
prepositions can be used like verbs in Notya. For instance (I use ex for
existential, pr for processive, co for conjunctive and te for terminative):

en zhecon filedelikinu mam.
(me-ex.te book-ex.te Frederic-ex.co give-pr.te): I give the book to Frederic.

whereas:

en filedelikinu mam zhecon: I give _a_ book to Frederic.
(the newest information is at the far end of the sentence, so when you
didn't already talk of the book, you have to put it at the end of the
sentence. For that meaning, you can also use wo: importance, important, but
it is a little different:
en zheconu won filedelikinu mam: It's a book I give to Frederic.
(me-ex.te book-ex.co important-ex.te Frederic-ex.co give-pr.te)

Finally, if you want to add to the fact that you made an action, you can say:
em zhecon filedelikinu mam.
(me-pr.te book-ex.te Frederic-ex.co give-pr.te): _I_ give the book to Frederic.
You use the processive with 'e': me to explain that you acted something
(maybe it was dificult or it was really your will, it has lots of meanings).

        Well, I know I didn't explain well, but Notya is still a project and
I find difficult myself to use the concepts I defined (Notya is so far from
any of the languages I already know...).

PS: Sorry to have answered so late, but I was looking for my notes about
Notya (don't come at my home, as we say in France: "une chienne n'y
retrouverait pas ses petits"!).

                                                Christophe Grandsire
                                                |Sela Jemufan Atlinan C.G.

homepage: http://www.bde.espci.fr/homepage/Christophe.Grandsire/index.html