Re: A wacky language
From: | Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> |
Date: | Wednesday, February 4, 2004, 8:12 |
Quoting Trebor Jung <treborjung@...>:
> Merhaba!
>
> I'm interested in creating a wacky conlang, one with a crazy phonology,
> morphology, and syntax. Any features I should think about - that are crazy,
> unexplainable, or just weird?
It shall, of course, have to be Monster Raving Loony (ie, have one case for
transitive subject and object, and one for intransitive subject).
Phonologically, make sure it has the sublamino-velar trill (voiced and
voiceless), a full linguolabial series, distinguish dental vs alveolar vs
postalveolar vs retroflex vs palatal, syntactically determined alternation
between plain voiceless stops and preaspirated voiced nareal fricatives,
glottalization to indicate the locative case, and dissimilative tone sandhi
(low falling tone turns into high rising-falling before another low falling,
except utterance initial, where it goes extra high flat instead).
Your adpositions should be impositions (ie, go in the middle of the word).
Plural should be indicated by reduplication of the preceding word, and verbs
should be discontinuous (ie, consist of 2+ separate bits that go in different
places in the sentence). Evidentiality should be indicated by suppletion of
the verb stem, while imperative mood by reversing the tonal contour of the
verb, except on the third syllable from the right, if present.
Andreas
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