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Re: me and my languages

From:David Peterson <digitalscream@...>
Date:Monday, September 10, 2001, 5:42
    I'm David, I'm twenty, and I haven't been inventing languages for a year
yet (October will be my one-year anniversary).  I've about 7; I'm working on
all at the same time.  Incidentally, I came up with a new idea.  I started to
created an agglutinative language in which just about all information was
coded into the verb.  When, however, other phrases were necessary (such as,
if you wanted to emphasize the subject or the object, or whatever), I was
thinking that you could have a satellite affix to attach to whatever form
that would stand outside the verb.  I'm sick, so I don't know if I'm
explaining well...  Let me give an example:

Verb root: masa (to eat)
Pronouns: wi (1st person, sing.), ne (3rd pers. sing.), la (2nd. pers. sing.)
[these aren't real forms, by the way; I'm just making them up for the sake of
the example.
Tense: Present (unmarked), Past ya, Future ke
Aspect: Indicative (unmarked), habitual fa, perfective se, irrealis wo,
progressive va
Subject: Same subject a, New subject u

The order would be: (subject status)-(subject pronoun)-(direct object
pronoun)-(verb root)-(indirect object pronoun)-(tense)-(aspect)-(beneficiary)

    So, if you wanted to say "I will be eating it for you", you'd say:
uwinemasakevala.

Now, this idea I had is more conceptual, in that I picture the verb as an
octopus who can shoot its ink out to make its presence known, but it doesn't
have to.  So, let's say you wanted to emphasize the "for you" part.  You'd
use some sort of preposition like "pa" to mean "for", and it could be
said/written either:

1.) pa la uwinemasakevala; or 2.) uwinemasakevala pa la.

    Anyway, I think I'm realizing my question here.  Is it feasible that
there could be a language with no preferred word order whatsoever since all
the information is encoded in the verb?  I was also toying with the idea of
putting entire relative clauses inside the verb...  Anyway, I've never
actually studied an agglutinating language, so I'm stumbly a bit blindly.
Speaking of which, is there anyone here who speaks Swahili?

-David

Replies

Yoon Ha Lee <yl112@...>
Thomas R. Wier <artabanos@...>