Re: me and my languages

On Sunday, September 9, 2001, at 10:42 PM, David Peterson wrote:

>     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:
>
I hope you get well soon.  :-(

> 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)
>
Pardon my ignorance; is "beneficiary" a technical term and what does it
signify exactly?

> 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.
>
That's a very vivid verb-image.  :-)  Unfortunately I don't have any
background in agglutinating languages, but...

>     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.
You're doing better than I would; I've never attempted one.  :-)
Well, say you wanted to emphasize "for you" *and* "because of me."  Wouldn'
t there have to be some way to connecting "for" with "you" and "because of"
  with "me" (to use a badly made up example), instead of mixing up the two?
   I guess you could do that with some sort of morphological marker...?

It also seems that word-order-ness then shifts to where affixes happen in
the verb (as per your "diagram" above with all the parentheses), so the
significance of order is at a different, um, unit?

Sorry if I'm making sense, either; I wait to be educated by those wiser
than I.

I'm interested in hearing the answer to this one too.  :-)

Yoon Ha Lee
who would like to work on conlanging, but doesn't have enough free time at
the moment, or knowledge of Japanese grammar (I have some resources, just
not the time)