Re: CONLANG Digest - 17 Nov 2003 to 18 Nov 2003 (#2003-325)

--- Aquamarine Demon <aquamarine_demon@...>
wrote:

> But none of that's borrowed! [w] > gw is
> typical
> of Northern and Western Romance; ne...X is also
> typical of Northern Romance (compare with
> Brithenig which has only ne...rhen).<<
>
> Excuse my ignorance, but what other Romance
> languages use ne...X?
French and Brithenig. Not sure about Jervaine! ;)

> And what
> languages, specifically, are you referring to
> when you say Northern and
> Western Romance? Just curious. :)
In IB, there is a whole branch of Romance that
was stillborn *here*, namely the Latin spoken by
the Romano-British, and if history had gone right
would be called the British branch of Romance (in
the same way there are Gallic, Hispanic etc.
branches of Romance.

I think that linguists and philologists in IB
would categorise the British branch as being a
little closer to the Gallic than any other
branch. It being the farthest north and being
even more Celtic influenced than French would be
distinguished by the general designation
"Northern Romance". It is differentiated from
"Eastern Romance" (Romanian, Wenedyk and
Dalmatian); "Western Romance" (Francien, Gaulósc,
Catalunyan and Castilian) and "Central Romance"
(all the Italian dialects).

They also have a scheme that divides British
Romance into relevant groupings: Eastern British
Romance is the extinct but posited branch that
would have developped in eastern Britain (around
London) had the Bloody Saxon not paid a visit;
Western British Romance gives rise to Kerno and
its littermates; Northern British Romance gives
rise to Britheno-Cumbrian and Votadinian.
Votadinian is extinct, though has a literature
still studied by Kemrese scholars, and  is a
possible influence on the development of
Breathanach. The Cumbrian part of
Britheno-Cumbrian is not faring well, as it is
politically English.

> >> > feaire~ faire
>
> Fair enough. That one was borrowed from Anglo
> Norman.<<
>
> Ah, I see... Cool! :)
A couple other verbs were also borrowed from
Ang-N in that way: cheistir (arrest), puhoeir
(can, be able) at least.

> For example, it would have been more typical to
> say "Domclam' me il
> Gouiliame"; and "domays mi y vratheor zew, il X
> et-z-el Y; et yan seieur, la Zeth.
>
> Hm... well... I can't make much sense of that,
> actually. :/
Allright! Now we're cooking with charcoal. That's
more Native; the other is not incorrect but
reflects a sort of greatest common denominator of
Kerno's Romanity. These Native forms reflect its
maximum Celticity. Or at least its usual ornerny
nature.

> A lot of the
> vocab seems familiar, but I can't find enough
> grammatical clues to try to
> put it together.
Domclam' me il Gouiliame

Kerno has the ability to prepend function words
called preverbs, which in turn are able to
support infixed pronouns. The verb llamar means
call out or shout; the verb doclamar-si mean name
or call oneself. Infixing -m-, the 1s object
pronoun, indicates the person being named, that
is, me. For reasons of euphony, I chose to drop
the -mi (1s reflexive pronoun); else it would be
"domclam-mi me", which a wee bit excessive even
for Kerno!

[Mind you, restating something four times over
this way is not foreign to Kerno, especially in
demonstrative pronouns, the emphatics of which
might have a string of four or five pronominal
forms all jambed together.]

domays mi y vratheor zew, il X et-z-el Y; et yan
seieur, la Zeth.

Kerno is very fond of showing possession with the
dative, and there are two easy ways of doing it.
This one uses the preverb do- (which means to or
at) prepended to aver (which means have, like
avoir). Using the appropriate infixed pronoun and
the 3s either active or impersonal of aver will
render a phrase that means "there is to X":
do+m+ays = at me it has. The alternative being
domaveor.

The other way of using the dative to show
possession is to construct a "do clause". This
uses the same word "do", but in stead of it being
a preverb it is now a plain preposition. Fronting
the dative noun or pronoun phrase in the sentence
(usually with a null copula) yields a sentence
that means "to me a/the X".

I could have thus written "do mi y vratheor
zew...". This latter is extremely common and is
the prefered way of constructing sentences like
"My brothers took the motorcar into Esca to see a
movie" = "Do mi y vratheor zew
et-z-entrawspeuwsount-el lê motoercar a-z-al
ncastra po ghouezer d' yen theateor." Literally,
"At me brothers two and onward-drove the motorcar
to the town by-way-of looking on a theater".
Hm... your conlang seems very

Lastly, there is the matter of initial mutations.
For various reasons, the initial sound of certain
kinds of word are mutated. Plurals generally
suffer from lenition, which changes B to V, M to
V, D to DH, etc. So: il  bratheors / y vratheor
is a matter of singular to plural number.

> interesting, though; I like it. :)
Ta!

Padraic.


=====
la cieurgeourea provoer mal trasfu ast meiyoer ke 'l andrext ben trasfu.


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