Re: Middle Welsh (was Cein)

On Thu, 31 May 2001, Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...> wrote :

> Interestingly, my conlang Moten is not unlike Middle Welsh in that respect.
> In Moten, conjugation exists only periphrasticly, verbs existing only as
> non-finite forms (nominal IIRC) which must be declined and used with the
> auxiliaries atom (to be) or agem (to have) which are the only verbs to
> have finite forms. I kind of took the idea from Basque.
I love the way the Basque auxillary can sometimes have to agree in person
and number with subject, object and indirect object too! The poor little
auxillary ends up completly lost under the pile of prefixes, suffixes and
infixes that get piled upon it. You can see why the verbs ceased to be
inflected directly, it must have been a worse nightmare than the Old Irish
verb (don't even ask ...) As it is, the main verb marks tense and aspect,
with all the agreements thrown at the auxillary. There are still a handful
of verbs that get inflected directly, but I think they're probably mostly
intransitive and so only have a one-way agreement.

> I had thought that this was completely original, as I didn't borrow the
> idea from any language ...
Well as the Hainish say "there is nothing new under any sun"

> Christophe.
Keith

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