Re: New Romlang, unnamed

En réponse à Shreyas Sampat <ssampat@...>:

[snip interesting proposal]

>
> Woohoo.  Comments?  How naturalistic is this?
>
Well, the drive that made object pronouns get in front of the verb could have
been strong enough to act on nouns too.

The result, though strange, doesn't strike me as unnaturalistic. Indeed, Rhaeto-
Romance languages and Northern Italian languages have a similar feature, but
with subject pronouns. In those languages, the subject pronoun became
mandatory, even when the subject was expressed. These subject pronouns reduced
gradually into so-called "particles", often a single vowel, which partly agree
in person and number with the subject.

Another possibility, maybe more naturalistic, would be that object pronouns
became mandatory before the verb, even when the object was specifically
expressed. Those object pronouns would then evolve into "particles" agreeing in
person, number and gender (even if only partly, or only in number) with the
object. If, like in French, most phonetic marks of number disappeared on nouns,
this particle may become the only thing that would mark the number of the
object. In that case, it would probably be written separately from the verb
though.

Whadyathink?

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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