Re: New Site: New Language: Tyl-Sjok

Henrik Theiling wrote quite a while back (sorry about the
belated reply):

> > I have borrowed most of it from Central Pomo. Where did
> > you get your influences from?
> Actually, I kind of `found out' the above distinction by
> discussions with non-linguist friends.  I keep them busy
> with thinking about `what if a language' suggestions. They
> are not influenced by any theory, so they think more freely
> and philosophically.
You have some nice friends! Mind if I borrow some of them? :)

I've actually tried asking such questions to my friends, but
most of them are either linguists or study Swedish (as their
job, that is). So for some reason they don't take me seriously.
Or perhaps too seriously... But asking my "linguistically
challenged" friends... Hmm... That's a pretty good idea.

> It would be nice to read more about agentive languages,
> though, since I really have no idea how to decide how to do
> things in some cases.  Do you have good sources? Central
> Pomo sounds like something to look at, I did not do that yet.
I'm trying to finish my BA-thesis on the subject. I could send
you a copy when I'm done (deadline for final draft May 8th, but
don't expect me to keep it ;) ).

As for the time being, I could send you my list of references
and the introduction. Of course, it's just my ideas and the
ideas about active languages seem to differ quite a bit between
people.

> The main influences of Tyl-Sjok are: Mandarin Chinese (almost
> isolating) and the idea to make a purely isolating, simple
> language (I cut it down to *one* grammar rule (of course, with
> a lot of corollaries) and *two* kinds of categories).  Another
> influence were discussions about agentive languages on this list.
> Without, Tyl-Sjok would have become nominative.
Lucky us we had that discussion! I'd really like to make a
totally isolating language once. I wonder why so many conlangs
make use of either case or agreement and so few of word order
when it comes to keeping track of the arguments. Or perhaps
they do use word order? This was just my gut feeling.

> > This is very cool! :)
> Yes! :-)
Weeeeee!!! :)  [Sorry, just had to.]

> The example with `peculiar' is really good.  If you don't mind,
> I'll quickly translate that into Tyl-Sjok (where's my word-
> generator, there's no `peculiar' yet...).
I coined the word from the name of one of my best friends. _jin-_
is to be "peculiar, different, special in the best imaginable way".

Unless it's used with AGT of course... :)

Perhaps you could use the word "jin", as a borrowing from Rinya? :)

> Another thing: compared to Rinya, I have less cases in Tyl-Sjok,
> namely only two: agentive and patientive.  Both are morphologically
> unmarked (->isolating) and only marked by word order.
That is so neat! As minimalistic as can be. I liked Jörg's Nur-ellen's
way to mutate the initial consonant, but that would still be "case".
I've never seen a language marking its "activity" by word order
alone. Or have I? Hmm... Can't think of any example. I know
Acehnese does something similar. Agent clitics precede the verb and
patient clitics come after the verb, but I'm not sure if it's the
same word. I mean if it's "I:AGT-fall" vs. "fall-I:PAT" where "I"
is the same in both cases or if it's "I:AGT-fall" vs. "fall-me:PAT".
I'll have to take a closer look at that.

> Other semantic rules have to be either rendered by additional verbs
> (e.g. for locative) or by embedding (in this case for experiencers).
> That's why 'I love you' is not rendered with ablative but by a
> second patient applied on the embedded structure `to love you'.
> So both `you' and `I' follow `to love'.
Aha! [ Okay, I'm out of exclamation marks. I think I've used my
share for this mail by now. :) ]  Could you give some more examples
of this embedding, with interlinears and all?

||| daniel

--
<> Qheil rynenya alandea! <> daniel.andreasson@telia.com <>
<>           Rinya lawea! <> www.geocities.com/conlangus <>

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