shdeete

rob wrote:
>Hi Byron,
>good to see you are back on the conlang list!
>I'm lurking lately, but I'm very interested what is the status of Shdeete?
>Do you have some more grammar yet? I'm very interested!
>Rob
greetings, rob!

it's been a while, but i couldn't stay away. i WISH i had more grammar for
sdeete worked out, but sadly, no. i was hoping to do a ton of it this last
summer, but my home-life decided to go to pot instead. bleah. (and just in
case i needed any more self-pity, a song called 'sucks to be you' just
started playing on the radio)

however, if you just need a taste to tide you over, i have the sdeete number
system sketched out (the cardinals, anyway). The basics (n#'s 1-10) are an
impressionistic cobbling-together of a priori and quebec east cree forms.

1  pêc       11  pêcap       21  ništo-tâne usa-pêc    'usa' is the
comitative
2  ništo     12  ništosap    22  ništo-tâne usa-ništo  case marker, denoting
3  nece      13  necesap     23  ništo-tâne usa-nece   'with'
4  kêwat     14  kêwacap     24  ništo-tâne usa-kêwat
5  hiyan     15  hiyanep     25  ništo-tâne usa-hiyan
6  kaptwaš   16  kaptwašap       etc...
7  pâšte     17  pâstesap    100        tomitanaw, pêcetomitanaw
8  âton      18  âtonep      1,000      mitâswâk, pêcemitâswâk
9  nupayok   19  nupayoksap  1,000,000  mîwon, pêcemîwon
10 nimkutât  20  ništo-tâne

for numerals that end in 9, there are two systems:

59 hiyan-etâne usa-nupayok - '5-DECIMAL MARKER COMITATIVE-9'
                                    = 'fifty with nine'
          or

59 pêc anâmi-kaptwaš-etâne - '1 SUBESSIVE-60-DECIMAL MARKER'
                                    = 'one underneath sixty, one less sixty'

an example of a larger number: 1,962

            >this is where this system gets scary, it's rather... large.<

pêcemitâswâk usa-nupayôketomitananaw usa-kaptwaš-etâne usa-ništo -
     = one-thousand COM-nine-hundred COM-6-DECMARK COM-two


so........there it is. any questions?

as for my signature phrase, 'pâtakimwukêc atimwêšup apiyêšupim
ecanukwûpôk?',
it means 'hast thou never seen a dog sitting in a tree?'

it's really, really old shdeete - 2 years or so, so it doesn't bear much
resemblance to the language now, but keep it in my sig anyway.

parsing:

       pâta-ki-mwuk-ê-c     atim-wê-šup    api-yê-supim     ecanuk-wûp-ôk
     see-2S-NEGadv-PST-INT  dog-ACC-FOC    sit-PST-FOCREF    tree-DAT-LOC

as you can see, it has a needless amount of cases and such grammatical
protuberances flying about... rather ugly, but i find the sentence in its
entirety to be eye candy at its finest. in sdeete's present incarnation, it
would look like.... ugh. i don't know. will poke through my notes and piece
it together tonight.

Woo! byron.