Re: New Language: Ano~'him (ACTUAL) Vair long

On Tue, Oct 12, 2004 at 07:32:53PM -0700, bob thornton wrote:
> Hello again, all. Last you saw of me, I'd been working on a rather
> blah IE style lang. Ish. Thingy. Right. Moving on, I've descided to
> begin work upon a rather stranger language, that is my first
> experiment with case and tone.
Very interesting.

[...]
> The tones are high, mid, low, rising, and falling.
>
> Phonotactics:
>
> Tone indicates what I call 'mood' on verbs and case on nouns.
Cool. I almost did something like this in Ebisédian, although it
turned out to have vowel contour instead of tone contour to go along
with case marking.

[...]
> Now, on to grammar.
Ah, my favorite part. ;-)


> It is a free order language (my first!) due to the cases, though it
> is generally SVO
> It has four grammatical genders: sentient being, non-sentient being,
> 'thing' (ie non-sentient, non-living object), and ideas. Each is
> indicated by the first vowel in the first syllable of the word.
Very interesting system. By 'ideas' I presume you mean abstract nouns?


[...]
> There are only pronouns for first and second person. For third
> person pronouns, one uses demonstratives.
Cool. I may adapt this idea for Tatari Faran, which doesn't yet have
3rd person pronouns. :-)

[...]
> Cases are determined by tone:
>
> mid = nom, high = voc, low = acc, rising = dat, falling = inst.
>
> Others are indicated by the tone and the voicing of the consonant
>
> mid, voiced = gen, high voiced = ben, low voiced = com
Interesting. If I were you, though, I'd put in additional contrasting
features to distinguish between cases.


> Demonstratives have a two way distance distinction, and they express
> speaker listener orientation, and gender distinction. Vowels
> indicate gender. To pluralize, voice the last consonant.
>
> Near speaker sg - |rh-t| /r-t/
> Far from speaker sg - |r-t| /4-t/
> Near listener sg - |l-t| /l-t/
> Far from listener sg - |lh-t| /L-t/
> Near both sg - |w-t| /P-t/
> Far from both - |wh-t| /j-t/
Hmm. Voicing the last consonant gives final /d/ vs. final /t/. That
seems to be a pretty difficult distinction to pronounce, IME, esp. if
you have no audible release after the consonant. (I know this 'cos
some Ebisédian pronouns have this problem in the nullar, which made me
give them irregular forms.)


> Now, onto verbs. There are only three verbs: To be, to do, and to
> go. There are five base tenses: Far past, near past, present, near
> future, and far future. They are suffixed onto the verb.
Interesting. So if you wanted say "he builds the table" you'll have to
say "he does the building of the table"?


[...]
> There are also 'complicated' tenses: constant, finished action,
> gerund, abiliative (can do) desirative (want to), imperative (have
> to)  and infinitive. They are suffixed onto the verb.
Nice. I think I should have this in Tatari Faran, instead of using
auxiliaries like English.


[...]
> The four moods are statement, interrogative, command, and refutive.
> These are represented by tones. High tone is statement, low tone is
> interrogative, rising tone is command, falling is refutative.
Refutative?


[...]
> Any opinions? Likey? Dislikey? I apologize for the regularity, but
> Ano~'him is just beginning.
[...]

Sounds like a very interesting conlang. If I understood you right,
there are only 3 verbs in the language, and to form other verbs you
compound them with, say, a gerund or something? I like this minimal
verb idea. :-)


T

--
When solving a problem, take care that you do not become part of the problem.

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