Re: A really odd language: Tolborese

Quoting "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@...>:

> On Sun, Sep 01, 2002 at 06:47:40PM -0700, Nihil Sum wrote:
> > But I've got some other excuses too:
> > Marking both participants means I could move them around, using different
> > word order (PVA, AVP, VAP etc) since it is clear which is the patient and
> > which is the agent.
>
> A good ole case system would allow this too. But of course, since you're
> going for counter-intuitive...
Well, his system *is* a case system.  It marks grammatical
roles quite explicitly.  It just does so in a way quite
unlike most human languages.

> > Leaving the verb unmarked means I can come up with all kinds of very
> > specific tenses and moods without having to inflect these for each person
> > and number.
>
> Now *that* is nice. Although one might argue that there's no need for
> verbs to inflect for person anyway (but that's just my tastes).
I tend to favor head marking languages, so all my languages
have verbal cross-reference.

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Thomas Wier
Dept. of Linguistics  "Nihil magis praestandum est quam ne pecorum ritu
University of Chicago sequamur antecedentium gregem, pergentes non qua
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