Re: Third report on Koni - some grammar

Arthaey wrote:

> Vep'Jessica emaelivpeith Daniel Andreasson:
What does that mean? "Wrote Jessica according to Daniel"? :)

> Hey, that's Asha'ille's verb form!  But the |-v| stays in all forms of the
> verb, whereas Jessica drops it off during conjugation, like Spanish (and
> Romance languages in general? I've only studied Spanish, so I don't know
> about the rest).
I don't know, but the Spanish influence on Koni is no
coincidence. (Influence from other Romance languages might
be coincidental, Jessica is just like you. She has only
studied Spanish.)

> What's the basic word order?  The first sentence above is VSO, the second
> OVS (if incorporated/conjugated subjects count for word order -- and what's
> the difference between pronoun-incorporation and conjugation?).
As I think I said in another post, we'll see.

As regards the difference between pronominal affixes and conjugation
I'm not an expert on the matter, but agreement is there just to point
out what the subject is. If there are any full NP's (like "bird" or
"the evil overlord Sauron", there will still be a suffix indicating
person on the verb. If the subject is a pronoun, then you can drop
it: pro-drop. I think this is how Koni works.

If a language has pronominal affixes (like Quenya or Guarani), then
they are actual pronouns, which are just put on the verb instead of
being free-standing. They don't show up if the subject is a full NP.
And if the subject is a pronoun, then the affix itself is the actual
subject, which an agreement affix isn't. I hope that made sense.

> Is this an a priori or posteriori?
It's a priori, but with influences from Spanish (grammatically/phonologically)
and Russian (phonologically). Words are completely a priori afaik.

> Is there an associated conculture?
She does have a conculture from her younger days, but I'm not
sure how developed it is and if Koni is supposed to be set in
that surrounding.

> How does syllable stress work?  How long has she been working on Koni?
Questions, questions. :) This is all AFAIK, but syllable stress is
always on the penultimate. If it isn't (as in the case of the
language name itself) it's marked with an acute accent. Or a ' in
ASCII, so it would be Koni' on this list. I can recommend reading
the pdf-file I uploaded at http://home.swipnet.se/escape/koniphon.pdf.

> Why hasn't she joined the list herself yet?  :)
I don't know! I think she's a bit overwhelmed just by the fact that
she's found out that *I'm* a conlanger. But I think I've convinced
her to at least join the list and go nomail, so she can read and
answer messages specifically about Koni.

Daniel Andreasson

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