Re: Alien conlang idea

Staving J. 'Mach' Wust:
>On Tue, 20 Jul 2004 09:49:19 +0100, Peter Bleackley
><Peter.Bleackley@...> wrote:
> >>Is there an example where a noun marked with 'uo' wouldn't make sense as
> >>the experiencer of the appropriate verb, or where 'oae' wouldn't make
> >>sense in the dative case? I could see 'give' as the agent/essive as well,
> >>though I wouldn't conclude that just from this example.
> >
> >To a certain extent they do, but I don't imagine them being limited to
> >those roles. Let's see, if we suppose ltr (message) and __aa (be), we could
> >have
> >
> >osalfe ltara
> >
> >I-recieve message-be
> >
> >There is a message which I recieve, or I recieve a message.
>
>This could be considered to be a dative, too: There is a message to me.
Let's see,

gst (guest) u_e_ (come)

osalfe ugset

I-receive guest-come

I receive a guest.

Again, it could be parsed as "A guest comes to me", but then, I suppose, so
could the translation. In any natlang, there is semantic overlap between
words, which in practice is what would be the difference between verb
patterns and cases - besides, does it really make sense to talk of a 2160
case system? Maybe it does, in which case this language has no verbs at
all! But generally, 2160 members looks more like an open class than a
closed class in practical terms, and I would generally restrict the term
"case" to refer to a closed class. Still, neither noun or verb can exist as
an independent word in this language, which is I think its most alien feature.

I wonder how native speakers would analyse it. As they are presumably
non-human, they would probably not use anything directly translatable into
our human-language derived terms. Their world view presumably does not
regard objects and actions as separate things - an object must be seen in
terms of its actions, and an action in terms of the object performing it.

I also wonder how this language handles modifiers. At first I considered
stative verbs, but now I'm considering them more noun like, for example

rdj (red thing) _ee_ send

rdaja lturo selef

red-thing-be message-undergo I-send

I send a red message.

Pete