Re: 'Yemls Morphology

From: "Jeff Jones" <jeffsjones@...>

| Here's most of what I have so far on 'Yemls morphology. I know it's not
| very clear and I'd like to get some comments.

Hey I'm impressed!  And there are some similarities to my conlang.

| Words in 'Yemls are classified according to whether they represent actions
| or states. State words are classified according to whether they represent
| transient states or inherent states. The morphological paradigms partly
| depend on which of these classes a word belongs to. Action words will
| sometimes be called _verbs_, transient state words will sometimes be called
| _adjectives_, and inherent state words will sometimes be called _nouns_.
| The use of these terms only very roughly corresponds with their
| conventional usage. Also note that these classes also include words used as
| adverbs and prepositions.

Similar to what I have in Tech: there are three types of words; they are nouns,
verbs and "miscellaneous" (particles, pronouns, articles, conjunctions,
prepositions, interjections).  The first two are based on roots, or roots with
extensions, and have their own grammatical systems.  There can be grammatical
"crossover", that is, denominative nouns functioning as verbs, and nominative
verbs functioning as, what else, nouns.  Adjectives can be either type; they are
often classified as being more often one or the other.  The "misc." words are
the undeclinables, and many can function as prefixes/prepositions (see my
previous post on two in particular) or what not.

The action/state distinction transcends nouns and verbs, since theoretically,
any word can be made out to be a noun or verb.  But Tech has a split ergative
system which uses a nominative/accusative system for "state" verbs and
perfective aspect, and ergative/absolutive for "action" verbs and imperfective
aspect.

(The differing verb conjugations for perfect and imperfect aspects/tenses are
similar to Semitic.)

| Note: I have not attempted to distinguish between the terms inflection,
| clitic (en- and pro-), and affix (suffix and prefix), using the last set
| for all.

Tech is inflected big time, usually caused by internal changes caused by affixes
(especially infixes used in verb classes, again a Semitic borrowing).

A language that uses only affixes to express grammatical functions is called
"agglutinative"; inflection usually reflects internal changes such as ablaut
(changing vowels).  English has both in verbs such as "sing": the past and past
participles "sang" and "sung", but the present participle "singing".

| An expressed subject is marked by lengthening the last vowel without
| changing the stress (see Vowel Lengthening), i.e. if the subject was
| originally monosyllabic, it remains unstressed. If the subject is
| qualified, the marker is added to the last qualifier. If the last word is
| not the head of the last qualifier (or the subject itself), a resumptive
| particle {?} is needed?

Hmm, I have to read up on qualifiers before I try and answer that.  Anybody?

| There are a number of possible aspects. Some of these are indicated by
| lexical means (i.e. aspectual auxiliaries), while others are primary. The
| latter are:
|
| o _progressive_ for an action in progress,
| o _resultive_ for a state resulting from an action,
| o _stative_ for a current state,
| o _causative_ for a change of state in progress or an action causing a
| state,
| o _instantive_ for a change of state or an action taken as a whole.

Oh I love them aspects.  I think mine are going to be: imperfective (= your
progressive), perfective and stative; but causatives and passives/reflexives
fall in the category of voice, which is indicated by a prefix, most likely a
sibilant that may assimilate to the following consonant (e.g. s-c^ > s^c^, s-t.
> s.t., s-d > zd)
All my thoughts are currently very disorganized...

| Note: This gives the following (arbitrarily named) moods:
| o Indicative explicit tense with expressed subject
| o Relative explicit tense with linked subject
| o Subjunctive implicit tense with expressed subject
| o Infinitive implicit tense with linked subject

I haven't got moods worked out yet.  I expect at least an indicative, a
subjunctive or jussive and an imperative (most likely the unmarked verb root for
the generic 2nd person singular imperative; the 2nd plural adds a plural suffix,
and I have no idea what that's gonna be).

| The tense of a word either indicates that the time of the event is
| _general_ (non-specific) or specifies the time of the event relative to the
| time of its matrix event; this can be either _past_, for events occurring
| before the matrix event,
| _present_, for events in progress at the time of the matrix event, or
| _future_ for events occurring after the matrix event. For nouns, the
| present tense must be marked, since the general tense is unmarked. For
| other words, the present tense is unmarked and the general tense must be
| marked.

In Classical Greek you have a 3x3 matrix of aspect-tense combinations
(perfect/aorist/imperfect; past/present/future), with a total of seven since the
aorist present and future do not exist.  I just wish I remembered how they
formed.

| The grammatical voice of a word indicates whether its subject functions as
| an agent (active voice), a patient (passive voice), or a complement
| (complementive voice). The grammatical voice is active for action words and
| passive for state words when unmarked; this can be changed using prefixes.
| Changing the grammatical voice accomplishes the following:

Do you know how you're going to mark the agents, patients and other elements of
the sentence?  Case marking?

Anyway, keep it up; you've obviously worked on this a good bit...

~DaW~



_________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com

Reply