Re: Invitation to The Head-Last Project

On Thu, 23 Oct 2003, Andreas Johansson wrote:

> Quoting Peter Bleackley <Peter.Bleackley@...>:
> > I take it you've thrown up your hands in horror at the merry chaos which
> > has broken out at ACollaborativeConlang and decided to try to create
> > something saner? I noticed a comment along the lines of "We don't want
> > anything mad like  nominative/accusative in the present tense and
> > ergative/absolute in the past", which is precisely what
> > ACollaborativeConlang has (I believe that the linguistic term for this is
> > "split-S"). Good luck, but feel free to come and play with the anarchists
> > at any time.
>
> I once made a sketch of a conlang which was, IIRC nom-acc in the past, abs-erg
> in the present and Monster Raving Loony in the future, along with some bizarre
> mappings between different case and tense endings; ergative, accusative and
> intransitive, past and future where all unmarked, while nominative, absolutive,
> transitive and present all took the same affix. Hm, that doesn't look quite
> right - it was supposed to be completely unambigous too (syntax telling verbs
> from nouns).
Pidse has aspects of this in it, too. Except with moods and aspects,
rather than tenses. More complicated stuff too. Probably bizarre and I'm
sure there's _something_ that breaks the principle of anadewism. Written
down in a book. Which I'll look at now that the holidays are almost here
:)

> PS The purpose of the exercise was simple; to violate ALF.
What was ALF again?

--
Tristan                  <kesuari@...>

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