On Mon, 25 Oct 1999, Paul Bennett wrote:
> The mein=E1n describe the s[aghwaad<zi (<thagojians>) as "grunting and
> growling like animals", due to the size and nature of the s[aghwaad<zi
> consonontal phonology.
>=20
> Meanwhile, the s[aghwaad<zi describe the mein=E1nuagh=E1 as "mewling like
> infants", due to the size and richness of the mein=E1nuagh=E1 vowel
> phonology.
I like that!
> Set tabs at 8 and use a fixed font to read properly
I did that, but it didn't help any; something converted your tabs to
spaces. It's probably wise to use spaces anyway, so it will always
come out OK as long as people use a fixed font.
> Stops Nasals Fricat Affric Approxmants
> p b m f w
> T t[T
> t d n s ts r
> S tS l j
> k g N x
See what I mean?
> au daunt d=E1unt turned-c
Why do you romanize it like that, and not with something more like
"o"? Do they perceive it as a-like themselves?
> Vowel (or first vowel) is acuted (<'> in ascii) to show length.
So if the first vowel of a digraph is accented the whole thing is
long?
> The Native order can be found by reading the table above in row-by-row
> order, with vowels interleaved as follows: (each of the following are
> considered as single letters)
> p a b ua m ae ph uo w o th iu dth oa t d au n s oi z u r ai i sh ch ie
> l gh e c ei g gn ao h
It looks as if the vowels are in between in order to pronounce the
sequence as a sentence - not say each letter's name, but say
something like "pabua maephuo wothiu ..." when reciting the letters.
Is it like that?
> An apostrophe is used in romanisations to disambiguate words that
> would otherwise be homographs. The native alphabet distinguishes each
> phone with its own glyph.
How do you indicate long vowels then, or do short and long vowels
have their own glyphs as well?
> The grammar is a mixed ergative-absolute / dechticaetative system.
I've never heard of "dechticaetative".
> The system distiguishes the following cases (this also shows the usual
> word order): /* It's an horrendous abuse of the term "volitive", any
> better suggestions? */
What about "agentive"?
=20
> >Intransitive Verb
> Verb - Inflected for Subject
> Subject - Absolute
>=20
> >Passive (Di)Transitive Verb with Exophoric Subject (and Ind Obj)
> Verb - Inflected with <-h>
> Object - Absolute
What's an exophoric subject? Something like "the teacher" in "the
boys were given homework by the teacher"? (where "the boys" is
obviously the indirect object and "homework" the direct object)
> >Ditransitive Verb with Exophoric Indirect Object
> Subject - Volitive
> Verb - Inflected with <-h>
> Direct Object - Absolute
Same question: "the teacher gave homework to the boys"?
> The above cases are marked by unbound prefixes, shown as below:
>=20
> Def Indef
> Abs. oa 0
> Erg. an an
> Vol. eiz eim
If it's a prefix, how is it unbound? If it's a separate word, why not
call it an article (as indeed you do below)?
=20
> Component Gen. -eich (x y-eich =3D x is part of y) /* should this be <y-e=
ich x>
> ?*/
I should think you know your language better than I do :-)
There's no generalized "should", I think.
> Eiz teim an l=FAocuaneighic ph=E1enuor oa lign=F3as seihe=
ich.
> VOL us-EXC ERG here.illative.RES want.g4 ABS language you.COMP
> (Latest attempt at "your language goes here")
Well, write it in its own script and send a gif to Fabian! :-)
Irina
Varsinen an laynynay, saraz no arlet rastynay.
irina@rempt.xs4all.nl (myself)
http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt/irina/index.html (English)
http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt/irina/backpage.html (Nederlands)