Re: Zaik! (Hi there!) - Description of Lyanjen

Let me add my name to the chorus of members welcoming you to
the list:  welcome!  I'm hope you'll find us a congenial bunch.

Matt McLauchlin wrote:

> Phonology. Consonants: /d/, /dj/, /Z/, /r/, /s/, /z/, /b/, /k/, /p/, /t/,
> /n/, /nj/, /g/, /S/, /m/, /l/, /lj/.
Interesting -- you have quite a few palatals here. Is there any reason for
this diachronically?

> Barry got a little bit excited over the
> writing system, but actually it has its own writing system, and I used (for
> example) c to represent /S/
<c> for /S/ does have precedents -- Onondaga uses that.  There are no
conlangs AFAIK that do that, however.

> Vowels are divided into "masculine" (/o/, /u/) and "feminine" (/e/, /i/)
> vowels (/a/ is neuter). The feminine vowels and /a/ change sound when
> they're stressed: e = /E/, é = /e/; a = /a/, á = /{/; i = /I/, í = /i/. U
> and I make diphthongs, but u can only be added to a feminine vowel or A, and
> I can only be added to a masculine vowel or A.
Is this supposed to have onomatopoetic effects on the language?  It would
be rather interesting to posit a society where "masculine" vowels undergo
different historical shifts, or pattern differently, than "feminine vowels", because
the male members' speech in that society shifted when the females' didn't, or
vice versa -- hence the name.

> Nouns: six cases, nominative, ergative, absolutive, genitive, locative, and
> dative. Consequently:
As Matt P. has already pointed out, this seems to be a semantics-based
case marking system. If you're interested in a rather scholarly discussion of
semantic case marking like this, I'd suggest you check R. M. W. Dixon's
_Ergativity_ in the Cambridge Linguistics series, Chapters 2.2 and some
about split ergativity in Chapter 4.  You can probably check it out from your
school's linguistics library.

(He's a really good writer, but the subject matter is rather esoteric, so don't
worry if you spend several minutes on one page, trying to absorb it all.)

> Verbs: All adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions are verbs. Verbs'
> transitivity is determined by the noun cases used with them. For example:
> I-nom RED = I am red.
> I-erg RED = I make (something) red.
Presumably here, you would have to have a rule that allowed you to omit
some NPs.  Is there anything more specific to this?

> RED I-abs = I become red.
Is word order free?  Why the change from the above SV pattern?

> In the case of prepositions, they are also moving verbs depending on the
> case:
> I-nom UP = I am up.
> I-nom UP TOWN-loc = I am above the town.
Semantic case is typologically usually optional, but here you seem to
have to use the locative case suffix for "up". If it's not used, you get a
different reading, namely, "I lifted the town" or something like that.

> I-erg UP YOU-abs = I lift you up.
> UP I-abs = I ascend; I am lifted.
Is there no distinction in voice (syntactic movement of an NP to a
different place to emphasize some thematic role's part in the action)? You
*can* get around having morphological voice by free wordorder. Free
wordorder allows you to manipulate wordorder for thematic effect instead
of for syntactic requirements.

> UP I-abs TOWN-gen MOUNTAIN-loc SUMMIT-dat = I go up the mountain from the
> town to the summit.
>
> Some verbs also change meaning depending on the noun cases:
> I-erg SELL = I sell.
> SELL I-abs = I am sold.
> SELL I-dat = I purchase.
This seems a little like "quirky case", where case is specified lexically on the
verb.  What you really have to do here is posit two distinct verbs, SELL[1]
and SELL[2], for "sell" and "purchase" respectively,  which are simply
homophonous.

> Correlatives:
> To say something like "I believe that you are mistaken," say, you say I-erg
> BELIEVE THIS-ONE-abs, THAT YOU-nom ERR.
So... is THIS-ONE-abs the subject or the object?  Perhaps I'm being
confused by your terminology.

> To use a restrictive clause like "the man who stole my watch," you say,
> MAN-nom, THAT-ONE-erg STOLE WATCH-abs I-gen.
> To use an unrestrictive clause like "this man, who stole my watch," you say
> "MAN-nom-this, AND THAT-ONE STOLE (etc.)
>
> Other neat things:
>
> Conjunctions can be suffixes, like Latin -que.
How many conjunctions do you have so far?

> There are tu and vos forms for both plural and singular second person.
Do you mean by this that you have both neutral and honorific forms for
your pronouns?  I take this to mean that you have four second person
pronouns.  Do you crossreference pronouns on your verbs through
agreement?

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Tom Wier   |     "Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
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