Re: Conlang Typology Survey

Garrett Jones scripsit:

> I'm curious about the distribution of the types of conlangs on this list.
Here are the replies for Lojban.  Piat is too vague still, and as for xuxuxi,
I have to disown it -- its lack of any derivational morphology makes it
totally unlearnable.

> 1. morphological type
> a. agglutinative
> 2. Word order
S must precede V unless a marker is present.  Most prose is SVO, probably
influenced by native languages.

> 3. adposition/noun order
> b. preposition - noun
> 4. adjective/noun order
> a. adj - noun
> 5. genitive/noun order
> a. genitive - noun
Unless a marker is present.

> 6. relative clause/noun order
> a. rel. clause - noun
> b. noun - rel. clause
Either.

> 7. main verb/aux verb order
No auxiliary verbs as such, but TAM markers come before verbs.

> 8. adverb/verb order
> a. adv - verb
> 9. compounding type
> a. head-last compounding
> 10. case type
No case endings, but semantically closest to Split-S.

> 11. tense system
> a. time (past/present/future)
> b. aspect
> c. realis/irrealis
All of the above, plus remoteness, interval size, repetition;
also includes parallel spatial tense system.

> 12. script
> a. latin
Transliterations exist for many other scripts including Cyrillic and Tengwar.

> 13. number of genders/noun classes
Seventeen genders: the b- gender, the d- gender, the f- gender, the g- gender,
and so on through the consonants.  These matter only to pronouns,
and there are gender-neutral pronouns too.

> 14. number of cases
Meaningless.

> 15. number of phonemes
/a b S d E f g i Z k l m n o p r s t u v x @ z h ?/ = 25 phonemes.

> 16. lexicon size
1500 roots, 600 grammatical particles, about 5200 compound words (compounding
is extremely productive), unknown number of borrowings and proper names.

--
John Cowan  jcowan@reutershealth.com  www.reutershealth.com  www.ccil.org/~cowan
I am he that buries his friends alive and drowns them and draws them
alive again from the water. I came from the end of a bag, but no bag
went over me.  I am the friend of bears and the guest of eagles. I am
Ringwinner and Luckwearer; and I am Barrel-rider.  --Bilbo to Smaug