Re: Conlang Typology Survey

Hi!

Garrett Jones <conlang@...> writes:
> I'm curious about the distribution of the types of conlangs on this list.
> So, a survey. Maybe it will generate some on-topic discussions. Answer it
> for your respective conlangs:
Oh, I like polls. :-)

For two languages I'll answer this:
   F: Fukhian
   T: Tyl Sjok

> 1. morphological type
F: a (agglutinative)
T: d (isolating)

> 2. Word order
F: c (VSO)
T: b (SVO)  (counting agent as S, patient as O)

> 3. adposition/noun order
F: a (agglutinates postpositions)

T: Not appropriate, since there are no adpositions.

   The problem is: modification is not always marked and if it is,
   it's not marked by means of word order.  Adpositions would be
   normal 'substantives = full words = nouns = verbs' in Tyl Sjok
   and whether they are before or after their supplement depends
   on whether that is agent or patient.

   Look below at relative clauses, which explains the syntactical
   structure.

> 4. adjective/noun order
F: b (noun - adj)
T: Not appropriate for the same reason as above.
   Cf. rel.clauses below.

> 5. genitive/noun order
F: b (noun - genitive)

T: Again, not appropriate.
   Cf. rel.clauses below.

> 6. relative clause/noun order
F: b (noun - relative clause), but:

   Fukhian does put a relative clause somewhere after the noun that's
   modified.  However, more than one noun may be modified, so there is
   no direct connection to *the* modified noun.  The modified nouns
   are referred to in the sub-ordinate clause with pronouns and
   marked as referred to by suffixes in the matrix clause.  This
   means that in principle, the order is free here.

T: embedding: a noun in the matrix clause is replaced by a full clause
   containing the modified noun there (instead of a relative pronoun
   in other languages).

     rel.clause:     (I watch man)  = I watch a/the man.
     matrix clause:  (tall man)     = A/The man is tall.

     together:       (tall (I watch man)) = The man I watch is tall.

> 7. main verb/aux verb order
> a. main verb - aux verb
> b. aux verb - main verb
F: no idea. :-)  I think b.
   But uses a lot of suffixes to handle this, too.

T: b if the verb can be used as a particle, or like a relative clause.

> 8. adverb/verb order
F: a (adv-verb)

T: Cf. relative clause (with the 'verb' being modified).

> 9. compounding type
> a. head-last compounding
> b. head-first compounding
F: a

b: No compounding.  It's boring, I know, but please refer to the section
   on relative clauses...

> 10. case type
F: a (nominative/accusative)

T: agent/patient. more precise: controller/controlled.

> 11. tense system
> a. time (past/present/future)
> b. aspect
> c. realis/irrealis
F: a/b/c: fully grammatical.

T: a/b/c: optional marking.

   a/c: by relative clauses modifying the whole phrase
   b:   by relative clauses marking the event word

> 12. script
F: c (con-script (Arabic-like, hanging like Devanagari))
T: c (con-script (Chinese-like))

> and some free answer questions:
>
> 13. number of genders/noun classes
> 14. number of cases
> 15. number of phonemes
> 16. lexicon size
F: no genders/classes
   9 cases: nominative, predicative, accusative, dative, genitive,
           locative, separative (ablative), illative (allative),
           instrumental, vocative.
   Fukhian has a lot of chaos wrt. phonemes.  I'll try to count:
      6 vowels (the triangular 5 + [y])
      31 consonats (roughly)
   lex. size: ca. 600

T: no genders/classes
   2 cases: controller, controlled
   9 consonants, 7 vowels
   lex. size: ca. 500

**Henrik