For Miapimoquitch.
On Tuesday, May 20, 2003, at 09:43 AM, Garrett Jones wrote:
> 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:
>
> multiple choices can be selected for any of these questions if that
> makes
> sense for your conlang.
>
> 1. morphological type
> b. fusional/inflecting
> c. polysynthetic
There don't seem to be many polysynthetic types around ...
> 2. Word order
> g. free
>
> 3. adposition/noun order
> b. preposition - noun
This is a bit misleading since there are strictly speaking no
adpositions; those functions are taken over by predicates, which are
usually initial in the clause.
> 4. adjective/noun order
> b. noun - adj
I assume you meant attributive adjectives and not predicative; these
are expressed in following subordinate clauses in Miapimoquitch.
> 5. genitive/noun order
> a. genitive - noun
Misleading again since genitives are expressed as predicates, which are
generally initial in the clause.
> 6. relative clause/noun order
> b. noun - rel. clause
While the general order is main clause predicate - subordinate clause
predicate, it is misleading to talk of nouns and relative clauses in
Miapimoquitch.
> 7. main verb/aux verb order
> b. aux verb - main verb
>
> 8. adverb/verb order
> a. adv - verb
>
> 9. compounding type
> a. head-last compounding
> b. head-first compounding
Compounding as such doesn't exist in Miapimoquitch. There are two kinds
of constructions which can be thought of as types of compounding. The
first involves the set of lexical suffixes; there are about 60 of
these. They express various concrete or abstract meanings are are
suffixed to predicate stems. The second construction involves two
separate predicates which cooccur idiomatically; e.g., go + see =>
visit. The first predicate takes mood and person marking; the second
marks number and phase (roughly aspect). The initial predicate in a
complex predicate construction can be considered an auxiliary or adverb.
> 10. case type
> d. other
There are no case distinctions in Miapimoquitch, but there seems to be
an ergative/absolutive alignment in argument structure.
> 11. tense system
> b. aspect
> c. realis/irrealis
By this I assume that you mean which of these distinctions is encoded
inflectionally; Miapimoquitch does encodes tense but in complex
predicates rather than inflectionally.
> 12. script
> a. latin
> b. other existing natlang script
> c. con-script
d. Miapimoquitch is the language of a preliterate society, and as such
has no native orthography. It can be written in the Deseret Alphabet
(as it was in the journals of the fictional Mormon missionary who
encountered the language in the 1850s), but I use the IPA and my own
romanization scheme.
> and some free answer questions:
>
> 13. number of genders/noun classes
n/a
> 14. number of cases
n/a
> 15. number of phonemes
12 consonants, 4 vowels; lots of phonological alternations, which these
surveys don't generally seem to ask about.
> 16. lexicon size
~ 600
>
> that's all the ones i could come up with quickly. so, how do your
> conlangs
> look?
A while ago, there was a brief discussion of a Conlang Code which would
capture many of these kinds of distinctions. A proposal was made which
I thought was worth refining and using to capture typological
information about the languages we are working on. I'd be happy to
repost it if there is interest.
Dirk
--
Dirk Elzinga
Dirk_Elzinga@byu.edu
"I believe that phonology is superior to music. It is more variable and
its pecuniary possibilities are far greater." - Erik Satie