Re: Conlang Typology Survey

On Tue, 20 May 2003 08:43:11 -0700, Garrett Jones <conlang@...>
wrote:

None of my "languages" are well-developed, but it looks like I can answer
most of these.

1. morphological type
MNCL, 'Yemls: a. agglutinative
Rubaga:       b. fusional/inflecting

2. Word order
'Yemls: b. SVO
Rubaga: c. VSO
MNCL:   g. free (but complementive case objects immediately precede the
verb)

3. adposition/noun order
MNCL:           a. noun - postposition
'Yemls, Rubaga: b. preposition - noun

4. adjective/noun order
Rubaga:       b. noun - adj
MNCL, 'Yemls: either

5. genitive/noun order
Rubaga: b. noun - genitive
MNCL, 'Yemls lack general-purpose genitives

6. relative clause/noun order
Rubaga, 'Yemls: b. noun - rel. clause
MNCL:           either

7. main verb/aux verb order
MNCL:   a. main verb - aux verb
'Yemls: b. aux verb - main verb

8. adverb/verb order
Adverbs are rarely next to verbs. MNCL has free order of clause components.
In 'Yemls and Rubaga, adverbs tend to come at the end.

9. compounding type
MNCL:   a. head-last compounding
'Yemls: b. head-first compounding
Rubaga: not sure, derivation mainly by affixes

10. case type
Rubaga: a. nominative/accusative (so far)
MNCL:   b. ergative/absolutive (so far)
'Yemls: d. other -- the case markng system is pretty stable, I just don't
know what it is!

11. tense system
a. time (past/present/future)
b. aspect
c. realis/irrealis
All of these are or will be used in some way.

12. script
Rubaga, MNCL: a. latin
'Yemls:       c. con-script -- a syllabary which happens to be identical to
the latin script.

13. number of genders/noun classes
MNCL, 'Yemls: none
Rubaga:       at least 2

14. number of cases
MNCL:   4 (sort of)
'Yemls: 3 primary marked by position, oblique marked by prefix
Rubaga: 4 (NADG)

15. number of phonemes
MNCL:   30 (25 consonants, 5 vowels)
'Yemls: 16 (12 consonants, 4 vowels) by one analysis, but could be more
Rubaga: doesn't lend itself to an easy phonemic analysis (either that, or
I'm lazy!).
 Consonants: 14 letters, 12 basic, 45 (I think) phones.
 Vowels:      5 letters,  7 basic, 10 phones at least.

16. lexicon size
MNCL:   tiny
'Yemls: tiny
Rubaga: confirmed lexicon is tiny

Jeff Jones