Re: Conlang Typology Survey

Garrett Jones wrote:
> 1. morphological type
> a. agglutinative
> b. fusional/inflecting
> c. polysynthetic
> d. isolating
Aggultinative verging on polysynthetic, particularly in certain informal
usages.

> 2. Word order
> a. SOV
> b. SVO
> c. VSO
> d. VOS
> e. OVS
> f. OSV
> g. free
Verb initial.  Beyond that, there's a tendency for more-animate nouns to
precede less-animate nouns, and a weaker tendency for agents to precede
patients.

> 3. adposition/noun order
> a. noun - preposition
> b. preposition - noun
B (and when it follows it's called a postposition)

> 4. adjective/noun order
> a. adj - noun
> b. noun - adj
B.  Absolutely consistent in this.  Even numbers and demonstratives
follow the noun

> 5. genitive/noun order
> a. genitive - noun
> b. noun - genitive
B

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

> 7. main verb/aux verb order
> a. main verb - aux verb
> b. aux verb - main verb
A, but that's because the main verb is *incorporated* into the auxilary
verb.

> 8. adverb/verb order
> a. adv - verb
> b. verb - adv
B, generally

> 9. compounding type
> a. head-last compounding
> b. head-first compounding
Generally head-first

> 10. case type
> a. nominative/accusative
> b. ergative/absolutive
> c. split ergative
> d. other
B

> 11. tense system
> a. time (past/present/future)
> b. aspect
> c. realis/irrealis
Has separate tense and aspect affixes.

> 12. script
> a. latin
> b. other existing natlang script
> c. con-script
C, a modified syllabry

> 13. number of genders/noun classes
7 (5 or 6 in some dialects, 8 in a few mountain dialects)

> 14. number of cases
19, subdivided into two groups of 7 and 12

> 15. number of phonemes
There's some uncertainty about phonemes.  Vowels, there are 3 plus
length, and 2 diphthongs.  Consonants there are 13 or 16.  The 13 that
are undeniable are /p t k b d g m n f s v z l/  In addition, [C tS dZ],
while originally palatizations of /k t d/ respectively, are probably
best analyzed as distinct phonemes, altho there are restrictions on
their occurence that come from their origin as /kj tj dj/.  For example,
they may not be geminated - stops can only be geminated between vowels
(so that /ppj/ is illegal) while other types of consonant may be
geminated and followed by /l/ or a glide (e.g., /ffj/ is legal).  In
addition, they cannot be followed by l or a glide (except /w/ under
certain conditions), again reflecting a /kj tj dj/ underlying nature.
/pjl/ is illegal, thus [Cl] (/kjl/) is also illegal.

However, certain sound changes have permitted new instances of /kj tj
dj/ to be formed, which are realized as [kj tj/ts dj/dz]

In addition, an argument for considering gemination an abstract phoneme
could be made, so that [takka] would be underlyingly /ta*ka/

> 16. lexicon size
Nearly 1000 words

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