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Re: Conlang Typology Survey

From:taliesin the storyteller <taliesin@...>
Date:Wednesday, May 21, 2003, 11:48
* Garrett Jones said on 2003-05-20 17:43:11 +0200
> 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 > a. agglutinative > b. fusional/inflecting > c. polysynthetic
All except d.
> 2. Word order
g. free, but tends towards SOV, VSO and SVO... lazy translator
> 3. adposition/noun order
No adpositions so far
> 4. adjective/noun order
Both
> a. adj - noun
adj noun or adjnoun
> b. noun - adj
noun+case adj+case
> 5. genitive/noun order
depends on type of noun. Does "genitive" cover possesive pronouns as well?
> 6. relative clause/noun order
a., incorporated into the noun as a prefixed adjective or b. as a freestanding, case marked adjective
> 7. main verb/aux verb order
No aux verbs but there are serial verb constructions, verb that happened first goes first
> 8. adverb/verb order
Hm... Most "adverbs" are statives (together with adjectives) and are treated as such, placement of phrasal adverbs is usually as first word in the sentence.
> 9. compounding type > a. head-last compounding > b. head-first compounding
Does not compute. Compunding of nouns? verbs? There's a zillion ways of compunding nouns, just ask Panini. Though for Taruven... verb+verb-compunds is like a contracted SVC (serial verb construction) so first things first. Then there's verb+noun (patient) noun (agent)+verb IIRC adj/relative+noun there might also be, IIRC: verb+patient+agent noun+noun is generally "most important last"
> 10. case type > a. nominative/accusative
Variant of a. but is closer to semantically than syntactically based... Maybe d. instead? Hm.
> d. other > > 11. tense system
All, though I don't know how realis/irrealis is shown yet
> 12. script > c. con-script
Two, by last count
> and some free answer questions: > > 13. number of genders/noun classes
2, entities: sentient, alive, animals, fully sentient AIs; impossesable items: nonsentient, dead, things, abstracts; possesable There are two different genitive/possessive-constructions involved...
> 14. number of cases
9, not counting the detailed locatives 28, counting the detailed locatives
> 15. number of phonemes
About 50, not counting length. About 100, counting length.
> 16. lexicon size
About 650. t.

Replies

Garrett Jones <conlang@...>Conlang Typology Survey (explanations)
Garrett Jones <conlang@...>Conlang Typology Survey (lg name)