Re: Conlang Typology Survey

This sounds familiar.  Well, I'll try it again.  Seems like everybody and
his aunt's maternal cousin are conducting surveys.  Have you taken my
"lunatic survey," Garrett? :)

Sally Caves
scaves@frontiernet.net
Eskkoat ol ai sendran, rohsan nuehra celyil takrem bomai nakuo.
"My shadow follows me, putting strange, new roses into the world."




> 1. morphological type
> a. agglutinative
> b. fusional/inflecting
> c. polysynthetic
> d. isolating
Well, Teonaht is more polysynthetic than it is fusional/inflecting, but
there are some inflections for the accusative/oblique case, held over from
an earlier stage, or borrowed from an unknown language.

> 2. Word order
> a. SOV
> b. SVO
> c. VSO
> d. VOS
> e. OVS
> f. OSV
> g. free
Teonaht can be free in poetry, but it is routinely SOV in conversation, and
OSV in formal writing.

> 3. adposition/noun order
> a. noun - preposition
> b. preposition - noun
Teonaht favors the preposition over the postposition, in most cases.  In a
few other cases (see compounding below), there are postpositions.

> 4. adjective/noun order
> a. adj - noun
> b. noun - adj
Teonaht favors the adjective following the noun, but like French it has some
adjectives that routinely come before the noun, like mohs, yka (big, little,
bad, good, much, few, etc.).

> 5. genitive/noun order
> a. genitive - noun
> b. noun - genitive
Teonaht is weird about its genitives.  di/id represent the post and
prepositional affixes for the possessive genitive, but they must not come
between the words.  So:  idJehhan febry, or febry Jehhanid, "John's hat."
You CAN, however, say li febry ilid zef, "the man's hat."  The attachment of
the article makes it possible to put the genitive particle between the two
nouns.  Don't ask me why.  This has been a rule for years.  Some Teonim
prefer to put an article in front of the name: febry ilid Jehan, "hat of the
John." :)

> 6. relative clause/noun order
> a. rel. clause - noun
> b. noun - rel. clause
Too complicated.  Teonaht prefers to express the relative clause with a
juxtaposition of word orders, usually with two verbs in the middle:  "I saw
the boy kicked he the ball."   In rare occasions, T. has broken down and
used "ta," that all purpose word, as a relative marker.  But mostly, like
German, and many other languages, it prefers a reversal of word order for
its subordinate clauses.

> 7. main verb/aux verb order
> a. main verb - aux verb
> b. aux verb - main verb
It depends.  Since written Teonaht fronts the object and follows up with the
verb, the ordinary auxilliary is in the place of the verb, taking the verb
noun:  Gombrerem ly dehsan, "Buying she desires."  But modals are treated
like adverbs and go in front of the verb proper: ly dihs gombre, "she wants
buy."  Probably more like: she wantly buys.

> 8. adverb/verb order
> a. adv - verb
> b. verb - adv
Adverb before the verb.   Le tohda o nimint teo.  "The cat swiftly runs."

> 9. compounding type
> a. head-last compounding
> b. head-first compounding
Both.  Compounding in Teonaht is very demanding.  Do you mean for the
compound to express purposiveness?  You can't just say "dish towel," in
Teonaht.  Oh nothing that simple.  Towel dish-for.  Room water-for.  Box
ice-for.  Or what about a compound that expresses a part of a whole; not
just pie piece, but of-pie piece.  And the partitive genitive is different
from the possessive genitive.  And what about the attributive noun?  Book of
wisdom.  That's a juxtaposition.  The book isn't a part of wisdom, it is
itself wise.  Wisdom is an attribute, so you say kyam linda.  "Book wisdom."
Then there is the compound that expresses that one noun is like another:
kohs ko:klema, "monkey-dog."  But you have to say that the dog is
"monkey-like."  Because it isn't really a monkey, it's a monkey DOG.

Then there are a host of old compounds that have escaped this complexity:
wyrlorf, for instance, means "werewolf," but it's so old (at least it was
invented when I was fifteen) that it hasn't succumbed to "rules."  (So is
the word wyr, which is borrowed; zef is the standard word for "man" in
Teonaht).  Hsotfim is another such compound.  "Clothing pouch," i.e.,
"pocket."

> 10. case type
> a. nominative/accusative
> b. ergative/absolutive
> c. split ergative
> d. other
It's mainly an accusative language with what I call a "split nominative,"
i.e., it makes a distinction between subjects that govern volitional verbs
and subjects that govern non-volitional verbs.  So it has some active
tendencies that are themselves sort of schizophrenic: is it the subject or
is it the verb that determines volitionality?  You can say:  "The man looks"
or "the man sees," using both a modification to the noun AND the verb _ke_,
"watch/see."   This modification, though, is dependent on the article or the
pronoun, not in the noun itself.

> 11. tense system
> a. time (past/present/future)
> b. aspect
> c. realis/irrealis
All.  The latter, however, is considered aspectual, so maybe it doesn't
count.  There is no subjunctive voice in Teonaht.  There's no voice,
actually.  There are no conjugations in verbs.  Only tense and aspect
particles that attach to the pronouns.  Pronouns are resumptive when a
proper noun is used.  John the apple he eat.  The apple John did-he eat.

> 12. script
> a. latin
> b. other existing natlang script
> c. con-script
Teonaht has a Latin script that some of its newspapers use.  Others, and
those who prefer calligraphy, use the Renuon.
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/renuon.html
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/phonolog.html

Big political fight over this.  Lazy students complaining about how hard it
is to read the Renuon.

> and some free answer questions:
>
> 13. number of genders/noun classes
No gender.  Accept in the pronouns.

> 14. number of cases
Absolute, object, genitive.

> 15. number of phonemes
Too lazy to count.  Too many for one language, but the Teonim pride
themselves on their exposure to other languages.  Lots of permissible
initial consonant clusters.  No aesc sound.  No umlauted vowels.

> 16. lexicon size
Between four and six thousand and growing.  I'm not really sure.  The
biggest problem for me is getting every word accounted for and up on-line.
I don't have a database I can use; I place everything by hand in about four
lexicons, working from about three handwritten manuscripts in various stages
of completion.  It's the hardest aspect of showcasing this 40 year-old
language.

> that's all the ones i could come up with quickly. so, how do your conlangs
> look?
I think mine breaks a lot of language "rules."

Now tell me about your invented language.

Sally Caves
Lis teuim, etc.
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/whatsteo.html
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/teonaht.html

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