Re: Conlang Typology Survey

My aims for the Føtisk language family.

AF=Ancient (pre 1000, mostly written in the Latin alphabet, some in Runic)
OF=Old (1000--1400, beginnings of Scandinavian influence, use of Runic
alphabet becomes more common under Sc. influence)
MF=Middle (1400-1800, height of Scandinavian influence (and use of
Runes) but *also* when the language first looks very unlike,
grammatically speaking, Germanic languages)
MnF=Modern (1800--, Scandinavian influence continues but begins to wane,
English begins to influence it mildly (lexically), totally written in Latin)

Garrett Jones wrote:

>1. morphological type
>a. agglutinative
>
MnF

>b. fusional/inflecting
>
AF, OF

>d. isolating
>
MF

>2. Word order
>a. SOV
>
AF, OF, MF (but V2 as are all good germanic languages). In MF, no verb
is ever found in the final position unless there is nothing but a
subject and a verb.

>b. SVO
>
MnF

In all cases, the subject is not necessarily what's in the nominative
case, nor are words in the nominative case necessarily subjects, hence
all other word orders may apparently come up, but they're at heart
SOV+V2 or SVO (including questions, even though they're normally VNO:
there is an empty subject position, and the verb moves after it.
N=nominative)

>3. adposition/noun order
>a. noun - preposition
>
AF (but not strict), uncertain about the rest.

>4. adjective/noun order
>
Free in AF, adjectives don't exist in MnF. Uncertain about OF and MF.

>5. genitive/noun order
>b. noun - genitive
>
AF; uncertain about the rest. Probably doesn't make sense in MnF.

>6. relative clause/noun order
>
Uncertain.

>7. main verb/aux verb order
>
AF, OF: When V2ed, the aux verb comes out the front and leaves the main
verb at the end. When not V2ed, the usual order is main, aux.

MF: aux, main. (note that this doesn't need to be expressed separately
from the above, but I've done it anyway)

>8. adverb/verb order
>
AF: Free. Uncertain about the rest.

>9. compounding type
>
>
Uncertain.

>10. case type
>a. nominative/accusative
>
AF, OF, possibly MF and MnF.

>11. tense system
>a. time (past/present/future)
>
AF

>b. aspect
>
MF, MnF

OF was transitional.

>12. script
>a. latin
>
AF, OF, MF, MnF

>b. other existing natlang script
>
OF, MF

>and some free answer questions:
>
>13. number of genders/noun classes
>
AF, OF: three decreasing to two. MF: one. MnF: a few.

>14. number of cases
>
AF: 4, OF: 2, MF: 0 (or 1, whatever), MnF: undecided.

>15. number of phonemes
>
By late AF: 10 vowels (incl. length=20 vowels), 16 consonants
The rest: undecided.

>16. lexicon size
>
>
AF: 3 words. MF, MnF: 1 word. There will evenutally be somewhat more :)

--
Tristan                  <kesuari@...>