Re: Klingon (was Re: Fictional auxlangs as artlangs (was Re: Poll))

Philip Newton wrote:
>>> The odd thing there is that it's an agglutinating language,
>>> but has subject/object combined into unanalyzable prefixes.
>
> Though as Mark J. Reed noted, if you use it, you'll find that a dozen
> or so are used pretty frequently so you learn those after a while
> (IME). And it wouldn't surprise me if there were quite a few speakers
> who don't know some of the lesser-used ones (e.g. you -> us), simply
> because they're not used that much, but who still have a firm grasp of
> the more-frequently-used ones.
>
AFMOC Kidjeb has a set of verb endings which are rather
fused together since most of them underlyingly consist
of a sigle or two consonants (actually they have lost
their vowels due to lack of stress) and the resulting
consonant clusters have been mangled and reduced by the
rather sweeping Kijeb sandhi rules.

<http://wiki.frath.net/Sohlob_historical_phonology#Sandhi>

E.g. all the third person animate pronominal morphemes
consisted of a nasal -- -n- for masculine, -m- for
feminine and -N- for irrational -- which in pre-Kijeb
were pluralized through gemination -nn-, -mm-, -NN-.
The geminates turned into nasal + voiced stop, which
then all were reduced to -nt when a final vowel was
lost.  Vhen a singular pronominal preceded you got
-<nas>@nt, which then went through a series of
syllable reductions and sandhi changes:

* -n@nt > -n.n=t > -nn@t > -nd@t > -ndt > -ntt > -nst

resulting in an unanalysable ending -nst which means
'third person singular animate and third person plural
animat', though not exactly subj-obj: since Kijeb is an
hierarchical language there is another morpheme earlier
in the verb word, itself fused with the tense markers,
which signals which of the two is subject and object.
There is another morpheme -n '3sgA' and one -nt '3plA'
but there is no -s in the pronominal system.  There is
an -st but it means '1sg/1pl exclusive+3plA', so
-nst can't be -n-st.

I really have to update the wiki page to reflect the
verbal system as it currently is.

/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch atte melroch dotte se
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  "C'est en vain que nos Josués littéraires crient
  à la langue de s'arrêter; les langues ni le soleil
  ne s'arrêtent plus. Le jour où elles se *fixent*,
  c'est qu'elles meurent."           (Victor Hugo)