Re: Verbs in Finlaesk

On 9/26/07, Benct Philip Jonsson <conlang@...> wrote:
> On 2007-09-26 Paul Bennett wrote:
>  > How much borrowed structure would seem naturalistic? Just
>  > the bare minimum to restore the distinctions lost from ON?
>  > Enough to impart all the distinctions in Ojibwe? What
>  > about the other distinctions unique to Inuktitut (if and
>  > when I get to studying them properly)?
>
> Having thought on it for five minutes I think that the most
> likely thing would be to use analogy and grammaticalization
> of ON-derived material to achieve a morphosyntax similar to
> the Skraeling languages, rather than borrowing morphemes.
Borrowing morphemes is indeed fairly unlikely; my plan was indeed to
grammaticalize ON lexemes to "import" the "structure" of Skraelingisk
(which becomes hlálīkisj /Ka:li~kiS/ btw), i.e. "achieve" a
"morphosyntax similar to"
Skraelingisk. The real question is one of quantity, but given Michif
as a yardstick, I think pretty much anything goes.

Having said that about borrowing morphemes, I'm tempted to borrow a
few monophonemic morphemes, such as '-s' to mark Obviative nouns, and
'-i' to mark dual number. My gut tells me this should be a fairly
plausible thing to happen.

Speaking of changing language names, "fínlǣsk" no longer makes sense
given the amended sound changes. Something like "fínlātisj"
/vi:nlA~tiS/ is closer to the new truth. Is there an automatic (or
semi-automatic) way for me to rename pages and links on the Frath
wiki?

>  > The sound-changes seem to be close to something
>  > aesthetically nice, but they've reduced the number of
>  > conjugations much more than I was aiming for
>
> If it's any consolation I'm struggling with the same
> problems with Kijeb person markers -- and that lang is
> wholly a-priori!
Yikes! You have my sympathies. That's not a very good sensation at all.




Paul

Reply