Re: And now for something completely different - Chatiga

On Mon, 27 Dec 2004 07:59:28 +0100, Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
wrote:

>On Sun, 26 Dec 2004 17:53:28 -0500, Pascal A. Kramm <pkramm@...> wrote:
>> This time, I took a completely different approach :D
>> Chatiga possesses neither verbs nor adjectives, as nouns are used in their
>> place. Words are never inflected, making it a highly isolating language
>> which uses particles for grammatical functions like indication of time and
>> modality, or to mark nouns for their function if neccessary.
>
>Looks a little bit like Lojban, which has not only no verbs nor
>adjectives, but not even any nouns! Only brivla, which act like all
>three depending on position in the sentence and whether they are
>preceded by cmavo ("articles"/"prepositions"/... depending on the
>category of cmavo) or not.
Well, Chatiga is more flexible there. You can either stick to the regular
form which is actor/target/action, which will generally not require
particles to mark the functions, or you can use a free word order and mark
the functions as neccessary.

Example: The cat eats the mouse
-------
Normal word order:
  Kaz     nu      meus   etca.     /kats nu mOis etCa/
  cat  /present/  mouse  food/meal

Words that do not follow this order have to be marked. The temporal particle
can be placed freely.
You generally only do this to put emphasis on a certain word, e.g. because
of an unexpected action.

  Nu meus ti kaz etca.
-> Target marked with "ti" because irregular position, actor/action in
normal order, thus unmarked.
-> The cat eats the *mouse* (and not something else).

  Etca de kaz meus nu.
  Kaz etca de nu meus.
-> Action marked with "de", actor/target in regular order: unmarked
-> The cat *eats* the mouse. (as opposed to e.g. playing with it)

  Meus ti nu etca de kat.
-> Both Target and Action marked because of irregular position.
The cat *eats the mouse*. (as opposed to e.g. playing with a ball)

Finally, you could also rephrase it as "The mouse is eaten by the cat":

  Ga         meus   nu         kat  etca.
  /passive/  mouse  /present/  cat  food/meal

  Nu etca de kat ti ga meus.
-> In Passive, actor and target switch places, so what would be the actor in
the active mood, must be marked as target in the passive mood.

--
Pascal A. Kramm, author of:
Chatiga: http://www.choton.org/chatiga/
Choton: http://www.choton.org
Ichwara Prana: http://www.choton.org/ichwara/
Skälansk: http://www.choton.org/sk/
Advanced English: http://www.choton.org/ae/