Re: New Language Sketch

nicole perrin <nicole.eap@...> wrote:

>Tense (past, present, future), aspect (perfect, imperfect, progressive)
>and mood (indicative, negative, imperative) are marked on an auxiliary
>verb, <skan>
Is this compulsory? How much can you leave out?

>A prefix is required to determine what part of speech (noun, verb,
>adjective, adverb) a particular word is.

This seems a bit excessive, especially for nouns and verbs.
What *I* would do is merge the noun-PoS mark and the case
mark, for example (either as a prefix or a suffix). The
verb should need no mark, since it's in a fixed and
conspicuous place.

>Do any natlangs mark only for
>agent/patient on the noun and then for active/passive on the verb to
>show who is the subject or object?
What you're doing seems to be a direct/inverse marking
-- someone will probably know a natlang example (I'm
sure a Native American language was mentioned). AFAIK
it's exactly like that: the core arguments in an order
given by a hierarchy (of gender, animacy, whatever),
and then, if the resulting word order is, say, SO,
the verb is direct (usually zero-marked); otherwise
it's marked as inverse. I'm not sure if this can be
called "voice", since the arguments keep their status
(in passive voice, they're shifted -- object to subject,
subject to optional oblique).


--Pablo Flores
  http://www.geocities.com/pablo-david/index.html
  http://www.geocities.com/pablo-david/draseleq.html