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Re: Mærik grammar outline added to wiki page

From:Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>
Date:Monday, February 28, 2005, 18:33
David J. Peterson wrote:
> Benct wrote: > > << > Thanks for noticing! It was due to an empty cell too much. > > So what do you think about the language? :) > >> > > Yeah, really. I felt bad about that, but I noticed it, and I didn't > have time to write anything else.
'Tis OK. I'm afraid the page *is* pretty chaotic...
> I don't know much about Swedish, and no even less about > Old Swedish. Nevertheless, a few questions:
No problem. Mærik is not *really* similar to Old Swedish, except in phonology and superficially in orthography. E.g. in O.Sw. *when* there is a markered difference between nominative and accusative of nouns it is the nominative which carries the marker. Not so in Mærik where the accusative is markered. Moreover Mærik lacks a distinctive adjective inflection among other things found in O.Sw. OTOH Mærik has more cases.
> -You explain in a footnote the presence of "w" in the vowel > list, but why "v"? Are these orthographic vowels or IPA?
They are orthographic. In the medieval style v/u are positional variants of one grapheme which can stand for both a consonant and a vowel. Medial [v] is spelled _ffu_!
> -I like the way you do negation! I never seem to do negation > in any special way, but it tends to be special in most languages. > I like it!
Sorry, but I nicked it outright from Finnish (and Dravidian). There are many languages that have a verb meaning "not be".
> > -Not knowing Swedish, it's kind of hard to see which word > matches up with which in your examples, since there are no > glosses.
The words are utterly unlike Swedish. Will fix glosses (or interlinears).
> > Anyway, looks pretty neat. I like the look and sound of the > words (if I'm pronouncing them right), as well as the first > person verb suffix. I'd definitely like to see more.
What is cool about the first person verb suffix? That there is an inclusive/exclusive distinction? There is one in pronouns too.
> -David > >
-- /BP 8^)> -- Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant! (Tacitus)