Re: conlang survey

I just realised I never sent this draft message of the survey for Omurax.
Heather, if you're still collecting these things, here it is.

On Saturday 21 December 2002 4:56 pm, Heather Rice wrote:

>Language name, creator's name, realative date of
creation (just any old number will do), country and
first language of creator, purpose of conlang
(auxlang, conlang, loglang, . . . ).

Omurax, created by Mike Ellis (who also created the Rhean language), fairly
recent creation (within the last year), my first language is English,
purpose is an experimental conlang for fiction.

>Phonetics:  number of consonants, number of vowels,
presence of nasalization, tone and how many, where the
accent generally falls.

Not a very exotic phonology:
18 consonants
b d f g h j(Z) k l m n p r s sh(S) t th(T) v z
5 vowels
a e i o u

No nasalisation or tone. Stress is a bit odd though. Each grammatical suffix
carries a "stress pattern" which either causes the suffix to take the stress
itself, or causes the stress to shift inside the root word.

>Morphemes:  presence of...
>allomorphs
Yes.
>mutation
No.
>assimilation
No.
>prefixes
Yes.
>suffixes
Yes.
>infixes
No.
>suprafixation
If the stress patterns count, then yes!
>dicontinuation
Yes.
>exclusion
?
>total fusion
Sort of.
>subtraction
Yes.
>reduplication.
No.

>Is the conlang agglutinating, isolating or fusional?
Mostly agglutinating for derivation, and mostly fusional for the noun
declensions.

>Nouns and such:
>subclasses of nouns (common/proper, abstract, things that may not be
>expressed explicitly in affixes)
No real sublclasses. Variations in declension are due to phonological rules
only.
>presence of cases and how many and what kind,
12: Absolutive, Ergative, Genitive, Essive, Translative, Illative, Locative,
Ablative, Comitative, Abessive, Purposive*, Instrumental
*a bastard word, I know. Find me a better one!

>kind of possession (alienable, inalienable, no distinction, etc.)
I use the genitive for that. No inalienable possession.

>presence of gender
No.
>number
Yes.
>articles
No.
>demostratives
Yes.
>adjectives
Yes.
>quantatives.
Who?
>Are comparatives expressed by affix, word order or both?
Don't know yet. Probably a prefix.
>Do pronouns express gender, number, declension?
"Pronouns" are nouns. So: no, yes, yes.
>Are there indefinite pronouns, possessed pronouns? Others?
No.
>How many prepositons (approximate).
None. Local nouns plus the three local cases cover that.
>Presence of clitics.
Yes! Little words that stick to the tense particle, like |ouno-| "not yet"
>Is derivational morphology mostly by compounding words or by affix or both?
Both.

>Verbs and such:
Omurax has no verbs.

>Are person, number, object expressed with the verb?
No, no, and no.
>Are there static verbs (to be)?
Not really. There are tense markers, and that's it.

>Is the object incorporated into the person marker (making a
phonetically different affix like in the Native
American languages)?
No such thing, and no such thing.

>Is transitivity marked for transitive, intransitive, bitransitive or other?
No.
>Is the person inclusive, exclusive, no distiction?
No verbs, thus no "person". Where we have pronouns, Omurax has nouns for
"we" or "it" etc.
>Kind of gender.
No grammatical gender.

>Are past, present, future expressed?
Yes.
>Recent, remote?
I might add those.
>Is mode express, what kind?
?
>Is voice expressed?  What kind?
Ergative; only one "voice".
>Manner?  Aspect?  Please list
Difference between perfect and imperfect. Probably more, as I work on it. I
want a very precise tense/aspect/whatever system in Omurax.
>Presence of adverbs
No.
>pro-drop.
Yes.
>Can nouns, adjectives, adverbs be changed to verbs and vice versa?
Nouns to adjectives and vice versa, yes. But there are no verbs or adverbs.
>Presence of adjective, adverbial clauses and relative pronouns.
Yes, sort of, and yes.

>Sentences:
>Does the conlang have an ergative or accusative system?
It's as close to "ergative" as you can get without having verbs.
>Word order and is it free or strict?
Temporal particle comes first, the rest is relatively free.
>Are adjectives, adverbs and prepositions before or after the modified word?
After.
>Is the word order changed in a question?
No.
>How many (approximately) conjugations are there?
None.

>Other:
>What is the number base for the numeral system (10? 12?)?
Not sure yet. Might go with 12.
>Presence of idioms, irregular forms of nouns and verbs.
Yes.
>Is the language syntax very predictable
Yes.
>How much literature has been produced and what kind (I'm not talking about
>translations, but stuff you wrote yourself).
Next to none.
>Is there a history and dictionary of the conlang?
Growing!
>Script invented?
Yes.
>Other conlangs produced by the creator of this one.
Rhean, Tolborese, Lididric, others.

>If you could summarize your conlang in a sentence, what would you write?
If I could, I would write a sentence that summarized Omurax; however, I
can't, so I won't.

M

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