Re: conlang survey

Language Name: Lahabic
Creator's Name: Anthony Marcus Miles
Date of Creation: 1995
Country: USA
First Language: English
Purpose: Fantasy Conlang.  More grammatically regular than a natlang.
Consonants: 31 consonants: p,t,k,p_h,t_h,k_h,p_j,t_j,k_j,k_w;
b,d,g,b_t,d_t,g_t,b_j,d_j,g_j,b_w,d_w,g_w, s, m, n, q [N], l, r, j, w, h
(but very weak)
Vowels: 5 Monophthong, 6 Diphthong: a, e, i, o, u, ai, au, ei, eu, oi, ou.
Nasalisation: No
Tone: No. God no.
Accent: Penultimate syllable if final syllable is long; antepenultimate
syllable if final syllable is short. In verbs, however, the ‘pronominal mood
indicators’ can shift the primary accent forward one syllable.
Allomorphs: Extensive allomorphs for rounded and unrounded variants of
vowels; short o [U/O] vs. long o [7:/o:]; [s] before non-front vowels vs.
[z] before front vowels.
Mutation: no.
Assimilation: Extensive change from voiced to voiceless stops (d>t) and vice
versa (t>d) before voiced and voiceless stops; from voiced stops to
homorganic nasals (dn>nn).
Prefixes: 3; dho-, ba’-, kyel-, and in a sense, any dependent use of the
adjective in the language
Suffixes : 21
Infixes: No, although suffixes often find themselves buried in compounds.

Suprafixation: No.
Discontinuation: No.
Exclusion: Don’t understand this.
Total fusion: Don’t understand this.
Subtraction: Possibly, if halas-ro’n > hala’ro’n counts.
Reduplication: No.

Is the conlang agglutinating, isolating or fusional?: somewhere between
agglutinating and fusional. That is, I construct it through agglutination,
but the native speakers who are not linguists probably regard it as closer
to fusional, if they were to consider such things at all.

subclasses of nouns (common/proper, abstract, things that may not be
expressed explicitly in affixes): agent (-ra-, -a-), recipient (-pha’l-,
-ro’-), instrument (-win-, -en-), benefactor (-pha’-, -ma’-), possessive
(-te-, -de-), adjectival(-te-, -de-, -dha-), cardinal, ordinal (-so’l-),
adverbial (-lid), ‘geographics’ (-ouon, -oion, -auan, -aian).
cases: nominative, genitive/accusative, dative/benefactive/reciprocal,
locative/vocative/instrumental, accusative
kind of possession: dative is more personal and reciprocal than the
genitive.

presence of gender: yes; animate, inanimate

number/articles/demonstrative: a single demonstrative stem kho-, modeled on
the Homeric Greek article

adjectives: adjectives may be independent and suffixed by /-dha/ or
dependent and attached to the following nouns by a system of suffixes that
is too complicated to be fully explicated here; the list of subclasses of
nouns, however, gives a fair indication.

quantatives:  cardinals, ordinals, and adverbial forms of numbers all formed
regularly.

comparatives expressed by affix : suffix.

Do pronouns express gender, number, declension:
Gender: the only gender distinction is animate/inanimate.
Number: singular, dual, plural, as in nouns.
Declension: as in nouns.
Indefinite pronouns: Yes. La’ (one) and ti’ (none) may be declined as nouns
and used as indefinite pronouns.
Possessed pronouns: No.
Others: No. Word order is used to indicate questions.
Are prepositions bound, unbound: Prepositions are often prefixed to a root.
How many: About 25 (some borderline uses), not counting compound
prepositions.
Presence of clitics: Yes. The ‘pronominal mood indicators’ (= PMIs) affect
the accent of the verb.
Is derivational morphology mostly by compounding words or by affix or both?:
Always both at the same time.

Verbs and such:
Are person, number, object expressed with the verb:
Person: yes, but with a serious case of underrepresentation resolved by the
use of ‘pronominal mood indicators’ = PMIs.
Number: yes; singular, dual (rarely used), and plural.
Object: no, except possibly in the case of reciprocity, if forms like
ru’pha’tyaien- ‘see oneself’count
Ru’-     pha’-                     tyaien
3an sg   reflexive animate suffix  ‘see’

Are there static verbs (to be): Yes. The verb ‘to be’ is also used as a kind
of neutral base to which prepositions may be attached and acquire verbal
force. Mena ‘to be’ Sab ‘without’ Sab-mena > sammena ‘to lack’

Is the object incorporated into the person marker: No.

Is transitivity marked for transitive, intransitive, bitransitive or other?:
Transitivity is completely unmarked. One must know the use of the verb.

Is the person inclusive, exclusive, no distiction?: In the third person,
there is a distinction between animate and inanimate.

Are past, present, future expressed: Lahabic uses thematic vowels to
indicate a combination of aspect (aorist, imperfective, perfective) and
relative time (past, present, future).

Is mood expressed, what kind: Indicative and Imperative are rendered with
the aid of a PMI. Causative is rendered by the suffix –ro’n-. Desiderative,
Obligatory, Hortatory (‘ought’) are rendered by a construction [dependent
verb]-[benefactive inanimate suffix –ma’-]-[dharab/dhub/dhob]. Other
Subjunctive uses of the verb, such as Conditional, are handled by
conjunctions (mostly specialized uses of compound prepositions).

Is voice expressed?: Active, Middle, Passive. Active and Passive voice are
expressed by conjugation of the verb aided by PMIs. Middle voice would
coalesce with the reciprocal form.

Aspect?: Aorist, Imperfective, and Perfective; marked by thematic vowels and
linked inseparably with the tenses.

Pro-drop: No, I don’t think so.
Can nouns, adjectives, adverbs be changed to verbs and vice versa: Most
roots are verbal and can be changed to nouns. Adjectival and nominal roots
can become verbs but the semantic change involved varies widely. Adverbs are
formed from the locative case of nouns.

Presence of adjective, adverbial clauses and relative pronouns: No to the
first twon; Lahabic adores compound adjectives and nouns. /kho-/ is the
relative pronoun.

Does the conlang have an ergative or accusative system?: Accusative.

Word order and is it free or strict? VSO, very strict

Are adjectives, adverbs and prepositions before or after the modified
word? Adverbs after, prepositions before, adjectives before.

Is the word order changed in a question?: Always, to emphasize the topic of
the question.
How many (approximately) conjugations are there?: 1 conjugation, 7
declensions (although this number is the result of classifying
animate/inanimate pairs as individual declensions; taken separately, fewer
are seen)

What is the number base for the numeral system?: 10

Presence of idioms: many; the native speakers are poets at heart, and their
language obliges.

...Irregular forms of nouns and verbs.  Is the syntax very predictable:
Extremely.

How much literature has been produced: Some poetry; most use of Lahabic is
for names of people or places.

Is there a history and dictionary of the conlang : a definite history, with
related languages, both cognate and descendant; several scattered paper
dictionaries, a LANGMAKER one, and a small posted one at my website. I think
the word for ‘fruit’ is different in each.

Script invented: Yes. Very good for wood or stone, but the cursive version
is nearly unreadable.

Other conlangs produced by the creator of this one: naReNga naRi’, sketches
of numerous cousins to Lahabic for etymological research; sketch of Emegali

If you could summarize your conlang in a sentence, what would you write?

“Lahabic is an tangled family tree, with mothers, aunts, and cousins,
intermarriages and borrowed utensils, and family tales that are treasured
but not true.”

"commune id vitium est, hic vivimus ambitiosa
paupertate"
"this is our common fault; here we live in ostentatious poverty"
Juvenal, Satires 3.182-3




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