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Adjectiveless/verbless conlangs, etc. (Was: Re: LUNATIC SURVEY: 2005)

From:H. S. Teoh <hsteoh@...>
Date:Saturday, February 26, 2005, 1:13
On Thu, Feb 24, 2005 at 08:31:57PM -0500, Mike Ellis wrote:
> Sally Caves writ: > > >LUNATIC SURVEY 2005, by Sally Caves
[...]
> Omurax: > Ergative, but verbless. (Honestly, the language became verbless before I had > internet access and discovered that everyconlanger and his dog had tried a > verbless language. Really!) Fusional for noun cases, which it has 12 of. > Cases inspired by Finnish, phonology by modern Greek. Script written > right-to-left. Mostly head-initial. No prepositions; trying to do away with > adjectives as well.
Did I ever get to tell you on #conlang how Ebisédian does just fine without true adjectives? [...]
> Rhean I wanted more natural. Naturalistic, at least. But It's not very > likely for as many ripped words to show up by pure coincidence in a world > completely seperated from our linguistic history as they have in Rhean. > Never mind the Roman alphabet. > And it's probably extremely unlikely for a human culture to have a language > devoid of syntactic verbs, like the Omurax. Ah well.
I don't see why that's so unlikely, especially given how you described the Omurax on #conlang as a philosophy-inclined people. Those are exactly the kind of people who'd be able to wrap their minds around the circumlocutions you need in a lang without syntactic verbs. In fact, such a thing probably appeals to them. Now, having a lang devoid of *semantic* verbs, OTOH, ... :-) I don't remember who I told it to, but I had this idea of a race of beings that exist in timelessness, a place where time is geometric rather than temporal, and so they describe events exactly the same way they describe shapes. I suppose this would qualify under the freaklang category. [...]
> >*22. How much do you study other languages in order to discover what is > natural in language? Or to discover how you can stretch the boundaries of > language to make it do things that are unnatural? > > I've looked at a lot of natural languages just to see what's out there. So > now, it bothers me to see people assume that other languages are based on an > "internal English" that people have to "think about" in order to turn into > their own language via all those pesky grammar rules. I find few statements > as powerfully stupid as "there are no rules in English".
lol... LOL... I love that phrase, "powerfully stupid". _kiapat koko_. _kakari koko_. :-) [...]
> >*8. Do you sense that people on this list are interested in your conlang > and give you feedback on it? > > I've gotten some very helpful feedback from the list. Probably should post > more. Once I got an email in Rhean. Was that ever a spooky feeling.
Do you realize how many of us would be really, really, jealous by your making that statement? :-) [...]
> >9. Have you ever set out to learn at least a little bit of someone's > conlang, if only a word or two, or a phrase? > > Yup. If I had unlimited time I'd learn a few of them. But I don't. The one > I've learned the most of is Ebisedian. Its sheer weirdness hooked me.
[...] ji'ne kele? :-) T -- Claiming that your operating system is the best in the world because more people use it is like saying McDonalds makes the best food in the world. -- Carl B. Constantine