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

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

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