Re: Group Conlang (was: Re: a Conlang, created by the group?)

On Sun, 11 Oct 1998 11:33:21 -0300, Pablo Flores
<fflores@...> wrote:

>The main reason to prefix case markers is (it seems) to avoid imitating
>Latin (and other IE langs).
Well, it's not quite Latin, since number and gender are marked with a
prefix, but since most people seem to prefer prefixed cases, I'll modify =
my
proposal to swap the two positions. (In that case, gender suffixes would
have a form such as -V or -VC, rather than CV-.)

>>I don't especially like pe- or ys-.
>Neither do I. Do you not like them or plainly hate them?
I could get used to them, I guess, but pe- sounds too much like "patient"
and I'm not yet sure about how the syllables ending in fricatives are =
going
to work as prefixes.

>I see you use a prefixed marker a- which you translate
>"the". Is it supposed to be a gender marker (where you proposed
>it to be located), or is it really an "article"?
There are two slightly different versions; a system without gender =
markers
(in which the a- precedes the noun root directly) and a system with =
gender
markers (in which the a- precedes the gender marker). I have a slight
preference for the gender system, but I can appreciate the concerns about
arbirariness of gender classification. If words are listed in the
vocabulary with a gender suffix attached, it could almost be considered a
basic part of the word and not need to be memorized separately:

example:
kiran : bird [root kir-, gender class -an]

>Bear in mind that kjak- "bite" should be marked with a
>predicate case affix. Otherwise your sentence could mean
>"the bit made to me by the dog", cos kjak- is both
>nominal and verbal in principle. The proposed word order
>(modifiers + head) suggests this.
If we get rid of verb roots, it should have a predicate case affix. I'm
still not convinced that getting rid of verb roots is a good idea. I'd
prefer to derive the noun "bite" from the verb "to bite".

>>Being able to distinguish predicates from modifiers might be useful for
>>word order flexibility: we could say "the-dog red-modifier" for "the =
red
>>dog" without having it be confused for "the dog is red".
>
>I agree. The trouble with modifiers is that you don't know what
>they modify. If you say "man-agent strong-modifier disagree-predicate"
>it could mean "the strong man disagrees" or "the man strongly =
disagrees".

That's where gender agreement would be useful.