Re: How much data in your conlang nouns?

On Sat, 03 Jan 2004 21:28:58 -0800, Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...> wrote:

> So here's my starter list.  What does your language
> need that I haven't listed?
>
> 1. Number (such as singular, dual, plural)
> 2. Gender (such as masc., fem., neut.)
> 3. Class or Declension (Varies with language)
> 4. Case (nom., dat., gen., etc. varies with language)
> 5. Social mode (formal, informal, royal, sacred, who
> knows)
Thagojian has number marking, actually a couple of kinds, one for talking
about count nouns, one for talking about membership in groups of count
nouns, and one for quantities of mass nouns. Gender is semantic, instead of
syntactic, thus you mark a noun with the correct gender for it's use in the
sentence (e.g. 2nd Person, 3rd Person Inanimate, etc). So, by my reckoning,
that means you only have to know the number and the numbering class, and
since the numbering class is syntactic probably (at a guess) 90% of the
time, it's really easy. You need to know 1.1 things about any given noun.




Paul
... told ya I'm behind with my CONLANG mails