Re: Conlang Change and The Definite Article

At 12:03 pm -0400 22/4/00, Doug Ball wrote:
[....]
> Do
>others of you experience the same sort of thing?  How often do you change
>your conlang(s)? Are you in the slow process-camp or the overnight-camp?
Quite definitely the slow-process camp - not by choice, however; it's just
the way things have gone.

As I teen-ager, I used to churn out conlangs several times a year.  a major
'overnight' over-haul almost invariably resulted in a different language.
Practically all these juvenile efforts are now lost (that may well be a
'good thing'  :)

Now I want the darned things to be 'perfect', even tho I know they cannot
really be so.  But it means that I've moved slowly, but quite definitely,
into the slow-process camp.

[....]
>In looking at VSO langs, I have yet to see one that doesn't have the
>definite article.
Interesting - I hadn't noticed that, and I guessed I should've done  :=(

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At 6:25 pm -0700 23/4/00, Jim Grossmann wrote:
[....]
>I didn't know that there was a connection between VSO word order and the use
>of definite articles.   How many VSO languages have you studied?
I can't speak for Doug, of course, but the 'classic' examples for us
westerners are surely the insular Celtic languages and the Semitic
languages - all of these (with maybe the exception of modern Hebrew - not
sure about that) are VSO languages and all have a definite, but no
indefinite, article.

Interestingly, Breton - which by definition is not insular Celtic - has
developed an indefinite article as well as the definite & has shifted to a
V2 word order.  Are the two developments connected?

>Approximately how many VSO languages are there all told?
Does anyone know?  Are there other examples besides the Celtic & Semitic
languages?  I guess there probably are.

>Are you sure that
>there is a VSO-definite article connection in natural languages?
Depends on the non-Celtic & non-Semitic counter examples people come up
with, I guess.
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Back to Doug again:
> So in moving Skerre to VSO, I figured I should add the
>definite article.  However, with my beloved reduplicative plural prefix, the
>article becomes a problem, because it becomes confusing between, ta tansko
>(the race), and tatansko (races).  Looking at possible solutions to my
>problem, I'm pondering adding a suffixing definite article.  Does this seem
>natural, especially for a VSO lang?
The Celtic & semitic languages all have prefixed definite articles.  So if
they are the evidence that VSO langs have a definite but no indefinite
article, then by the same token we have to conclude that such languages do
not have suffixed articles.

Yet there seems to me no a_priori reason why a VSO should not have such an
article.  I guess we have to wait & see what other examples of VSO
languages people find   :)

Another solution would, of course, be not to use 'ta' as the definite
article and, indeed, not to use anything with CV pattern as an article.
Would a VC article avoid the 'reduplicative plural' problem?

Ray.





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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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