Re: Genitives NPs as Relative Clauses

En réponse à Keith Gaughan <kmgaughan@...>:

>
> >In my Azak, I solved this problem by having two different genitive
> cases: a
> >genitive subjective and a genitive objective (in fact, they are
> genitive
> >ergative and genitive absolutive, since Azak is an ergative language),
> and
> >thus
> >two different sets of possessive adjectives.
>
> How would something like that have evolved?
>
Unfortunately, Azak is a language without history. I created it before I knew
anything about historical linguistics, less even about the list. So basically
it started from scratch. Its much too regular grammar accounts for it: rigid V-
initial order, 100% agglutinative grammar consisting only of suffixes, all of
the form VC (a handful of VCVC), roots mandatorily ending with a consonnant (so
you even have vowelless roots like the meaningless n-, used only to transform
an affix into a root - a little like the Icelandic pi-, as I discovered a few
days ago on the list. But I swear I didn't know any Icelandic when I designed
Azak :)) -), 30 cases or so, including an "adjective" case, transforming a noun
into an adjective (not to confuse with the two genitives), etc...

Add to that an ugly script (with a neat feature though: roots are written with
an alphabetic script, but affixes are written with a kind of syllabary, where
each VC form (and the VCVC too, so it's not a true syllabary) receives its own
character. So there's no need to put spaces between words since the alternation
of writing systems is enough to show the beginning and end of words. And I
didn't know anything of japanese when I devised it :) ) and you have that. And
if you're still not discouraged by this description, you can still check my
webpage, it has a part about Azak (in French only though :( ).

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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