Re: Isolating syntax, agglutinating grammar

John Vertical wrote:
(someone else wrote:)
> >Has anyone done a language where the structure is mostly isolating but
> >the grammar has the form of a more agglutinating language?  In other
> >words, instead of case endings on a word, you would just have a
> >particle for each case?
Actually, my Gwr (still developing) is somewhat like this, except the only
"cases" marked are the possessive (and it can be optional :-)) and
dative/recipient-- the poss. marker is a toneless suffix that takes the tone
of the word it's attached to, but the Dative is a separate "word" with its
own tone, so it's more of a postposition. _Plural_ is also marked with
another toneless suffix.

Verbal future tense, and imperative, also use toneless suffixes, but other
TMA are expressed with time-adverbs, auxiliaries, etc.

> OTOH, I've contemplated a language that *looks* isolating - in that it'd
> be
> dominatingly monosyllabic -
IMO predominantly monosyl. langs. probably descend from polysyl. langs., so
you might need to work out the historical development. Some of the first
words I created for Gwr (using very general guidelines in my head) turned
out to be phonologically and/or tonally impossible-- now that I've actually
worked out all the developments from CVCV(C) > CV(C). (And still I find
errors :-( )

..but would express cases and stuff with
> mutations, clustering of consonants and maybe even tones, too.
Certainly possible. If you're actually starting with monosyl.forms, it might
be necessary to allow rather complex structure, in order to get enough
variety.

 (How likely
> is it for tone to express grammatical meaning?)
I can see it occurring, for ex. to distinguish a verbal form from a related
noun derivative, or an adj. from a noun. There are natlangs that do this,
though not always regularly, I suspect.

As for case distinctions-- in order to be at least a little realistic, there
should be phonetic reasons for tones to develop (of course, realism may not
be your criterion, which is OK...). The most common development(s) observed
are: voiceless C lead to high(er) tones, voiced to low(er)

> I'm however afraid the
> morphophonology might get too strained.
Since when has that ever been a problem for a conlanger??? :-)))
>
> Another side question - languages like English have used only a small part
> of the possible monosyllabes. But how's it with "monosyllabic" languages
> (counting tone)?
So far I've worked out approx. 400 Gwr words, and already there are some
total homonyms (same form, same tone), quite a few same-form/different-tone.
Sometimes I'm quite surprised at the outcome!!

One reason for this is that e.g. (p,t,k)-stressed V1-(p,t,k)V2# all >
(p,t,k)V1? with high tone; etc. etc.  Whereas you could get /pV?/ with low
tone < (ptk)V1[b]+stressed V2+C-- V1 > 0, the vl-vd stops cluster, the vd
stop devoices, but keeps its low tone.

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