>> Dirk, can you include ' i inverse ' á la Kiowa? I happen to have that
>> in my conlang.
<snip explanation>
>If the default for a word like 'finger' were plural,
>the marker would indicate singular.
>Does your system work like that?
Yes, it does.
>If so, here's the problem that I see. For the morphology section of the
>Language Code I've been tacitly assuming that the attributes and their
>values refer to morpho-syntactic categories and not to the formal
>realizations of these categories. While 'inverse' might be a novel way
>of realizing number categories, it isn't a category itself.
I understand. So I guess my lang has singualr and plural, but just
expresses in an 'inverse way'.
>The question is whether the Language Code should include
>realizational properties of morphological categories beyond the general
>agglutinating/isolating/inflecting cast of the language as a whole. I'm
>inclined to not include them, unless someone has good arguments for
>doing so. This also points out a weakness of schemes like the Language
>Code; you can't put in everything, and many interesting and even
>important features will go unmentioned.
I think you are right in this. A scheme like the Language Code should
just mention some rough characteristics, a grammar should mention
the interesting features.
So, Tlapóa is :
Tlapóa :Tp Pt*p++16,4s(c)v(v/c) Ws Ma+ h+t2a2c3g2nsp Sbso.argn Lc+++d+300
Just nitpicking about tones: what is the difference between 'register' and 'level' tones?
How to indoacte 'pitch accent'? Is that just 'register'?
Rob