Re: The Language Code

On Monday, May 26, 2003, at 08:34  AM, Rob Nierse wrote:

>> n number
>> s singular
>> d dual
>> t trial
>> p plural
>> f paucal ("just a Few things")
>> a distributive ("things All over the place")
>> g collective ("things Grouped together")
> ...
>
> Dirk, can you include ' i inverse ' á la Kiowa? I happen to have that
> in my conlang.
As I understand the Kiowa/Tanoan system, the inverse number marker is
added to a form in the "unexpected" or inverse number. So if the
default for a word like 'person' were singular, the marker would
indicate plural. If the default for a word like 'finger' were plural,
the marker would indicate singular. Does your system work like that?

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. 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.

>> d (Devanagari-style script -- what's the term?)
> Isn't that Abjad or abugida?
I think you're right; the others seem to agree that it's an 'abugida'.

Dirk
--
Dirk Elzinga
Dirk_Elzinga@byu.edu

"I believe that phonology is superior to music. It is more variable and
its pecuniary possibilities are far greater." - Erik Satie