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Changes to W, and a bit of con-culture

From:Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>
Date:Tuesday, November 17, 1998, 18:43
First off, I'm considering contracting Watya'iya`isa to Watya'i`sa.

Secondly, I've made several important changes.  I've completely altered
the aspects.  The new aspects are: Potential (about to), inceptive
(begin to), inchoative (during the action), habitual, cessative (stop; I
may call this terminative), and perfective.  I've eliminated the stative
and immediate future modals.  Tenses likewise have been reformed.  I've
also added confidentiality morphemes following the tense.  The new
tenses are remote past, past, present, future.  Confidentiality
morphemes are contrafactual, hypothetical, belief/second-hand,
confident/reliable source, and observed.  Remote past can never occur
with observed, past can never occur with hypothetical (thus, tense is
mixed in with confidence - hypothetical is always remote, even if you're
hypothesizing about something that might have happened two minutes ago),
present cannot occur with confident, and future can only occur with
hypothetical - altho observed may also be used in prophecies, I think.
I've also altered the forms of some affixes slightly.  I've made tense,
confidentiality, absolutive, and aspect obligatory (I think).  I've
dropped eight cases, reducing the total to 19.  I've also altered the
meaning of genders 4 and 5.  Previously, they were "higher animal" and
"lower animal", now they are "feminine animal" and "masculine animal" -
however, those terms are based on considerations other than biological
gender.  Certain animals are associated with males, and others are
associated with females.  In their belief system, all animals have
equivalents in the spirit world, and the certain spirits watch over
females, others over males.  I've only just started to work out the
divisions.  Fish are female, and migratory birds are male.
Non-migratory birds will, I think, be divided up among male and female.
Individuals have a specific animal watching them, which extends to a
food taboo - one cannot eat one's patron animal (and, of course, there
are certain foods which are forbidden to all).

Names reflect these beliefs - children are named after the patron animal
of their mother plus another animal, assigned by the elders to them for
their birth order (1st female child is assigned a certain fish, etc.).
When they reach adulthood, they take the name of their patron animal
(learning which that is is a part of becoming an adult), along with the
patron animal of their mother, with their childhood animal also tagged
on to the very end, but rarely used.  Children only take fish for
females, and migratory birds for males.

--
"It has occured to me more than once that holy boredom is good and
sufficient reason for the invention of free will." - "Lord Leto II"
(Dune Chronicles, by Frank Herbert)
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files/
ICQ #: 18656696
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