Re: Future English

On Tue, 8 Feb 2005 17:00:49 +1100, Tristan McLeay
<conlang@...> wrote:

>Well, we get by often enough using s~z~@z after a singular element as
>it is...
Yes.

>> One of the allophones would be [@]?  How do you figure?
>
>z@z@, s@z@ > z@, s@
>houses're h&Oz@z@ > h&Oz@
>boxes're bOks@z@ > bOks@
Ah, okay.  Makes sense.  Also possible are long s-sequences:
houses're > haussa ['haUs.s@]
boxes're > bakssa ['baks).s@]

>> I think it likely that that pronoun will become a postclitic verbal
>> marker for transitivity.
>
>I think it sensible to avoid the word 'likely'.
Why's that?  It's already happened in some creoles, e.g. Tagalog.

>Oh, for the derivative of 'us' or 'to us' to become singular dative,
>all it needs is for informal speech to become standard. A feature of
>informal British and Australian English is and has been for some time
>to use 'us'/'to us' to mean 'me'/'to me'. (Reports on the web suggest
>it's more common in some British variants than it is in my Australian
>variant, but it's common enough here too.)
Oh, I see.  I didn't know about that.  Over here in 'Merca, we don't do
that. :b

>> Rather, it
>> seems more likely that oblique forms will be constructed similar to
>> Hebrew
>> and Arabic: t'mi for "to me", n'yu for "and you", etc.  Compare Hebrew
>> l'chaym "to life", etc.
>
>Which differs from one current option only in orthography.
Yes.

>Well transitive and active aren't exactly similar, nor are intransitive
>and stative. I
No, but the pairs transitive-active and intransitive-stative have more in
common than transitive-stative and intransitive-active.

>> Mi tekim. = I take [something].
>> Mi tek. = I am taken.
>
>That second one (the English translation at least) is just
>
>BTW---I see no reason why English of the 24th Century should be any
>more likely to have had its orthography changed than English of the
>21st. Some words might change spelling in minor ways, but I wouldn't
>expect anything radical---maybe just more things like 'gonna' or
>'wanna' will become more standard (and others unthought of as things
>become grammaticalised and reduced), or as <miniture> from <minuture>,
>unstressed syllables might change. I thus suggest:
>
>Me take 'em.
>Me take.
It's just my preference to have a more phonemic/phonetic orthography. :)

>If you feel so inclined, you can suggest the IPA pronunciation: /mi
>"tekIm/, you seem to imply.
Actually, I posit that stress would always be on the initial syllable and
would be rather weaker than that of current English.  So, |mitekim|
= /mitekim/ = ['mi.t_he.k_hIm].

>> Other possibilities:
>>
>> 1. A contrast between alienable and inalienable possession.  The
>> former is
>> expressed by the verb _on_ "own", e.g. ket mion "my cat", while the
>> latter
>> is expressed by the preposition _o_ "of", e.g. hed omi "my head".
>
>I was never trying to suggest things that don't already have some
>indication of where it's coming from in current English... I can say
>'my own head' just as easily as I can say 'my own cat'.
I didn't say that you suggested such things.  I suggested them. :)  While
one can say "my own head" as easily as "my own cat", it seems like the
related verb "own" implies alienable possession.

>> 2. Complete obliteration of the fossilized ablaut verb forms (e.g.
>> sing ~
>> sang ~ sung) and also the currently productive past-tense formation in
>> -
>> ed.  The new verb system would have mostly prefixing TMA markers.
>
>I doubt it'll be *completely* obliterated. Lexical words, yeah, but
>grammaticalised words I think will retain it for a while.
I think things like sing vs. song will remain, but not Ablaut within a
given class of words (nouns, verbs, etc).

>> 3. Possibly a new animate/inanimate grammatical gender distinction
>> expressed by different verbal markers.  For example, an animate direct
>> object would be marked by the suffix -im on the verb, while an
>> inanimate
>> direct object would be marked by the suffix -it (or perhaps -o, from
>> "her").
>
>I'm sure all the women will enjoy being turned into inanimates. While
>similar things have happened in other languages, normally there's
>already no relationship between masculine and feminine and male and
>female, whereas in English, the relationship is incredibly strong.
Women wouldn't be turned into inanimates.  They'd be part of the animates.
However, in colloquial English, some inanimate objects are referred to in
the 3rd-person feminine.  So there isn't a complete lack of basis for such
a development.

>Leaving that aside, I don't see it happening anyway, at least, there's
>no indication of it happening already... Perhaps a French-style 'Me, I
>went to the park', or 'Jack and Fred, they went outside' (which happen
>sometimes in English, but not religiously yet), but that's the closest
>in the current system I can get to any sign of nominal indication via
>inflexion on the verb.
These are just my own thoughts.

- Rob

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