Re: CHAT: Bouncing (jara: My girlfriend is a conlanger!)

Isaac Penzev wrote at 2003-03-18 13:52:59 (+0200)
 > Katav Jan van Steenbergen:
 >
 > > > Perhaps the next poll could help me gather some data by asking
 > > > for people's height and weight as well as some basic
 > > > characteristics of their conlangs; basic syntax,
 > > > accusativity/ergativity/other, presence of cases, etc.
 > >
 > > Hehe. Length 1.90m, weight somewhere around 100 kg (it was a long
 > > time ago I weighed myself, so let's say 100 ± 5 kg). Favourite
 > > word order VSO. Inflective language. Accusativity. Cases, but not
 > > too much (preferably seven or so).
 >
 > Ok. I'm 1.78m, weight about 90 kg. Favorite sounds:
 > ejectives. Favorite word order: VSO/NA. Agglutinative or with
 > semitic-like infixes. Accusative with traces of ergativity and
 > activity. More elaborated verb morphology than noun one. Favorite
 > sounds: ejectives.
 >

I'm the same height [as Yitzik], approximately the same weight, and
I'd agree with most of this.  Well, I'm not so keen on accusativity.
And I've never really learned to pronounce ejectives... but I like
Mayan languages, which have glottalized consonants, even if I can't
pronounce them.  VOS might be as good as VSO, but NA is important.
I'm particularly fond of semitic-style interdigitation, infixing,
ablaut and other non-concatenative morphological processes - beyond
this I don't have much preference between inflection and
agglutination.  I'd agree about verbal vs nominal elaboration, but
it's not a crucial point.