Re: About Romance natlangs and conlangs (Re: ) (LONG)

In a message dated 11/18/1999 7:52:56 AM,
grandsir@NATLAB.RESEARCH.PHILIPS.COM writes:

<snip>
>> It's a pity because personally I prefer romance langs:(( It's probably
>easy
>> to create your own romance conlang then to learn a "natural" romance
>> language:((. So the information I need couldn't be found here.
>> At the moment, I was able to think out only these points:
>> - there must be grammatical genders (f, m, n) in a "natural-looking romance
>> conlang", and
>
>        Only masculine and feminine genders. Neuter was already moribund
>in
>Colloquial Latin at the time of the Republic. My Romance conlang Reman
>has in fact no grammatical gender (except m, f and n in 3rd person
>pronouns singular and plural) but it does have semantic gender (for
>sexed animals or things).
Romanian has a neuter gender ... but I think it was a later development.

>> - appropriate articles (def., indef., f, m, n)
>
>        In all Romance natlangs, the indefinite article seems to come from
>Latin "unus" (1) and the definite article from Latin "ille" (yonder).
<snip>

Except for Sardinian, whose definite article domes from "ipse" (-self).
There's always room for variation! :-)

Josh Roth
http://members.aol.com/fuscian