Re: Typologic survey, part I

On Sat, 27 Jan 2001 20:20:23 +0100, taliesin the storyteller
<taliesin@...> wrote:


>---- PART I Conlang Typlogic Survey 2001 ----
>
>House-keeping data
>
>Name of the participating conlang: Banin
>Name/id of the creators: Luís Henrique
>Name/id of the submitter, if different from the creator: the same
>Place used, if any: all over (dominant language) Gaia world
>Web-address with more information, if any: being built, not yet available
>Type of language as per Rick Harrison's system[2]: 2.1.2
         Fictional, vocabulary mostly built on Langmaker (and afterwards
         selected by personal aesthetics)
>
>1: Word order of Subject (S), Object (O) and Verb (V): free
>
>The possible orders are: SVO/SOV/VSO/VOS/OSV/OVS/free/doesn't apply
>Which order(s) is/are most common?
>Which orders are possible? all; euphonic considerations are important
>Is the order different if the verb is intransitive, if so, how? no
>If it doesn't apply, why?
I'm not sure if the concepts of "subject" and "object" are meaningful in
Banin. They have more semantically oriented verb arguments. Agent XOR
instrument are marked (by tense agreement with the verb); pacient is not
prepositioned and may inflect to future to mark subjunctive mood; other
arguments (focus, origin, destiny, cause, etc) are prepositioned. Verbs
with no agent are commonplace. Verbs have different meanings according to
their "transitivity" (frex, "valus" = to die if there is no agent, "valus"=
to kill if there is an agent).

In a noun phrase, the substantive must come second, unless there are no
other words.
>
>---- END part I ----
>[2] btw, has anyone a better/different classification scheme?
>
Not better, I guess, but more traditional: Banin is a flexive language
(though its demonstratives may behave in a quite aglutinative manner).
Substantives flex by gender and "tense" (past/present/future); verbs by
tense (12 in all); demonstratives by gender and number (sg/pl); other word
classes don't inflect. Genders are "pure" (feminine) and "mixed"
(masculine); gender has different meanings according to the semantics of
the substantive involved. Mixed is the default.

Luís Henrique