Person marking on nouns

I'm glad to see I sparked some interest with this topic!

(replies to multiple people follow.  sorry about delay.)

David Peterson wrote:
> The examples you came up with for this person marking on nouns was
> rather like trying to fit the system you described onto English.
Yes, it kind of was that.  I thought it was the easiest way to explain
it, but maybe it wasn't.

> You don't need to do this.   If you had a created language that had
> person marking on nouns (let's say...):
> ma- = 1st
> ka- = 2nd
> 0- = 3rd    (where 0- is a null   morpheme)
> Then I would predict that that language would use this strategy a
> *lot* more--so much so, that a noun with person marking might be used
> more often than a pronoun.
Yes, quite possibly.  That's a consequence I'd thought of, but didn't
bother to write.

[snip conversation example]

> It's a good idea!   I may have to steal it one day.   ;)
Go ahead!  Let me know if you do.  (I have SO MANY little conlang ideas
floating around that I'll never get around to using, but would love to
see used.)

> -David
Jake X wrote:
> I'm definately using that in my next lang.
> You never know, maybe this wholw idea will spark something.
Yay!  My idea inspired another person!

Christian Thalmann schrieb:
> If you have verb inflections, you can use those rather than noun
> affixes:  "Speak, for your servant am listening."  My conlang Obrenje
> does that, especially for expressing grammatical number, to which
verb
> inflections are insensitive:
> |Lonnaze.| {sing:1}  "I sing" or "We sing".
> |Lonnaze nae.| {sing:1 all}  "We all sing."
> |Lonnaze cene.| {sing:1 the:single}  "I alone sing."  (That sounds a
>     tad strange in English, but it's not quite the same as "I sing
>     alone".)
Yeah, that would be another way of doing about the same thing.  In the
language I'm working on that will do something similar, the verb-like
forms will probably have to agree in person (and gender and number)
with the noun-like forms that serve as their arguments.

[snip stuff about if Latin does this]

> PS: Wots up wif da Gangsta orthografy?  Makes it kinda hard
>     ta take u serious, u no.
Well, it's a long story... We all know the illogicality of English
spelling.  And of course many people have tried to reform it, but it
never catches on.  I decided that instead of trying to reform spelling
by creating a total, logical spelling reform, and then having to try to
convert people to using it, which will never work, I would do something
else.  I decided to simply "revolt" against the standard spelling,
respelling things in ways that made them more logical than the standard
spelling, but also not going too, too far from the standard spelling.
It's also not an attempt at a reformed spelling because the degree to
which I make it differ from standard spelling varies according to the
occasion, context, and my mood.  Sometimes I just make a few minor
changes, sometimes I make quite a few changes, and I'm selective which
audiences I use it to.

Originally I thought this would be a good place to use it, since I
figured that linguisticly-oriented people such as we have here would be
readier than most to accept it.  But it's been pointed out to me that,
while my system is legible without too much difficulty to native
speakers of English, it may cause difficulties for non-native speakers,
which we have a lot of on this list.  So I think I'll stop using it
here, or just use it sparingly.


Carlos Thompson wrote:
> I once deviced a conlang marking nouns for either gender or person:
>   friend-1st : I (who is a friend) ...
>   friedn-2nd : you (who are a friend) ...
>   friend-3rd_fem : friend (female)
>   friedn-3rd_masc : friend (male)
> but I didn't developed that idea further.
Yes, that sounds like what I'm thinking of.  The language I'm inventing
doesn't have nouns distinct from verbs, but otherwise works similar.
it would base these forms on a word beaning "to be a friend"  (glossed
"be.friend", and they would work something like this, (ignoring other
morphemes like tense/aspect):

be.friend-1st.NOMINAL : I who am a friend
be.friend-2nd.NOMINAL : You who are a friend
be.friend-3rd.MASC.NOMINAL : He who is a friend / male friend
be.friend-3rd.FEM.NOMINAL : She who is a friend / female friend

(I mark the person affixes here "1.NOMINAL", "2.NOMINAL" etc. to
distinguish them from person affixes which go in the same affix
position, and are largely exchangeable with them, except that they give
a form translatable as a verb rather than as a noun, e.g.
"be.friend-1st" means "I am a friend"."

H.S Teoh wrote:
> Now, that is a VERY cool idea... because this would explain the
> Ebisédian pronominal system perfectly.
Neat!  Someday, I'll learn Ebisedian :)

Nik Taylor wrote:
> Well, some languages use verbal person markings on nouns to indicate
> *possession*
Hebrew does something like this, doesn't it?  Well, it's not exactly
verbal person marking though...


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