Re: Ooh! Pretty Pictures! (was: Need Advice on Syntax & Case System

On Sat, Apr 27, 2002 at 03:56:13PM +0200, Christian Thalmann wrote:
> In an effort to make my case system more understandable, I whipped up
> some sketches in Photoshop to illustrate the relationships of objects
> in an Obrenje sentence.
>
> Does it make more sense now?  Feedback encouraged!
[snip]

Cool stuff. A lot of it seems quite similar to my own conlang, esp. the
concept of the predicative noun. There are significant differences in the
way my conlang handles different noun cases, but the idea of source (your
nominative) and destination (your object) is inherent in its case system.

One significant difference is that my conlang has no passive; there is a
single verb for giving and receiving (being given), and noun cases are
cast exactly the same way. E.g.:

"The man gives a flower to the child" is rendered as:

pii'z3d0 byy'jh  ka'c3       bii'l3nu.
man(org) give(v) flower(cvy) child(rcp)

org = originative case, marking the source, in this case, the source of
      the flower.
v   = verb -- Ebisedi grammarians describe verbs as "the process by which
      the conveyant noun passes from the source (the originative noun) to
      the destination (the receptive noun)."
cvy = conveyant case: that which is "conveyed", or "carried" by the action
      of the verb. In many cases, this case coincides with your
      predicative case.
rcp = receptive case: the recipient, or target, of the action.


The passive equivalent of the sentence, "The child receives a flower from
the man" (or, more accurately, "the child was given a flower by the man",
since giving and receiving are not the same action), is, in fact,
identical in case markings.  The only difference, should the speaker
choose to differentiate the two, is the word order:

bii'l3nu byy'jh  ka'c3       pii'z3d0.
boy(rcp) give(v) flower(cvy) man(org)


T

--
The diminished 7th chord is the most flexible and fear-instilling chord. Use
it often, use it unsparingly, to subdue your listeners into submission!