Re: Newbie says hi

Dirk Elzinga wrote:
>If you squint, the clitics _a=_ and _e=_ look like case markers since _a=_
>appears on a subordinate clause which is coreferential with the object of
>the main clause and _e=_ appears on a subordinate clause which is
>coreferential with the subject of the main clause.  This means that there
>may in fact be a formal distinction between nouns and verbs; nouns have
>case marking (nee switch reference markers), verbs don't. I'm not entirely
>pleased with this development.
>
Conlangs have a way of developing ways unforseen by the conlanger don't
they? It was certainly not my intention that Steianzh should end up with its
somewhat byzantine orthography, which's steadily acreted weirdities. And I
accept no responsibility for the instrumental and possessives case endings'
failure to collapse as planned*.

What happened to those polls? A really good question for one of those
would've been whether you've experienced one of your conlangs acquiring
properties you didn't mean to include.

* The case systems of the Taianzh language family were meant to be more
rectangularly rational than IE ones. Despite this, a typical Steianzh noun
has a mere 7-8 eight forms between 10 case-number combos.

                                                       Andreas

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