Re: CHAT Graeca sine flexione (was: Greek plosives)

I received Ray's msg already after I had sent my reply to Philip, so I need to
reply to one more msg in the thread (still in the daily quota, I suppose).

R A Brown wrote:

> I feel we've give this quite an airing, shown how the sort of way it
> could go and also thrown up some of the problems involved. I feel we
> have, may be, given ideas for possible conlangs.
I agree. I may stop at this stage. It was refreshing, anyway. Thanks to all
participants.

> Isaac Penzev wrote:
> If the AG forms are retained. Even then it is not so simple as both _es_
> and _eis_ are used in the ancient language. Which do we pick, and why.
Koine offers _eis_, does it make Koine a third source in row with AG and MG?

> In MG _en_ and _ek_ have gone, and _es_ has become _se_ with a much
> extended range of use similar to that of _a(d)_ in the modern Romance langs.
Again, it depends on definition, what exactly is MG - only Dimotiki, or
Katharevousa too? Because my (Neo)Greek-Russian dictionary lists both _en_ and
_ek_.

>  > Verbs are conjugated as follows:
>  > salta jumps
>  > saltare to jump
>  > saltato jumped
>  > saltante jumping
>  > salta! jump!
>  > </quoting>
>
> Um - sine flexione??? Or may be it's agglutination - but if so, we shall
> surely get some odd forms:
> scribe, scribere, *scribeto*, scribente, scribe!
> dormi, dormire, dormito, *dorminte*, dormi!
> etc.
>
> _scribeto_ is particularly odd. If LSF had _scripto_ then it ain't 'sine
> flexione'.
Agree with all my heart. It's agglutinativity, thus producing rather odd forms.

>  >>>A side note - I still miss plurals. The word _polý_ seems a bit
> overloaded.
>
> The Chinese, who are not an inconsiderable number of speakers, get on
> fine without it. As do the Japanese, and many others - seems to me that
> possible 1/3 of the world's population manage without a grammatical
> plural ending. Personally I do not see the problem.
Ok. Plurals are too eurocentric ;) but then Greek is still helluva European :)))
All auxlangs like this must die <evil grin>.

>  > Yes, I was not clear enough. I knew those were two different groups.
>  > So, strike out mi-verbs, and take deponent in 3rd form? Like _dínate_?
>
> Not me - I would assume an active form.
Turning _dynamai_ into _dyni_, pronounced the same as _dini_ 'to give'. Lotsa
troubles...

>  > Beta-code?
>
> Yes, it has, i understand, become the de_facto standard for ASCII
> notation among classicists.
>
>  >Can you enlighten us about this system?
>
> See:
> http://www.tlg.uci.edu/BetaCode.html
Eucharisto!

> Philip Newton wrote:
>  > and the
>  > ambiguous words are probably not worse than e.g. having both "invalid"
>  > and "invalid" in English. (For example, "khoros" being either "dance"
>  > or "place" in modern Greek, or "pisti" being either "faith" or the
>  > subjunctive of "to be convinced".)
>
> Umm - one could do as in Russian where the acute accent in used in texts
> for learners, but omitted in normal printing.
That may solve the problem. I should only mention, that stress is used even in
normal Russian (and Ukrainian) printing when there is need to disambiguate the
meanings like _зáмок_ "castle" vs. _замóк_ "lock", or _большѝх_ "big.GEN.PL" vs.
_бóльших "greater.GEN.PL".

>  > Or just ditch imperfect altogether and simply have a
>  > future/present/past distinction. Heck, my German idiolect does without
>  > the imperfect in quite a few cases, substituting the perfect instead.
>
> Yes, many German dialects do, i understand, and IIRC so does Afrikaans.
> Yes, I go along with that suggestion.
Yiddish does the same. Ok, it may work.

>  > And either the present subjunctive or the aorist subjunctive,
>  > depending on aspect (with aorist subjunctive being more common).
>
> Not if it's 'sine flexion' - we'll have to forget aspect, or show it
> some other way, methinks.
Down with aspect!

>  >>ACTIVE & PASSIVE
>  >>here I am stuck. MG still uses synthetic passives. Obviously GSF cannot.
>  >>All the above, of course, is indicative - no problem. Could the passive
>  >>be formed using an auxiliary verb such as 'receive' or 'suffer'?
>  >
>  > Or "become", as in German?
>
> Yes, indeed. I quite like it.
Ok, but caveat: _ginomai_ is deponent.

>  > On 2/4/06, Isaac Penzev <isaacp@...> wrote:
>  >>Shall we have different forms for subject and object?
>  >
>  > I say yes, on the analogy of, say, English and French.
>
> Neither language is 'sine flexione', especially French!
No, that was not me!!!

> Like Isaac, I feel I now need a break - besides my Brsc/Piashi is
> becoming more and more neglected    :=(
Let us shake hands, and wish all the best one to another. Actual conlanging is
waiting, to say nothing about the Real Life™...

-- Isaac Penzev aka Yitzik