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

General remark: You are so stimulating! I had to take out my modern Greek
materials (Russian-G and G-R dictionaries, a conversation guide and a tiny
grammar sketch) to follow the thread!

Hanuman Zhang egrapse:

> on 2/3/06 8:03 PM, R A Brown at ray@CAROLANDRAY.PLUS.COM wrote:
>
> > I think that one of the fundamental things that would need to be decided
> > in a "Graeca sine flexione" is whether the 'Graeca' is (essentially)
> > ancient or modern.
>
> Oh why not a dogged, mongrel-mutt Greco-mix of both commonly recognizable
> roots ancient and modern?
I expected it to be mostly ancient.

====================

R A Brown egrapsei:

> Isaac Penzev wrote:
> >
> > Ah, how lovely! May I play in this sandbox too?
>
> I assume it's open to everyone.
Poly kala! (will it be "poly kalo" in GSF?) Shall we distinguish between adj.
and adv.? Maybe again, in Romance manner: "poly kalo-tropo"?

> > Non-euroclonic auxlangs may be fun too, if people do not occupy with
> > proselytizing, but treat them as artlangs...
>
> They could be, but I don't think GSF is really non-euroclonic, but it
> would not be of the overdone Romano-germanic type  ;)
That's exactly what I meant: most euroclones are based on Romance or Germanic,
and it's frustrating.

[[[ in Reply to Andreas Johansson: > Isn't there a Slavic-derived auxlang too?
Called Slovio or some such?

- It is, and as a L1-Slavic speaker, I find it really really ugly. ]]]

> > What about number then, if there are no flexions?
>
> Indeed, 'sine flexione' means without any flexion. I believe, however,
> Peano did allow a plural -s if plurality was not clear from context.
> Glosa uses a preposited particle 'plu' (obviously from Latin).
>
> IMO Plurality should be left to context as in Chinese. If it necessary
> to make it clear then words like 'oligo' (few) or 'poly' (many) can be
> employed.
Agreed.
Alternative variant - to step away from flextionlessness to oligoflectivity :))

> That's OK if people have no objections to:
> - including sounds such as [T], [D] and [G];
We may come to a compromise: I would suggest modern vowels, but ancient
consonants, except, probably, making ph [f], th [T] and ch [x]. At least this is
the way people read Greek here, in Slavic lands ;)

> - having several different ways of spelling the same sound, in
> particular having half a dozen or so ways of spelling /i/;
For me, etymological spelling is always helpful for figuring out the meaning of
a new word!

> - allowing the same letter to have different pronunciations according to
> context (e.g. upsilon which may be /i/ or /f/ or /v/ or simply combine
> with |o| to give /u/.
It depends on what we decide on pronunciation. Things like _autos_ [af"tos] are
not a stumbling block for me (again, maybe because we have the same phenomenon
in Russian?)

> > Orthography - skip the aspirations and unify the stresses, and here you are
;)
> Sounds like modern Greek.
That's what I meant.

> But what I meant was, using the Greek or Roman alphabet. Greek has been
> written in the latter alphabet, particularly on Crete. It makes for a
> more regular spelling than the modern & Byzantine orthography.
Roman alphabet may be an optional alternative. Just using the traditional
transliteration. To mark stress with an acute (if necessary) - it can easily be
typed from US-Int or Spanish keyboard layout.

> Philip Newton wrote:
> [snip]
>  >>The *real* problem is - what shall we do with the Genitive???
>  >
>  >
>  > Well, taking the lead from Romance, replace it with preposition +
>  > flexion-less form. I propose "apo" (from, away from).
>  >
>  > So "the teacher's book" would become "to biblio apo to daskalo".
>
> Exactly - no problem  :)
Agreed. If we stick to the older forms, then "to biblio apo to didaskalo".

> Jim Henry wrote:
>  > Are we talking about just replacing the three stress marks
>  > with one (say, acute), or actually unifying the stress
>  > rule so stress marks need not be written because
>  > the stress is always predictable?
>
> Yes, I was not clear what Isaac meant, and rather fancied he meant the
> latter.
I meant the Modern Greek approach.

>  > We need to think about what prepositions will replace
>  > various uses of the plain dative as well.  "eis" could work
>  > for some of them.
>
> Too late!! The Greeks have already done this themselves several
> centuries ago       ;)
>
> There is no dative in modern Greek and, yes, they have employed "es/eis"
> for some its uses, except that in the modern language the preposition
> has become 'se'.
This is THE way :))

========

Too much to comment after the whole day of conversation.
What shall we do with the verbs, then??
Anyway, it is real fun! Sas eucharisto poly!

-- Isaac Penzev aka Yitzik

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