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

Now, I find this thread particulary inspiring for those who are interested in
aposteriori conlanging. My own ideas are already rapidly driving away from GSF
to something other, like, e.g. a Greco-Romance-whatever mish-mash fantasy,
preserving minimal flexion as, e.g. Spanish does... I may elaborate it further.

R A Brown chi gráfi:

> Isaac Penzev wrote:
>
> But when we are confronted
> by AG es ~ MG se, which one wins out?
>
> > I expected it to be mostly ancient.
>
> Maybe - tho surely it is sensible to use those reductions that the
> modern language has already made.
Makes sense. When I said "ancient variants", I meant first of all nouns, verbs
et al., not the structural particles. I would prefer _to (o)íno_, _to (o)íko_,
instead of _to krasi_, _to spiti_ etc.

> > R A Brown egrapsei:
> >
> >
> >>Isaac Penzev wrote:
> >
> > Poly kala! (will it be "poly kalo" in GSF?) Shall we distinguish between
adj.
> > and adv.? Maybe again, in Romance manner: "poly kalo-tropo"?
>
> MG normally uses the neuter plural form as an adverb, tho a few use
> neuter sing. I guess GSF should not distinguish.
Agreed. Polý kaló.

> >>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 ;)
>
> That means that eta, which is traditionally Romanized as _e_ gets
> pronounced /i/. But
> if you allow ph [f], th [T] and ch [x], you might just as well IMO have
> the full modern pronunciation - it is at least Greek.
You may know better. I'm just judging by the form Greek loans have in Russian.
b/d/g remain intact, ph/ch > f/x, th hesitates between t and f<T, e.g.
biblioteka, orfografiya, and, funny teologiya but feofaniya ("theophany").

> > Roman alphabet may be an optional alternative. Just using the traditional
> > transliteration. To mark stress with an acute (if necessary) -
>
> If the modern accentuation is used, then it will be necessary, just as
> it is in the modern Greek spelling.
Let it be so.

> >>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 :))
>
> Yes, it must be if it is 'sine flexione'  :)
Since the prep. "eis" will be used mostly before the article, it can easily
contract to 's, as it indeed does in MG. To contract "apó" is not so easy - I
would suggest _apó to_ > _pot'_

> > What shall we do with the verbs, then??
>
> Personal endings obviously go, as they have in some modern European
> langs. Subject is expressed by a noun or pronoun.
Is the stem form 3sn then? Gráfi, agapá etc.?

> (The pluses below are 'white space', of course)
> FUTURE
> MG forms the future by using the particle /Ta/ followed by the non-past
> form (traditionally called 'subjunctive') of either the 'present' or
> 'aorist' depending upon whether we want an imperfective or perfective
> meaning. Now, obviously Isaac is quite at home with the two futures,
Indeed I am :)))

> but
> many of us might feel this is complication. I suggest a single future:
> Subject + Ta + invariable verb
Agreed.

> PRESENT
> MG has only one indicative form (identical with the subjunctive BTW). I
> suggest:
> Subject + invariable verb
Agreed.

> PAST
> MG has two synthetic past tenses: imperfect and aorist. These are, in
> fact, the past tense forms of the two aspectual stems. Many languages
> make similar distinctions and I think GSF should also do. It would seem
> logical to use a particle in a similar way to /Ta/ for the future. But what?
> MG also has a series of perfect forms, formed by using the verb "to
> have" followed by an invariant verb form (which is the same as the 3rd
> sing. of the present). As we may want to keep the full form of "have'
> with its proper meaning 'to possess', I suggest a shortened /xi/ [Ci]
> which has the same CV shape as the future particle /Ta/. I suggest that:
> subject + /xi/ + invariant verb - has the same two meaning that the
> French 'passé composé has', i.e. xi grafi = wrote/ has written.
Neat!

> The Tsakonian dialect forms the imperfect by using the past tense of "to
> be" with the present participle. A flexionless language does not have
> participles, of course. "was" in MG is /itan/; I suppose we could
> shorten it to /tan/ as a preverbal particle.
I feel pity for the participles :( Russian has 4 of them, plus 2 converbs. But
since Ukrainian has only 1 particple ("past passive"), I can live with the way
you suggest. "Was" in AG was _e:n_, so I would keep the form _in_.

> For the invariable verb form, the obvious thing is surely to use exactly
> the same as MG does with "have", i.e. 3rd sing. of pres. indicative.
OK.

> INFINITIVES & PARTICIPLES
> MG, as many know, has dispensed with the infinitive, using a clause
> beginning with _na_ instead. Clearly, if we are to remain flexionless,
> we must do the same.
OK. Shall we use the particle after modal verbs?

> Participles are strictly unnecessary as we can always use a relative
> clause instead - and the MG relative pronoun _pou_ /pu/ is invariable  :)
Great.

> 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'?
To add a particle _méno_ from the participial suffix?

> BTW Isaac wrote:
> [[[ 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. ]]]
>
> Methinks, a L1-Greek speaker may well find GSF really ugly   ;)
LOL.

> Ray
Ray, you did a great job! The outline seems very reasonable. I feel it may work
(for fun, of course). The term "fauxlang" fits it.
A side note - I still miss plurals. The word _polý_ seems a bit overloaded. Any
alternative suggestions? Maybe to indicate it with a different form of the
article, e.g. _tus_?
Oh yes, if we stick to modern pronunciation, 1pl and 2pl pronouns collapse.
Shall we follow the laid path of MG? Shall we have different forms for subject
and object?

-- Isaac (aka Yitzik)

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