Re: R: An Unknown Conlang

At 18:47 06/07/00 +0200, you wrote:
>> Hi everyone,
>
>Hi, Christophe! Just this evening I downloaded a great part of your site,
>obviously in French - never studied it, so I have to translate it - wow,
>learning a new language reading about a conlang!
>
:) Well, it's not that different from me. I greatly improved my English by
the list and conlang-related webpages :) .

>> I was looking through all the papers that I accumulated in my apartment
>for
>> three years now (and if you saw my way of arranging things, you would
>> understand that it's quite an adventure :) ) when I found a bunch of
>> papers, pencil-written notes with my writing. It was a sketch of a
>conlang!
>> Yet I have absolutely no memory of writing that! And absolutely no idea of
>> when I did it! I was so stunned that I decided to look at it more closely,
>> and despite my telegraphic style, I could understand what the language
>> looked like. I found it really interesting, but I really had the
>impression
>> I discovered it! I really have no memory whatsoever of it! The language
>> looked so nice that I decided to copy the notes again, in a style that
>will
>> make it easier to read. And as I couldn't find the name of it in the
>notes,
>> I decided to call it O, reflecting thus the state of my memory concerning
>it.
>
>This looks very much as the old story of the conlanger who 'discovers' his
>language. Is this discovery true or only a fictional expedient?
>
Everything I said is true. I know for sure that I must have designed this
language somewhen (the simple fact that the writing on these notes is mine
is evidence enough), but I absolutely cannot remember when. So when I read
those notes it was nearly like a discovery. But a strange one, as it is a
discovery of something I'm sure I designed myself :) .

>> The language itself has really nice features. It's an ergative language
>> with cases and two genders: animate and inanimate. The only difference
>> between the two genders (other than the fact that some pronouns are
>> specific to one gender) is that 5 cases out of the 19 cases are not
>> available for inanimates. For example, ergative is a purely animate case.
>
>There was some linguist that explained the neuter Nom. and Acc. common
>endings in IE langs this way. Can't remember who (never been good with
>names).
>
Me neither. But there has been here a discussion about the possible
ergative stage of PIE. Maybe one of the participants can say who's the one
who originated this theory.

>> The inanimate subject of transitive verbs must be in the instrumental or
>> causative. Adjectives behave a little like Japanese: some are really
>nouns,
>> others are really verbs. All subclauses are infinitive (i.e. the verb of
>> subclauses is in nominal form. When I think that one month ago I said that
>> it was a really nice feature and that I would like to have it in my
>> conlangs. Now it's the second language of mine that I discover having this
>> feature! :) ).
>
>Nice! In my Vaiysi I deleted the infinitive, but in one of my next
>projects... : )
>
:) That's what I said too, until I discovered that some of my projects
already had it :) .

>> But the most interesting feature concerns tense in sentences. There are
>> five tenses: aorist, current, accomplished, prospective and hypothetical,
>> as well as a mediaphoric mark. They are marked on the verb only if there
>is
>> no noun in the absolutive case in the sentence. If there is one, the mark
>> of tense (and the one of mediaphoric if needed) is put on this noun, not
>on
>> the verb! It is the mandatory construction for subclauses. Also,
>conjugated
>> verbs take marks for the core participants only when those ones are not
>> present as nouns in the sentence.
>
>This looks kinda artificial, but I like it.
>
It's true. Yet I'm not sure that's that artificial. I know for sure there
are languages that mark tense on subjects instead of verbs. But it's
generally restricted to the pronouns. I just made it a little more
systematic :) .

>> O oscillates between agglutinating and inflecting. It's mostly an
>> agglutinative language (for instance marks of case and number -
>> indefinite/singular definite/plural definite - are added together in front
>> of the noun) with some inflecting features (for instance, wherever they
>are
>> - on the verb or on the noun - the marks of absolutive and tense are fused
>> in one affix).
>
>In this week I was thinking: what about a conlang with a Greek morphology
>and a Tagalog (BTW is it /'tagalog/ ir /ta'galog/?) syntax? I like languages
>with high difficulty degree - so I love inflecting features!
>
Me too! But I seem to be unable to create really difficult languages. Or
when I do that, those languages are so difficult that they are impractical.
So I generally try to find a mid-term :) . O is something like that, partly
agglutinating and partly inflective.

>> If you want, I can give you a sketch of this language. Its phonology is
>> interesting too, containing the phonemes /y/ and /H/ (the French 'u' - or
>> German 'ü' - and its semivowel conterpart, the semivowel in French 'lui').
>
>I'd really like to see it!
>
Unfortunately I leave from Paris tonight, so I'll have to set the list to
nomail soon. But as soon as I'm back in Paris I'll send a grammatical
sketch of O (I love this name. Did anyone give a one-letter name to their
language?).

                                                Christophe Grandsire
                                                |Sela Jemufan Atlinan C.G.

"Reality is just another point of view."

homepage : http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr
(ou : http://www.bde.espci.fr/homepages/Christophe.Grandsire/index.html)