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Re: Conlang Typology Survey (last call)

From:Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Date:Friday, May 30, 2003, 12:47
Quoting Garrett Jones <conlang@...>:

> I'm planning on posting the comprehensive results of this survey on > this > weekend. That means there is still a couple of days for everyone who > hasn't > done this for their conlangs. Also, if any of you have only done it for > a > couple of your conlangs, you can still do it for your other conlangs > too. I > have copied the survey here for your convenience.
This is for Yargish (Y), Kalini Sapak (KS) and Steienzh (S):
> 1. morphological type > a. agglutinative > b. fusional/inflecting > c. polysynthetic > d. isolating
Y: a KS: b or a - I don't really know how to classify it. Think Semitic. S: a with traces of b.
> 2. Word order > a. SOV > b. SVO > c. VSO > d. VOS > e. OVS > f. OSV > g. free
Y: a, with rearrangement for emphasis possible. KS: b, with rearrangement for emphasis possible. S: b, with rearrangement for emphasis possible.
> 3. adposition/noun order > a. noun - preposition > b. preposition - noun
Y: a KS: b S: b (Someone-else may've pointed this one out, but it should be "noun- postposition".)
> 4. adjective/noun order > a. adj - noun > b. noun - adj
Y: a KS: a S: a, occasionally b in frozen expressions or archaizing usage.
> 5. genitive/noun order > a. genitive - noun > b. noun - genitive
Y: b KS: a (the very name "Kalini Sapak" is an example of this - "clans' speech".) S: a
> 6. relative clause/noun order > a. rel. clause - noun > b. noun - rel. clause
Y: b KS: Probably b. Haven't really figured out how this works yet. S: b. There is a tendency to replace relative clauses by prenominal participial constructions.
> 7. main verb/aux verb order > a. main verb - aux verb > b. aux verb - main verb
Y: No auxiliaries KS: No auxiliaries S: No auxiliaries Are languages supposed to have these?
> 8. adverb/verb order > a. adv - verb > b. verb - adv
Y: a KS: a S: a and b
> 9. compounding type > a. head-last compounding > b. head-first compounding
Y: a KS: a S: a, but productive compounding, largely, isn't.
> 10. case type > a. nominative/accusative > b. ergative/absolutive > c. split ergative > d. other
Y: b KS: a S: a
> 11. tense system > a. time (past/present/future) > b. aspect > c. realis/irrealis
Y: a and b KS: a S: a
> 12. script > a. latin > b. other existing natlang script > c. con-script
Y: c KS: c S: c (The Yargish and Kalini Sapak con-scripts, this far, has a largely theoretical existence, altho' I've deviced a couple of Yargish logographs. Steienzh is written in the _Moidzhen Xalesh_ ['mOYdZn= 'xal@S], on this list perhaps better known under their Tairezan name _Maidzhen Klaish_. More info can be found at andjo.free.fr .)
> and some free answer questions: > > 13. number of genders/noun classes
Y: 1 KS: 3 S: 1
> 14. number of cases
Y: 4 (one of which, the locative, only occurs with postpositions) KS: 3 S: 5
> 15. number of phonemes
Y: 22 KS: 23 S: 42. Or 32. It's hard to tell, really. Could be somewhere in between. Or possibly 47.
> 16. lexicon size
Y: ~50 KS: 30 entries in the list of roots. Most roots give rise to multiple words. S: I don't know. 200 may be a decent guestimate. Andreas