Re: Sketch: Tatari Faran

Hallo!

On Tue, 12 Oct 2004 12:25:05 -0700,
"H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@...> wrote:

> Thanks to people on #conlang who gave me good ideas, I've now named my
> new conlang Tatari Faran, the language of Fara, the volcanic plain.
In what kind of world does it exist?

> Here's a brief sketch of what I've worked out so far (warning: this is
> a bit long):
>
> [...]
>
> Nouns
> -----
>
> Case system: Tatari Faran's core case system is essentially reduced
> Ebisédian. There are 3 cases: originative, conveyant, receptive.
> Besides these core cases, there are the secondary cases: the vocative
> and the genitive. There is also a special case, tentatively called the
> absolutive, which is unmarked.
Ah, the legendary Ebisédian case system!  Well, the second time it
is used it is essentially a rip-off of the first, but of course
it's your language, so do what feels right to you.

> [...]
>
> Word order
> ----------
>
> Another interesting feature of Tatari Faran is in using word order to
> indicate verbal mood. (Altho Mike Ellis aka DrLurk tells me that it's
> a case of anadewism, since Finnish apparently does this too. In fact,
> one can probably argue English does it too.) The first NP in a
> sentence is always the "subject" [*], and following NP's are
> arguments.
>
> [*] I put "subject" in quotes because Tatari Faran uses a reduced
> Ebisédian case system, and as such doesn't have the same concept of
> "subject" as English or other accusative langs do. As far as Tatari
> Faran's core cases are concerned, subjectiveness is orthogonal to the
> case marking, which is semantically chosen ala Ebisédian.
>
> The different word orders are:
>
> Indicative:     subject-verb-arguments-complement
> Interrogative:  subject-arguments-verb
> Subjunctive:    verb-subject-arguments
>
> Examples:
>
> Indicative:     tse na dutan haara sa inin.
>                 "You hear a loud noise (you do)."
> Interrogative:  tsa na haara sa dutan?
>                 "Do you hear a loud noise?"
> Subjunctive:    tapa tse sa itsan no, tse na dutan haara sa inin.
>                 "If you walk to the cinder cone, you will indeed hear
>                 a loud noise."
> (The subjunctive is used in constructing conditional statements. The
> first clause is in the subjunctive, and the second is in the
> indicative. Notice how the verb complement re-emphasizes the
> indicative mood: if X, you *will* hear a loud noise, indeed.)
Now this is creative!  Expressing mood by word order!  I've never
seen that before.

> [...]
>
> Hope you enjoyed this (gasp) on-topic post, in the spirit of the good
> ole CONLANG days when people communicated in grammar sketches. ;-)
I did enjoy it.  I also wish back those good old days.  One sees
too little stuff about actual *conlangs* on CONLANG nowadays,
and way too many YAEPTs and off-topic posts.

Greetings,

Jörg.

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