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Re: Sketch: Tatari Faran

From:Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...>
Date:Wednesday, October 13, 2004, 19:13
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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H. S. Teoh <hsteoh@...>