Re: New Language - Altsag Venchet

----- Original Message -----
From: "Nik Taylor" <yonjuuni@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Tuesday, November 26, 2002 4:47 PM
Subject: Re: New Language - Altsag Venchet


> Joseph Fatula wrote:
> > --- Gender ---
> > Every noun is either animate or inanimate.  Animate nouns are living
things,
> > parts of living things, and other things being viewed as capable of
action.
> > There are a number of irregulars, of both genders.
>
> In most animate-inanimate distinctions, irregular forms are
> assymetrical, that is, it's common to find inanimate objects in an
> animate category, but to find an animate in the inanimate category is
> exceedingly rare.
All of the animate objects in the inanimate gender are not living things,
but parts of living things, a category that is generally animate.
Furthermore, these are all "substance" sort of objects.  Words like "arm" or
"head" are animate, but parts like "wool" or "blood" are inanimate, even
though they are parts of living things.

> > Objects of prepositions are in the dative case.
>
> All prepositions?
Most of them.  There are a few that aren't, but they are marked as such in
the dictionary.

> > --- Tense ---
> > present   -
> > present progressive   -aj (-ai after ch or j)
> > past   -un
> > future   -ar
>
> Progressive is actually an aspect, so perhaps -aj should be considered
> an aspect suffix, with a note that it can only be used in the present?
I realize that it's an aspect, and I debated this one for a while.  However,
as it is only a present tense aspect, I left it as a separate tense ending.
The jury's still out on this one.

> > --- Aspect ---
> > Perfective is for completed actions.  Habitual, actions repeatedly or
> > habitually done.  Inceptive means "to begin to X", cessative "to stop
Xing".
> > Medial, "in the middle of Xing", "while Xing".  Intentional and
> > unintentional reflect the speaker's intent.
>
> Interesting.  Can you use multiple aspect affixes?  E.g., can you have,
> say, -jevar (or perhaps -varje) for intentional starting of an action?
Yes.  In fact, you can add as many as you like (though it gets hard to
follow beyond a certain point).  For example, kovir means "to run", kovirje
"to start running", kovirvar "to intentionally run", kovirjevar "to
intentionally start running", kovirvarje "to start intentionally running".
In this situation it doesn't show much of a difference, but the first ending
is evaluated first, followed by the second, and so on.

The noun cases are not so, however.  Only one may be applied at a time.

> --
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> you just have to find people who are dorky the same way you are." -
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