Re: CHAT: New Member With Questions

Brandon Denny wrote:
>Hello!
>What a wonderful resource this group is!
>My name is Brandon, and I am in the process of creating a small language to
>use in stories that I author (I only need a rudimentary vocabulary).  I am
>totally amatuer, and would like to ask for help.  I would imagine that
>group
>members get sick of new members asking the same old questions repeatedly,
>but
>I'd like to ask some:
We enjoy newbies. Makes us feel old and wise! ;-) Welcome
>
>1)  Word Classes.  What the heck is this?  Obviously I am familiar with the
>basics, i.e. Noun, Verb, Adverb, Adjective.  When searching on-line I found
>repeated references to classes that exist in other languages that do not
>fit
>into those categories; unfortunatly those sites gave no explanations.  Does
>anyone know anything about those other classes?
Well, nouns, verbs, adjectives and (most) adverbs are the big, "open" word
classes that fill up most of a lang's lexicon and provides most of the
meaning in a sentence. There's also a number of smaller classes that mostly
have grammatical uses. In English you'll find prepositions (eg on, to,
between, for), articles (eg the, a, an), numerals (eg one, two, third),
pronouns (eg I, me, you, those), conjunctions (eg and, or), interjections
(eg ouch!, yeck!). "To" as infinite-marker doesn't fit very well into any of
these, so it's sometimes counted as a class on its own. Some languages place
the word corresponding to English "on", "for" etc after the noun instead of
before - this is called postpositions. Prepositions and postpositions are
sometimes collectively known as adpositions.
>
>2)  Again With Word Classes.  Can a language make a distiction in class
>between, say, a proper noun, and a abstract noun?  Does any know of any
>languages that do?
Somebody mentioned french, so yes.
>
>3)  Does any one know of any on-line resources that might quantify N, V,
>Adv., Adj. into different general subclasses?  My memory of grammer classes
>is sketchy at best, and I was looking for a refresher.
Not sure what you mean.
>
>4)  *Disclaimer-This is possibly a foolish question*  Let us say that there
>is a language with noun cases (basic ones the system I'd like to use is
>more
>complex).  In this language noun declension is, basically, adding a suffix.
>
>Example:  N+Non, N+Acc, N+Gen, where N is the noun.
>
>Let us also say that we have a few other cases such as an Ablative, "from"
>represented by N+Abl.
>If I wanted to say, "The Man came from China," would the sentance be:
>(In SOV format)
>Man+Nom Come.Past China.Acc
>Or
>Man+Nom Come.Past China.Abl
>
>Which case suffix has precedence?  I am only familiar with cases through
>Latin, and I never paid much attention to this subject (assuming if ever
>came
>up).  Are there languages where this conflict occurs?  How do they resolve
>it?
Well, it all depends on your lang! If a language does have a case called
ablative then one would expect that to be the one used in the construction
above. If it doesn't, there's no reason the accusative couldn't take on a
"from" meaning with a intransitive verb.

However, you can't very well carry a such construction of to transitive
verbs. If you did, then "Man+Nom Write.Past China.Acc" could mean both
"(The) man wrote from China" and "(The) man wrote China". If you disambigues
this by substituting the accusative for some other case in the later example
then your "accusative" would have become an ablative in all but name.
>
>5)  Is there a FAQ for this list with common abbreviations, etiquette, and
>style guides on it?  If so where are they located?
Not that I know of.

                                                           Andreas
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