Now under production: Tech Verbs

Okay, now I got about 700 roots and roots with extensions in my conlang so far.
But it's a lot easier to reconstruct word roots in a protolang than it is to
reconstruct the grammar, at least in most cases.

So my plans are to mix elements of Afro-Asiatic, Kartvelian and Indo-European,
as those are the three inflected families of Nostratic.  A good bit is known
about Indo-European verb morphology: thematic and athemiatic personal endings,
reducplicative prefixes, even ablaut (usually in the form of a vowel shift) for
different verbal aspects.  Semitic verb grammar is also pretty well known; I'm
not sure about the rest of AA.

Now Kartvelian, which is both simplified and limited in its reconstruction based
on the fact that there are only four known languages (Georgian, Svan, Mingrelian
and Laz; the last two may be dialects of the same language), does have a pretty
interesting system of verb construction.  The verb root itself may be as short
as one single consonant.  The verb as a whole can be a good bit longer, since as
many as eleven affixes may be attached:

1. preverb(s)
2. personal prefix(es), subjunctive or objective
3. character or version vowel
  ROOT
4. passive suffix
5. causative suffix(es)
6. plural suffix (for nominative-absolutive noun)
7. present stem formant
8. imperfect suffix
9. mood vowel
10. personal ending
11. subjective plural suffix

My order is probably going to be different, since Tech is a VSO and SVO language
and Kartvelian is SOV and SVO.

Also, I want the verb class system of Semitic (10 in Arabic plus a few archaic
classes; I don't know Hebrew or Aramaic too well in this area.)  This will
involve vowel shifts, prefixes, infixes and geminations (the last two become
internal consonant mutations).

Any information I can get online is very much appreciated.  Sorry I don't have
much more than this.

~DaW~


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