Re: Attributive Nominal Forms and Syntax in a lang experiment

on 11/18/03 9:46 PM, Elliott Lash at erelion12@YAHOO.COM wrote:

> While sitting around in class today, I started
> doodling about, creating a few vocab items and simple
> sentences. The main "strange" feature in this
> experiment seems to be the 'pre-attributive' form of
> the noun. This form seems to be used before something
> that describes it, whether an adjective, a possessive,
> or a relative clause.
>
> Adjective Phrases:
>
> dzhin dwo
> your  father
>
> gi    dyu          beng
> my   father+attr  dear
>
> dzhin bwa:   your mother
> gi byo beng: my dear mother
>
>
> So the pre-attributive forms are used before the
> adjective 'beng'
>
> Possessive Phrases:
>
> yishwe  'bird'   pre-attr:  yishi
>
> (shi)   ne   yishi gi
> (exist) this  bird  my/mine
> This bird is mine
>
>
> Relative Clauses:
> bunlo 'soup'     pre-attr:  bunlu
>
> nga zoy bunlo
> I   heat soup
> 'I head the soup'
>
> mu        kwo          nga  bunlu zoy
> pleasure  come-toward   me  soup hot
> 'I like hot soup'
Is there a relative clause in the conlang version here? The translation
doesn't have one. Of course 'bunlu' would be used anyway because of the
adjective 'zoy' - or is 'zoy' itself the relative clause?

> Some other weird type of Phrase:
> ne 'this'    pre-attr: ni
>
> (shi) ni          gi shyuke
> exist this-attr   my  house
>
> 'This is my house'
Is "this my house" all one phrase, and then you're saying that that exists?
That seems quite different from the English translation.

> does any of this make sense so far? or should i
> explain better. If i have done well explaining...does
> this feature show up in any other languages?
>
> Elliott
This does show up in some form or another in other langs. I have this paper
here by Johanna Nichols on "Head-Marking and Dependent-Marking Grammar," and
it has some examples of head nouns being marked:

Persian (and there's a similar Tadzhik example):
kûh-e boländ
mountain high
'high mountain'

"The suffix -i/-e marks the noun as having a dependent - without further
specifying the type of dependency, the gender/number/person of the dependent
or head, or the like."

Shuswap:
wist t-citx
high REL-house
'high house'

"Shuswap has a minimal two-case system which opposes the absolutive, used on
core arguments, to the relative, used on oblique arguments. The relative
case is also regularly used, as in this example, on a noun modified by an
attributive."

She also gives examples of head-marked relativization in Navajo and Arizona
Tewa, but the marking consists of deletion of the head, and replacement by a
pronoun, respectively, which is a slightly different phenomenon than what
you're thinking of.

My conlang Eloshtan has noun-marking after an adjective, but not
possessives. Relative clauses usually come after the noun, and the noun does
not take any special marking. If one comes before though, the noun must get
marked:

yavo - 'elephant'
tes yavo - 'your elephant'
valogapco yavo-l - 'agitated elephant'
gite-k yavo-k-ol - 'seven elephants'
yavo vlimyectev - 'elephant that jumped'
vlimyectev yavo-l - 'elephant that jumped'

Nouns in Kar Marinam (other conlang) could possibly be said to be marked
when they occur with adjectives and rc.s, depending on how you analyze it.

--
Josh Roth

http://www34.brinkster.com/fuscian/index.html

"Farewell, farewell to my beloved language,
Once English, now a vile orangutanguage."
-Ogden Nash

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