Re: Conlang Development With Multple Noun Cases

BP.Jonsson wrote:

> > Nominative Noun Ending: o, os
> > Accusative: a, as
> > Dative: e, es
> > Genitive: i, is
> >
> > The second example is a plural ending.
>
> Is this an auxlang?  If not you are of course not in need of "simplicit=
y"
> of "perspicuity" in any sense (unless you want them anyway).  IMHO ther=
e is
> an advantage in treating acc, dat, and gen phrases no differently from
> "prepositional" phrases.  I put "prepositional" in quotes because you
> needn't actually use prepositions; it can be locality cases like in
> Finnish.  In fact I prefer preposed markers to endings, since they
> obliterate all need of adjective-noun congruence: number is marked on
> nouns, and adjective stand between marker and noun.
Uh... why? I mean, just because you have case endings on nouns does not m=
eanthat you have
to mark cases on adjectives, or adverbs for that matter.  It just
means that you have to place the adjective in a certain syntactically pre=
dictable
place near the modified noun, that's all.  Very simple.

> I have a problem with your vowel scheme, similar to the problem I have =
with
> the Esperanto vowel scheme: Espo makes all nouns look masculine and all
> adjectives look feminine.  Yours is possibly worse (sexistically seen) =
in
> that it makes all *nominatives* look masc and all *accusatives* look fe=
m.
> Yuck!  I don't think you thought along these lines, surely, but it migh=
t be
> so viewed... :(
Well, this would mostly only become a problem with educated people
living in European-like socities, and only with people who have studied a
language like Latin, or any of the Romance languages *first*.  And even
then, the connection between endings in all of those languages and the
gender is tenuous at best (especially in Latin).

For most people in the world, however, no such connection would likely
spring to mind (especially because of the sound-symbolism we discussed
recently:  -a certainly sounds more masculine in those terms than anythin=
g
else!).

Two other points:

(1) As far as I know, he was not intending his language to be an IAL.
(2) These aren't flaws with his language, but only with people's views ab=
out
language in general.

> > I've also been very free in my rules for giving case to a nominative =
noun:
>
> But it will *have* the nom case even  if this is not *marked*!
Your point?

> >  However, when it is plural, the noun, regardless of its former
> > ending, requires 'os' for the plural.
>
> This is like Occidental.  It makes one painfully aware that something i=
s
> *deleted* in the singular <shudder>.  This is however an artefact of
> putting the plural marker after the case marker rather than before it.
>
> There is an advantage in having all words in an auxlang/simp(le )lang e=
nd
> in vowels: there are languages that require all words to end in a vowel=
,
> but there is AFAIK no natlang with the opposite requirement that all wo=
rds
> must end in a consonant.
Sure there are.  All it requires is a strict VCVC structure, of which the=
reare quite a few
(but I can't seem to think of one off-hand).  And there
are a great many more which allow end consonants, which has the same
practical effect.

Anyways, just because there *are* languages that are strict about somethi=
ng,
even if there are many of them, why does that necessitate some similar ru=
le
in his language?

> I would however laxing the rule so that words may
> also end in a alveolar/dental (or coronal for short) sonorant n, r, l o=
r,
> more hesitatingly, s.
When pre-Homeric Greek underwent a similar dropping of final consonants,
the only ones that remained were n, r and *s*.

> In fact there are problems also with n, l, r as
> final consonants: in many languages (e.g. British English, German, Tibe=
tan)
> r after a vowel has a tendency to get vocalized and disappear, n may
> disappear via nasalization of the vowel, and l has a tendency to become=
 w
> in the same position (which perhaps is a problem only if you have final=
 -u
> diphthongs).
... and there are plenty of languages which have none of these phenomena.=
Only certain
phonetic instantiations of those phonemes tend to be affectedlike that (e=
.g., only dark
/l/s tend to become /w/; most languages have alveolar
/l/).

> I think the best idea is to have e as the optional case
> marker, since most people would agree that e is the most inconspicious
> final vowel (or a, depending on which of the two alternates with schwa =
in
> the language(s) you're used to!:)  Also people faniliar with Roman scri=
pt
> are also mostly familiar with French andor English words with silent fi=
nal
> -e.
Why should a foreign language's orthography determine the phonologyof a c=
onlang? To be
very honest, making such a claim seems to have the
underlying belief that most people can't ever get beyond the spelling of
their own languages.

> This combined with the fact that I think the dipthong au and one of ai
> or oi are ok, but not ei, ui, eu, iu, ou since they too easily mix up w=
ith
> the other diphthongs or simple vowels.
How?  That's not hard for me... :)

> More over I would rule stress to
> fall on the last pre-consonantal vowel, since that would make it less
> likely that final consonants are effaced.
Which would also likely reduce many vowels to /@/... (consider
English's initial stress which would operate in the same way as final
stress)

Basically, my main question here is why we are thinking about how
other language learners

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Tom Wier <twier@...>
ICQ#: 4315704   AIM: Deuterotom
Website: <http://www.angelfire.com/tx/eclectorium/>
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."

"S=F4=F0 is gecy=FEed / =FE=E6t mihtig God manna
cynes / w=EAold w=EEde-ferh=F0."
 _Beowulf_, ll. 700-702
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