Re: conlang servey

--- Heather Rice <florarroz@...> wrote:

> Language name,
Kerno, a posteriori Romance language; considerable
Celtic influence.

> creator's name,
Padraic Brown

> realative date of
> creation (just any old number will do),
1998

> country
Rheon Kemr

> first language of creator,
English

> purpose of conlang (auxlang, conlang,
> loglang, . . . ).
Art language.

> Phonetics:  number of consonants, number of vowels,
> presence of nasalization, tone and how many, where
> the accent generally falls.
Number of consonants depends on what you count as a
separate consonant. There are, perhaps, two dozen
simple consonants and a dozen vowels. No grammatical
tone. Accent is somewhat variable, somewhat following
the same pattern other Romance languages follow.

An ad hoc phonetisation:

p t k f T s tS x h
b d g v D z dZ G
w j
m n l lj L r hr R N

a E e e@ ej eu @ i I o oj ow c ca cwE ec u ue ui uw V

G = voiced [x]; c = ou in OUght

> Morphemes:  presence of allomorphs, mutation,
> assimilation, prefixes, suffixes, infixes,
Yes. There is a well developped, but moribund,
mutation system:

i = unmutated; ij = aspirated; iij = nasal; iiij =
softened; v = hardened.

I    II     III     IIII     V
p    f      mb      b        -
t    th     nd      d        -
k    x      ng      g        -
qu   hw     ngw     gw       -
b    v      mb      v        p
d    z      nd      dh       t
g    G,y    ng      G        k
gu   w      ngw     w        qu
m    v      -       v        -
n    nh     -       nh       -
f    v      -       v        -
s    z      -       z        -
v    vh     -       vh       f
z    j      -       j        s

> suprafixation, dicontinuation, exclusion, total
> fusion, subtraction,
I don't know what any of that is.

> reduplication.
Yes. All instances of verbal reduplication are
descended from Latin originals, or else through
analogy to a Latin form. For example, dedai (I gave),
coscorrai (I ran), mosmordai (I bit).

> Is the conlang agglutinating, isolating or fusional?
Inflexional.

> Nouns and such:  subclasses of nouns (common/proper,
> abstract, things that may not be expressed
> explicitly in affixes),
Kerno favors verbal nouns; otherwise, all the usual
sorts of nouns are present.

> presence of cases and how many and what
> kind,
Two accepted, standard cases: nominative and oblique
(or accusative). Traces of dative, possessive,
instrumental and vocative. Case endings tend to be -e,
which is often silent.

> kind of possession (alienable, inalienable, no
> distinction, etc.) presence of gender, number,
Masculine, Feminine, Epicene, and Neuter. Neuter is
found only in certain pronoun types. All M/F nouns
that don't refer to an inherently masculine or
feminine object can be epicene as well (il physickes /
la physickes / ce physickes = the physician); but you
can't have *la varró or *ce varró, excepting that "ce"
is also an indefinite demonstrative, so "ouel, bodoer
ce varró" = "well, there was this chap...").

> articles, demostratives, adjectives, quantatives.
Yes. Definite, indefinite articels, various sorts of
demonstratives (deixis) and levels of definiteness.
Adjectives are undeclined.

> Are
> comparatives expressed by affix, word order or both?
By affix or by comparative particle: duvieor / plu
dhuv = blacker.

> Do pronouns express gender, number, declension?
Yes. Gender is expressed in the third person only.

> Are
> there indefinite pronouns, possessed pronouns?
Yes. Generally, the more "ce"s you add, the more
indefinite the pronominal phrase is: "ouel, gouithei
ceu cist omen..." = Well, I might have seen this
man..." "ceu cist" = "ce le ce ist" [ce is the
indefinite pronoun, le is the accusative of the
definite article, ist is a demonstrative].

> Others?  Are prepositions bound, unbound?
If by bound and unbound you mean attached to its word
or unattached, then by habitual use prepositions are
unbound to nouns but bound to verbs: condamlasi co ma
marcka = I went for a walk with my girlfriend.

> How many prepositons (approximate).
Who knows. I keep finding new ones, and it is possible
to combine prepositions: destrem =
de+ex+tram-per+ar+in, as unlikely as that seems. Such
compounds are often emphatic in nature. This one means
"thoroughly through and through": destrempuinnasi-el
ezel sew ngatte = I beat seventeen kinds of living
snot out of him.

> Presence of clitics.
Yes. As above, -el is an enclitic object pronoun.

> Is derivational morphology mostly by compounding
> words or by affix or both?
Both.

> Verbs and such:
> Are person, number, object expressed with the verb?
Person, number, (voice, mood, etc.), direct object and
indirect object can all be expressed by the verb.

dosdedai-lo (I gave it thee) has do (preverb), -s- (2s
i.o. pronoun), dedai (verb), -lo (d.o. pronoun)

> Are there static verbs (to be)?
There are a couple verbs that answer to "be". As you
could see in the thread "hello" (or similar), Kerno
has several verbs that do for "be". Notable are ysser
and bodar (which are synonymous) and forer (which
anciently meant something slightly different, but now
serves as the subjunctive of ysser). Ystar, literally
"stand", also answers to "be".

> Is the object
> incorporated into the person marker (making a
> phonetically different affix like in the Native
> American languages)?
No. Object markers can be infixed between the preverb
(preposition) and root, or they can be suffixed to the
verb, or both. Infixing is now rare and in general is
frozen with only a few forms.

> Is transitivity marked for
> transitive, intransitive, bitransitive or other?
No.

> Is
> the person inclusive, exclusive, no distiction?
There are inclusive and exclusive for 1 and 2 plural;
but they're archaic.

> Kind
> of gender.  Are past, present, future expressed?
Via morphology. Past can be distinguished for
imperfect and perfect.

> Recent, remote?
Via adverbs.

> Is mode express, what kind?
Yes. Moods are indicative, subjunctive and imperative.

> Is voice expressed?  What kind?
Active, passive.

> Manner?  Aspect?  Please
> list
> what kinds of manner and aspect the conlang
> expresses
> in its verbs.  Presence of adverbs, pro-drop.  Can
> nouns, adjectives, adverbs be changed to verbs and
> vice versa?
To an extent, yes.

> Presence of adjective, adverbial clauses and
> relative pronouns.
Yes.

> Sentences:
> Does the conlang have an ergative or accusative
> system?  Word order and is it free or strict?
Word order is fairly strictly VSO.

> Are
> adjectives, adverbs and prepositions before or after
> the modified word?
Prepositions are before, adverbs after, adjectives
either.

> Is the word order changed in a
> question?
No. Interrogation is shown via expletives (empty
particles) and rising pitch at the end. Such
expletives are "aur" (now), "mira" (now look), etc.

> How many (approximately) conjugations are
> there?
Basically five: -a stems, -e stems, -i stems, -ei
stems
and a catchall that includes all the incorrigibly
irregular verbs (ysser, etc.)

The -ei conjugation is slippery, in that most forms
look like -a or -i forms.

> Other:
> What is the number base for the numeral system (10?
> 12?)?
Base 20. Traces of base 15. The vigesimal system was
outlawed for a while, but the Province refused to give
it up and the law was finally repealed. Numbers above
a thousand tend towards decimal for convenience sake.

> Presence of idioms, irregular forms of nouns
> and verbs.
Basically the regular forms are irregular. Most forms
have at least two possible variants. There are many
full time irregular words.

Idioms are also in evidence. Cats, badgers, historical
kings, saints, gods and a whole host of other curious
things form the structural elements of Kerno idioms.

To be surprised by something is "dondoliar-si cunny
ngatte ezel mbrocke", or to be put in the barrel with
a cat and a badger. To request fairness in a matter is
"othiomus l' altoer ngalle", or let's hear out the
other cockerel.

> Is the language syntax very predictable,
> or are there many exceptions?
There are several levels, or registers, that can come
into play at any time. Sometimes Kerno seems
conventionally Romance, sometimes very Celtic or
classically Latin.

> How much literature has
> been produced and what kind (I'm not talking about
> translations, but stuff you wrote yourself).
A couple folk stories, some legal texts (not in Kerno
proper, but in Legal Latin), some recipes, some witty
sayings, some Bible portions and an introduction to a
music book are the extant texts. There are some other
incidental pieces though I can't recall specifically
what.

> Is
> there
> a history and dictionary of the conlang?
There is a long history (all the way back to the
Groans of the Britons to Aetius, or thereabouts) and a
substantial (though by no means compleat) dictionary
of more than 2000 words.

> Script invented?
Yes. Insular uncial (I think) is the basis for the
modern British print typefaces. Think of the Gaelic
typeface, and that's very close.

> Other conlangs produced by the creator of
> this one.
There are.

> If you could summarize your conlang in a sentence,
> what would you write?
Dechont que yen teoutha san-z-en lenghedech foreth yen
teoutha san-z-en corth; mays, docouant que sisura il
nusteor corz?

[They say that a people without a language is a people
without a heart; but, how long til our heart stops? -
a question much on the minds of Kerno speakers in the
early 21st century, many of whom will probably outlive
their native language.]

Such as there is online (mostly cultural information)
can be found through:

www.geocities.com/elemtilas/ill_bethisad

> Heather
Padraic.


=====
il dunar-li c' argeont ayn politig;
     celist il pozponer le mbutheor ayn backun gras.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Y! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your web site
http://webhosting.yahoo.com/

Reply