Re: conlang servey

Heather Rice wrote:
>
> Language name
Uatakassi

> creator's name
Nik taylor

> realative date of creation
Not sure what "relative" date" means.  It was devised in the summer of
... '99, I think.

> country and first language of creator
USA; English

> purpose of conlang (auxlang, conlang, loglang, . . . ).
Conlang; for fun

> Phonetics:  number of consonants
Arguably 22

> number of vowels
3 plus 2 diphthongs

> presence of nasalization
None, except allophonic

> tone and how many
None

> where the accent generally falls.
Always on the penultimate mora; grammatical prefixes may not be
stressed.

> Morphemes:  presence of allomorphs
Lots

> mutation,
None

> assimilation
Yes.
Sequences of obstruents have regressive voicing assimilation, also:
Nasals assimilate to place of articulation of following consonant.
/sC/ -> /SS/
/stS/ -> /SS/
/zdZ/ -> /ZZ/

> prefixes, suffixes, infixes,
Lots, lots, and 2.

> reduplication.
Yes.  Full reduplication of adjectives indicates excessive or "very",
also some fossilized examples of earlier types of partial and full
reduplication

> Is the conlang agglutinating, isolating or fusional?
Agglutinating to the point of polysynthesis

> Nouns and such:  subclasses of nouns (common/proper,
> abstract, things that may not be expressed explicitly
> in affixes)
No formal subclasses, beyond gender.

> presence of cases and how many and what kind
19 in the classical language, altho some are lost in most dialects.

> kind of possession (alienable, inalienable, no distinction, etc.)
No distinction in the classical language, but later varieties adopted
the dative to show respect towards the possessed

> presence of gender
7: Sentient female, Sentient male, Sentient epicene, Animals associated
with people (domesticated animals as well as some pests), other animals,
other animate (plants, emotions, social institutions, insects, etc.),
inanimate

> number
Singular/plural in nouns, singular/dual/plural in 2nd and 3rd person,
singular/dual/paucal/plural in 1st person

> articles
None

> demostratives
Four: Li (this), Vaa (that-near listener), Iu (that-further away), Funu
(that-previously mentioned; also dummy noun)

> adjectives
Treated like nouns; agree with head in gender, case, and number

> quantatives
Numbers are uninflected, others are treated as adjectives.

> Are comparatives expressed by affix, word order or both?
Classically by an infix, but in post-classical times, a prefix developed
based on the prefix maa- (very) plus the comparative and superlative
infixes

> Do pronouns express gender, number, declension?
Not sure what you mean by declension, but 3rd person pronouns make the
same gender distinctions as nouns.

> Are there indefinite pronouns
In what sense?  In the sense of English "one", not strictly speaking.

> possessed pronouns?
"Possessed"?

> Are prepositions bound, unbound?
What do you mean by bound and unbound?  They cannot be separated from
the rest of the prepositional phrase

> How many prepositons (approximate).
Unknown

> Presence of clitics.
Lots.

> Is derivational morphology mostly by compounding words or
> by affix or both?
Mostly suffixes and prefixes, some compounding.

> Verbs and such:
> Are person, number, object expressed with the verb?
Person and number are marked on the verb, which agrees with the
absolutive argument.  In addition, 3rd person is divided into two
subclasses, sentient and non-sentient

> Are there static verbs (to be)?
Yes.  Four "to be"'s -
Ian: Ian X Y indicates that X is a member of the set Y
Klaf: Klaf X Y indicates that X equals Y
Sa-: Prefixed to adjectives to make "Be ____"
Launi: Be located

> Is the object incorporated into the person marker
There are clitics that mark the nominative and accusative in the case of
1st and 2nd person, nominative [intransitive], ergative, and accusative
in the case of 3rd person genders 1-3, and ergative and absolutive in
the case of 3rd person 4-7.  These are optional

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

> Are past, present, future expressed?
Yes

> Recent, remote?
Not formally, however, the present, when combined with punctual aspect,
for non-stative verbs, indicates immediate past, while the present with
prospective aspect indicates immediate future.

> Is mode express, what kind?
Yes.  Quite a few: able to, must, want to, afraid to, etc.

> Is voice expressed?  What kind?
Yes: Antipassive, reflexive, reciprocative, dative-object (promotes
dative to absolutive)

> Manner?
With adverbs

> Aspect?
Yes: Perfect, inceptive, punctual, non-punctual, habitual, cessative,
prospective

> Presence of adverbs
Yes

> pro-drop.
Yes.

> Can nouns, adjectives, adverbs be changed to verbs and
> vice versa?
Nouns and adjectives can be made into verbs and vice versa.

> Sentences:
> Does the conlang have an ergative or accusative
> system?
Fairly consistent ergative.

> Word order and is it free or strict?
Fairly free, except that verb must come first.

> Are adjectives, adverbs and prepositions before or after
> the modified word?
Adjectives and adverbs follow, very consistently (including possessives,
numbers, and demonstratives), prepositions precede.

> Is the word order changed in a question?
There's a tendency for the question word to come at the end of a
sentence, but it's not strict.

> How many (approximately) conjugations are there?
Only one conjugational pattern.  There are thousands of possible
inflections.

> Other:
> What is the number base for the numeral system (10?
> 12?)?
12, but the writing system uses 6.

> Presence of idioms
Some

> irregular forms of nouns and verbs.
Depending on how you define irregular, there are either a large number
of irregular verbs and nouns or very few.  Most of them fall in specific
classes that can be determined for nouns by the plural, and for verbs by
the 1st person singular.

> Is the language syntax very predictable,
> or are there many exceptions?
I think it's fairly predictable, altho it's pretty different from your
standard European model.

> How much literature has
> been produced and what kind (I'm not talking about
> translations, but stuff you wrote yourself).
None, except for a few that I wrote in English first and then translated
it.

> Is there a history and dictionary of the conlang?
Yes and yes.

> Script invented?
Yes, a modified syllabry.

> Other conlangs produced by the creator of this one.
Several.  In order, and that I can remember:
Tarníf, Tqa-Cizê, [forgotten name], Kizval, Kizval (two langauges with
the same name, but completely different from each other).  I think
there's a few others

> If you could summarize your conlang in a sentence,
> what would you write?
"The result of an orgy involving Eskimos, Polynesians, Finns, and
Bantus, spoken by fanatically religious birds living in a furnace" or
"Hawaiian spoken by Finns on crack"

--
"There's no such thing as 'cool'.  Everyone's just a big dork or nerd,
you just have to find people who are dorky the same way you are." -
overheard
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