Re: conlang servey

It's sUrvey, btw...


--- In conlang@y..., Heather Rice <florarroz@Y...> wrote:

> Language name, creator's name, realative date of
> creation (just any old number will do), country and
> first language of creator, purpose of conlang
> (auxlang, conlang, loglang, . . . ).
Obrenje, Christian Thalmann, 2000, Switzerland,
Schwiizertüütsch, conlang.


> Phonetics:  number of consonants, number of vowels,
> presence of nasalization, tone and how many, where the
> accent generally falls.
Consonant phoneMes: /p t k  b d g  f s c  v z x  m n N  r l  j w/
Phonetic realizations: [p t k  b d g  (f h) (s S) (x s)  v (z Z) (z (mute))
     m n N  4 l  j w]

Vowel phoneMes: /a e i o u y/
Phonetic realizations: [(a: a) (e: E @) (i: i) (o: O) (u: M) (y: y)]

Stress: Completely regular, falls onto the ultimate syllable if that is
closed, otherwise onto the penultimate.



> Morphemes:  presence of allomorphs, mutation,
> assimilation, prefixes, suffixes, infixes,
> suprafixation, dicontinuation, exclusion, total
> fusion, subtraction, reduplication.  Is the conlang
> agglutinating, isolating or fusional?
Some consonants have distinct palatized forms.  Vowels become long and
tense in stressed open syllables.  Word-final nasals can assimilate.

Word forms are made by inflection.  Some inflections change the word stem,
and while they do have some logical coherence, they're not really
separable.  The language also has analytical features.



> Nouns and such:  subclasses of nouns (common/proper,
> abstract, things that may not be expressed explicitly
> in affixes), presence of cases and how many and what
> kind, kind of possession (alienable, inalienable, no
> distinction, etc.) presence of gender, number,
> articles, demostratives, adjectives, quantatives.  Are
> comparatives expressed by affix, word order or both?
> Do pronouns express gender, number, declension?  Are
> there indefinite pronouns, possessed pronouns?
> Others?  Are prepositions bound, unbound?  How many
> prepositons (approximate).  Presence of clitics.  Is
> derivational morphology mostly by compounding words or
> by affix or both?
No subclasses of nouns (even adjectives aren't distinguished),
three grammatical cases and many prepositions (the distinction
between cases and prepositions is blurry), no grammatical
number or gender (can be expressed with quantifiers and adjectives)
but inflections for definiteness.

Comparatives are built with quantifiers.  There are indefinite and
possessive pronouns.  (WTF is a bound preposition?)  There are
clitic object pronouns for pre-verb use.  Derivations are often made
by compounding/affixing.



> Verbs and such:
> Are person, number, object expressed with the verb?
> Are there static verbs (to be)?  Is the object
> incorporated into the person marker (making a
> phonetically different affix like in the Native
> American languages)?  Is transitivity marked for
> transitive, intransitive, bitransitive or other?  Is
> the person inclusive, exclusive, no distiction?  Kind
> of gender.  Are past, present, future expressed?
> Recent, remote?  Is mode express, what kind?  Is voice
> expressed?  What kind?  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?
Verbs distinguish no number, but five persons: 0 (general, impersonal,
"man" etc), 1, 2, 3i, 3e (implicit and explicit subject).  Three tenses
(past, present, future), two aspects (solid, liquid), two voices (active,
passive); participles and gerunds for all tenses and voices.

There are detachable prefixes for moods (optative, hypothetical, negative)
and a naked-stem imperative construction.



> Presence of adjective, adverbial clauses and relative
> pronouns.
Yeah, all of those.



> Sentences:
> Does the conlang have an ergative or accusative
> system?
Neither, though the system is closer to accusative.


> Word order and is it free or strict?  Are
> adjectives, adverbs and prepositions before or after
> the modified word?  Is the word order changed in a
> question?  How many (approximately) conjugations are
> there?
Word order is rather loosely prescribed.  Head-initial phrases.
No change in word order in questions.  There are many conjunctions.



> Other:
> What is the number base for the numeral system (10?
> 12?)?
8.



> Presence of idioms, irregular forms of nouns
> and verbs.  Is the language syntax very predictable,
> or are there many exceptions?  How much literature has
> been produced and what kind (I'm not talking about
> translations, but stuff you wrote yourself).  Is there
> a history and dictionary of the conlang?  Script
> invented?  Other conlangs produced by the creator of
> this one.
There are idioms (though I haven't given them as much thought as they
deserve).  There is a native script.  No native literature yet.

Other conlangs:  Jovian.



> If you could summarize your conlang in a sentence,
> what would you write?
Obrenje was my first a priori conlang, intended to become aesthetic, fluid,
efficient, usable and original, with a somewhat slavic sound.  It didn't
quite live up to any of those ideals, but has taken on a life of its own
and now feels comfortable and coherent.  =P


-- Christian Thalmann

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