Re: conlang servey

On Fri, Oct 25, 2002 at 07:20:59AM -0700, Heather Rice wrote:
> Yeah yeah, I know.  Forgive me, its hard making a
> sUrvey.  Alright, any of you who want to include a
> priori/posteriori in the survey, that's great.
Darn, I missed it. :-/ Oh well. Ebisedian is *definitely* a priori; its
vocabulary is almost completely original. There may be superficial
similarities, but they have nothing to do with their natlangs lookalikes.
One of my favorite examples is _kara't3_ "to throw", "to hurl at". It has
*nothing* to do with karate. :-)

Well, OK, the one thing I did steal/borrow is the concept of correlatives,
which Classical Greek is so fond of. I did extend the concept to include
three-way correlations as well, though.

> I know that making a survey is a way of inadvertantly
> pidgeon-holing the thing you are surveying and that
> most languages aren't pidgeons.  Sometimes they're a
> rhinoceros.
And sometimes they're pidgins. :-P (Or real pigeons for that matter.)
Or maybe just a pigeonholed pidgin. :-P

> The purpose of the servey is to 1.  see what other
> people put into a conlang  2.  get to know the
> different conlangs, and 3.  determine the
> extensiveness of the conlang.  So if any of you don't
> like the survey, tell me why and how your conlang is
> different and explain your conlang to me in a brief
> grammatical scetch.
I think my reply to the survey contains ample material on how Ebisedian is
unique in many ways. (OK, so I forgot to detail the fact that stative
sentences exploit noun case combinations to convey idiomatic meanings, but
that's just one of the small points.)

> If your conlang happens to be a green alien from Pluto
> that eats pidgeon-holes for breakfast, just type anyway.
Surprisingly, as foreign as Ebisedian may be to the Earthlings who have
tried to tackle it, its speakers are quite human. (As far as one can be
human in a foreign universe.) They have completely human features and
completely human psychology and physiology.

> Anything will probably do.  I'm writing a conlanging book, for goodness
> sakes!  I'm desperate for conlangs to write about!
[snip]

You've asked in the right place, then. :-) Most of us would be more than
willing to showcase our conlangs in every excruciating nitpick and gory
detail. :-P And so, for the obligatory shameless self-plug, you may obtain
the latest documents on Ebisedian at:

        http://quickfur.yi.org:8080/~hsteoh/conlang/grammar.pdf
        http://quickfur.yi.org:8080/~hsteoh/conlang/lexicon.pdf

(There are postscript versions available as well, just replace ".pdf" with
".ps". The postscript versions are usually more up-to-date, too).


T

--
Shin: (n.) A device for finding furniture in the dark.