Re: S9: sketch of yet another unnamed conlang

Hi!

Peter Bleackley <Peter.Bleackley@...> writes:
> Staving Henrik Theiling:
> >...
> >   Ufta do vialt hat gip de ma uine lang un iuni huva.  Na di fone si
> >   hat stat, hat fin di de pais "`Sina"' un nali setel di.  Un di meka
> >   hat zat: "`Lat os meotke brin!"'  Un da brin zine meotke hat is de
> >   brik, un ne ta hat is ne meat.
>
> First few lines of the Babel text.
Yes!

> Apparently Germanic, with a bit of
> French influence. I reckon its meant to be a fairly close relative of
> English, maybe an alternative history English. How close am I?
Quite good, but no alternative history: more like future fiction.

My idea is the following: take a lot of Germans, some South Africans,
Chinese, speakers of Westfalian Low German, Dutch, French, English,
Japanese, Spanish and a few others of which my cupboard happens to
contain dictionaries of, put them in an isolated place and wait for,
say, 300 years.

With this in mind, I want to reconstruct a language from examining
some texts I find in, errrm, a crashed spaceship.

(Because it is constructed, after the intuition phase, I want to apply
the found grammar and phonotactics to correct some very unlikely and
unrealistic things.)

The above is a first try:
   - prepositions have merged with articles, involving some non-productive
     umlaut traces
   - articles are mandatory and carry case and number information
   - two cases are left:
      - core     (from German nominative and accusative) and
      - oblique  (from German dative)
   - relative clauses like Chinese ('de'-equivalent derives from 'sein'/'zijn')
   - word order mainly like German, but a bit different
   - some features of Afrikaans, but starting with German, not Dutch:
      - verb forms from 3p. sg. ind. pres.
      - isolating
      - suffixed 'nie' in negative sentences
   - vowels /aeiou/, no length, but maybe /y/ and /2/ as well
   - simplified phonotactics (but not decided yet)
   - many loans, finally probably many more than in the ad-hoc text above
   - maybe: pro-drop
   - maybe: optional tense instead of mandatory

**Henrik