Re: ? how would you classify this language ?

Rodlox wrote:

<< Assume that, tomorrow or the next day, you either encounter or create a
(con)language which has the following features:
* Indo-European word order.
* Semitic grammatical rules.
* Sino-Altaic phenomes.>>

I'd like to tentatively suggest that this is not the best way to go about
creating
a language that you want to look like the above.   If you wanted it to
actually
be an *a posteriori* language with these characteristics (note: "a
posteriori" means
that the vocabulary is derived from real languages.   "A priori" means that
it's
created out of thin air.   Examples of "a priori" languages would be all of
mine;
examples of "a posteriori" languages would be a language like all the
languages
in the Romance rings in the relay), then this is the situation you would have
to
simulate:

(1) An IE group moves into a place where a Semitic language is spoken and
sets
up something like a plantation, where they're the kind of "conquerors", or
something.   They take those who speak the Semitic language as their slaves
and
a creole develops over time.

(2) After awhile, the creole speakers overthrow the IE group, and the creole
becomes the dominant language in the area.   This group becomes economically
powerful, and begins to do business with the world (or something).

(3) The creole speakers develop relations with a Sino-Altaic group.   The
Sino-Altaic
group learns the creole.

And there you go.   You can avoid the first step, though, because there's
little difference
between IE word order and Semitic word order except for which one is most
common
(IE is *usually* thought of as SOV, but there are plenty of SVO and a few
VSO; Semitic
is *usually* thought of as VSO, but there are plenty of SVO, and I think I
know of a SOV
one, but maybe not).   Plus, word order is so ephemeral.   Why not just
decide on what
word order you want?

The only *dominant* word order I can recall seeing is SOV--where everything
is head-
final: Verb at the end of a sentence; noun at the end of a string of
adjectives; possessed
after the possessor; relative clauses occurring before the main clause.
This is like Japanese
and Turkish.   The rest of the word orders all seem to flirt with other
orders.   Here's are
some examples:

(1) I am happy.   (SVO)
(2) Am I happy? (VSO)
(3) That's *what I want*.   (OSV)

English is a dominant SVO language, but it varies word orders in certain
contexts.   VSO
languages commonly form questions (this is what I've heard, not what I've
experienced)
by flipping the verb and subject.   So if "Saw I a dog" is the norm, then "I
saw a dog?" would
be the question form.

SOV languages are pretty stable, but what if an auxiliary system is put in
place?   This is what
happened with German (right?).   German was an SOV language, but it began
using auxiliaries
so regularly that the second position became associated with inflection.
German word order
(in main clauses) can almost be thought of as STOV, where the T stands for
"tense".   So here's
an example from one of my languages.   It's dominantly SOV.   Here's a
sentence:

sexa jeldabanar uslar.
/man-NOM. apple-ACC. eat-PAST/
"The man ate an apple."

Now, the idea is rediculous to me, but what if for some reason the verb "to
be" started being
used as the auxiliary form of the present progressive?   It would have to
take the tense, and
the verb would most likely become the direct object.   That would leave us
with this:

sexa usalar jeldabanuf mekler.
/man-NOM. eating-ACC. apple-GEN. to be-PAST/
"The man was eating an apple."

Now what you've got is a bizarre word order that looks like SVOT.   In other
words, all the tense
information is at the end, where the verb used to be, and the verb is a kind
of nominal verb.   The
apple, while now in the genitive case, is still the logical object of "eat".

Now one feature of Zhyler (that's the name of my language) that does exist is
that the verb "to
be" tends to drop out when it's not necessary.   In that way, you might get
this:

sexa usalar jeldabanuf.
/man-NOM. eating-ACC. apple-GEN./
"The man was eating an apple."

And even though the /-lar/ ending above is a nominal ending plus the
accusative, it
looks exactly like the past tense ending.   So this sentence could be
reanalyzed as:

sexa usalar jeldabanuf.
/man-NOM. eat-PAST. apple-GEN./
"The man was eating/ate an apple."

And voila: The word order of a dominantly SOV language has changed.

The point of this is to show you that it's relatively meaningless to say that
a language has Indo-European word order.   Why not just choose a word
order you like an go from there?

The same holds true for phonemes.   If you like the phonemic inventory of
a particular Sino-Altaic language, you can always borrow it over, or borrow
it over and change it a little bit.   You can do whatever you want.   Same
holds
true for grammar.   Also, the term "Semitic grammar" is *really* broad.
I've
studied Arabic and Ancient Egyptian, and let me tell you, they're night and
day--and even those two are more closely related than some of the Ethiopian
Semitic languages.

What probably has happened is that you've found a set of sounds you like and
a set of grammatical phenomena you like.   Why not build a language based on
those phenomena, and nothing else--see where it takes you?

-David
*******************************************************************
"sunly eleSkarez ygralleryf ydZZixelje je ox2mejze."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."

-Jim Morrison

http://dedalvs.free.fr/

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