Shaquelingua and Teonaht

te'va SalI gavee tul :

>>But what really make me laugh is your very unusual use of the char "u"
>>[j].
>>My very special char is "y" [H] (i.e. [y] as a semi-vowel) or [w]
>>sometimes.
> I got some criticism for that when I first joined CONLANG... someone
> described it as "counterproductive."  I'm very proud of it.  It goes way
> back to my salad days when I didn't know a durn thing about scripts.
Counterproductive? Nothing can be counterproductive in a conlang. It's
always a feature!  ;-)

>>Shaquelingua can also use preposition to express possession.
> As can quite a number of European languages, Welsh being one, French being
> one, comme tu sais... (of the languages I know at all).
Je sais mais... Shaquelingua can't. I made a mistake here. There are
postpositions that can be used as _prefix,_ not preposition.

> Does Shaquelingua make a distinction between alienable and inalienable
> possession?
Yes, of course.

> Teonaht has three different ways to express "having" something; something
> you have nonvolitionally by virtue of its being an innate thing, such as
> a body part, a disposition, or a family member;
This one is very funny coincidence! Shaquelingua can express only 2
possessions, alienable vs. inalienable and amongst the inalienable
possessions, it includes the family relations.

In Shaquelingua, my child is as much part of me as my arm or my leg. In
fact, when persons are related (the one can't exist without the other), the
relation is expressed as an inalienable possession.

If I'm a student, my teacher is part of me. If I'm a doctor, the sick people
I cure are part of me and vice-versa.

All the qualities of an objects are also part of it, like the color of the
sky, the taste of the fruit, the dimensions of an objects, etc.

All my spiritual activities are part of me (emotions, thoughts, ideas), even
the words I say or write... upto a book or a song that I may write, etc.

That's why Shaquelingua has this very ambiguous way to say "I write, I
speak, I sing, etc":

teo'kja xej tul [te^o:.kja x\ej tul]

(indicative atemporal)'I self (descriptor)

= I give myself to perceive.

I'm also part of my family and of any legal and illegal organisation like a
city, a country, a planet, etc, as long as I'm referring to them as a group
of people or an abstract entity.

> something you own by having taken or
> bought it volitionally; and something that is with you presently, like a
> pencil, but which you acquired somewhat indifferently.
	[---CUT---]

If I bring a book with me, I just possess it, like my clothes, my house, my
vehicle, or any object or animal that I manipulate whenever I feel like it.

The big "objects" like a house, a city, a planet are described as
possessions only when you talk about their physical qualities. The wall of
my house, the buildings of my city, etc.

So, depending on the quantifier, a same word has 2 meanings.

kajo zëtos ! [kajo: zEtos]
= This is my book! (partitive -> I wrote it.)

kejo zëtos ! [kejo: zEtos]
= This is my book! (possessive -> I left it and I want it back.)

kajo kaj ! [kajo: kaj]
= This is my home! (partitive -> I live with these persons.)

kejo kaj ! [kejo: kaj]
= This is my house! (possessive -> Look at the walls, the roof, etc.)

be fjaobar far teo'keja bóvólhsi. [be: fja^obax fax te^o:keja: bOvO4.si]
= My country is a desert. (possessive)

ta'kaja bóvólsi be çukhkuro gør'sójë raadës.
		[ta:kaja: bOvOl.si be: Cuk?kuxo g9x(9)sOjE xa^adEs]
= My country invented the computer. (partitive)

	[---CUT---]
> John Cowan pointed out to me (when
> I was ranting about an invitation from some fringe group to donate my
> language to their role-playing game--"Teonaht seems especially suited for
> our Trolls") that a conlang can't be copyrighted.  He has reason to know
> that. :)  So we just ask permission to borrow words, concepts, dinner
> invitations, marriage ceremonies, gods...
IMHO, the name of a conlang can (could?) be copyrighted, as well as the
conlang itself as an artistic whole. Software companies always put a
copyright on an assemblage of things they didn't invent but re-use. The same
applies to a writter; he didn't invent the words he uses. Why couldn't a
conlanger do the same?

>>Shaquelingua and Teonath both only have adjectives to express gender.
> I'm blanking on this one.  Where does Teonaht express gender with an
> adjective?  Gender is almost absent from Teonaht except in the pronouns.
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/teonoun.html#gender

«Animals, however, have a whole range of gendered categories expressed in an
adjective that follows the noun; (...)»

I know English isn't my natlang but when I read this sentence, I understand
that Teonath has gendered adjectives that apply to animals only.

In Shaquelingua there are adjectives that really mean "male", "female" and
"ambisexued". They applied only to animals. The Shaqueans are ambisexued
(both sexes in one body) like almost all animals but there are also some
rare male/female animals, the same way there are some rare hermaphrodite
animals on Earth. The Shaqueans started applying these adjectives to persons
(only when mandatory and with a bit of shame) when they discovered aliens
(to them) that are male/female, like the Humans.

>>And I haven't finished exploring your site...
> Do you have a site for me to explore?  And mine, as ever, isn't complete.  I
> seem to have stopped building it.  Too obsessive.  Injures other work.
I've been working on Shaquelingua for 10 years... I know what you're talking
about. Obsession is in my list of words to build. ;-)  As I will say later,
I only have an out-dated site in French that isn't worth mentioning. (I
wanted to answer to your "romance" remark first.)

>>In Shaquelingua, the future imperative is the common way. Polite
>> directives are built a different way. You must use an irreal mode.
	[---CUT---]

> Well, EXCUSE ME!  :)
> I think an irreal mode must be added to the polite futuric imperative;
> otherwise it could be mixed up with the simple future.
	[---CUT---]

kos'va SalI! [kos(o)va: sa4i]
(imperative future irreal)'the Sally
= Please, do (it), Sally!

>>You're in my bookmarks.
> Great!  What a compliment!  Firrimby!  Me all groveling.  Let me put you in
> my bookmarks too.
I'm working on it right now. I only have an out-dated site... in french only.

	[---CUT---]
> Do!  I'm interested in the name, Shaquelingua, and its romance language
> echoes.
Well, I can't say much about the name. I forgot how I chose the name of the
planet: Shaquie. One hypothesis is that I chose the first syllable because
of my cats: [Sa] in French. One other hypothesis is that I liked the sound
of "Shaquille O'Neal" pronounced by french reporters: [Saki.onil].

 From the con-native ÇakI [Caki], I built çakelëf [CakelEf] (inhabitant of
Shaquie) and çakesar [Cakesax] (the language of Shaquie). In the novel I was
writing at that time, the Humans spoke an hypothetical "Interlingua" so the
Shaqueans translated the name of "çakesar" into "Shaquelingua". (This is the
short version of the story.)

About the romance echoes, it depends on what you're talking about.

The sounds were especially chosen by the shaquean linguists (me) in order to
be easy for the Humans to pronounce, creating a kind of human accent.
Besides, it would be a nightmare to XSAMPA-fy my own real pronounciation. So
I keep it simple, although there are very difficult clusters like [kt)] or
[kv)] and some alien consonantal diphtongues.

If you're talking about some aspects of the grammar. For example, the groups
quantifier + quality + object, I know it's very european. Although I changed
the names, it's always more or less article + adjective + noun and I don't
like it. Shaquelingua is supposed to be alien. Any way, I got an idea to
change this. I will try this during another afternoon grammatical reform and
maybe the 16th version will be the right one. Or I will keep this 15th
version; I'm quite fluent in this version of Shaquelingua.  ;-)

ji kaçtólu soe, [ji: ka.CtOlu so^e] (one soon until)

--
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Remi Villatel
maxilys_@_tele2.fr
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