Re: I'm back (OurTongue)
| From: | Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...> |
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| Date: | Tuesday, March 18, 2003, 22:41 |
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En réponse à Rob H <magwich78@...>:
> Hey Christophe,
>
> Sorry for taking so long to reply yet again (much longer this time :( ).
> Unfortunately, Yahoo
> doesn't let me save sent e-mail, so I don't have my reply to your first
> reply. If you still have
> it, please post it to the Conlang list.
Unfortunately I don't :(( . I guess people will just have to rework it through
my reply ;))) .
OK.
>
> Originally, 2sg imp was with -ka: hajaka 'go!'
>
> This inflection is one of the oldest, so the unstressed /a/ reduces to
> schwa, then to nothing:
> hajak 'go!'
>
> Final /k/s were rare even in Pre-/Proto-OT, and easily evolved into -h
> and then nothing: haja
> 'go!'
>
> Ironically, this is the situation with present-day Finnish, although the
> development is much more
> recent.
>
Didn't it go through a glottal stop stage in Finnish? I mean: k > ? > 0 .
Somehow, it looks to me slightly more plausible then through a glottal
*fricative* stage. Not that it would change the outcome of course ;))) .
>
> Well, my dad would always tell me: "No one makes you feel any certain
> way; you make yourself feel
> that way."
Well, even fathers aren't perfect you know ;))) . But that would be a great
tool against him! (" But dad, I'm not responsible if you're angry at me. *You*
are making yourself feel that way you know?" ;)))) )
Since I agree with him, it follows that I believe that our
> emotions are (largely)
> under our control.
I guess you really need to talk to a specialist ;))) .
The hypothetical speakers of OurTongue happen to
> have philosophical beliefs
> similar to mine, so they think the same way about emotions :-P .
>
Well, nothing ever said languages had to make sense, or else I wouldn't be
working on Maggel ;)))) .
>
> Good point. Do you know of any natural languages that make no
> distinction between "looking" and
> "seeing"?
>
Not that I know of. But that wouldn't surprise me :) .
>
> Again, good point. A way to work around this argument is to actually
> have a category of
> non-control transitive verbs, with the "subject" (experiencer) in the
> absolutive > accusative and
> the "object" (source) in the genitive.
Looks pretty naturalistic :) .
Thus, an OT translation of "I
> see the dog" would be
> glossed as "me [dog]-is [see]-n" where "me" is the 1sg accusative
> pronoun, "-is" is the genitive
> suffix, and "-n" is the 1sg subjective verb suffix.
>
Agreed :) .
>
> Again, we can apply the solution mentioned above to hearing. An OT
> translation of "I hear the
> dog" would be "me [dog]-is [hear]-n." Let's make it even more
> complicated: "I hear the dog's
> barking" would be... "me [bark]-ma-s [dog]-is [hear]-n" where "-ma" is
> the masdar suffix and "-s"
> is the genitive suffix for vowel-stems (I don't know if the word for
> "dog" will be a vowel-stem or
> consonant-stem yet, so I give the full suffix). Do you think having
> both "barking" and "dog" in
> the genitive case will cause unnecessary ambiguity?
>
Well, this person's father's son here finds it OK ;))))) .
>
> ergative/nominative, absolutive/accusative
>
> mi, me "I"
> ti, te "you"
> si, se "he/she/it"
> meni, men "we"
> teni, ten "y'all"
> seni, sen "they"
>
> So, the verbal system now looks like this (with haja- 'go'):
>
> Old OurTongue:
>
> hajam 'I go' hajaim 'I went'
> hajat 'you go' hajait 'you went'
> haja(s) 'she goes' hajai(s) 'she went'
> hajamen 'we go' hajaimen 'we went'
> hajaten 'y'all go' hajaiten 'y'all went'
> hajasen 'they go' hajaisen 'they went'
>
OurTongue is based on the so-called "proto-syllables", isn't it? If so, those
proto-syllables looks damn IE to me! Nothing against OurTongue, it's an artlang
after all ;)) . But it makes this whole "proto-syllables" stuff pretty not
serious to me ;))) .
> Classical OurTongue:
>
> hajan 'I go' hajain 'I went'
> hajat 'you go' hajait 'you went'
> haja 'she goes' hajai 'she went'
> hajame 'we go' hajaime 'we went'
> hajate 'y'all go' hajaite 'y'all went'
> hajasi 'they go' hajaisi 'they went'
>
Looks good to me :) .
> The Classical forms may end up being more conservative than they look
> right now. What do you
> think? Oh, and I've added a possible suffix for a conditional mood:
> -le. I know, it's the same
> suffix as the allative, but then again I'm using -i for both nominal
> plural and verbal preterite.
> What do you think?
>
There's no problem in using an affix for more than one job, synthetic languages
do it all the time :))) . I say go for it! It looks good, a bit like some PIE
conjugations :) .
Christophe.
http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr
It takes a straight mind to create a twisted conlang.
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