Re: Neimalu website

On Thu, 20 Jul 2006 21:27:32 +0200, Henrik Theiling <theiling@...> wrote:

>I read that several suffixes have more than one form, also, some seem
>to have some kind of umlaut in their case forms.  Are there abstract
>rules for this?  Vowel harmony, etc.?  Did I miss anything?
I have words ending with -u and words ending with -a; the suffix -exa goes
with an -A word and -exu with an -U word.
Where I wrote -ok/ökr/okum this is the form in different cases (NOM/ACC/DAT).

>And what is the overall design goal?  It looks quite similar in
>structure to my Fukhian, but more elaborated.
I haven't thought about a design goal, it just started out as a private
language.

>To comment on the phonology: the normal vowels I found very
>straightforwardly constructed (three-levels in height, front, back,
>and the front high vowels exist both rounded and unrounded).  When
>reading about the diphthongs, however, I felt a strange mismatch that
>the language has both /ej/ and /Ej/.  Why is that so?  In contrast to
>the monophthongs, this is a very subtle distinction (and most
>foreigners, e.g. me, don't learn this easily when trying to learn
>Dutch).
I don't have a reason for that, but to me é is a vowel and ei is a
diphthong. I could change /ej/ to /e/ but that sounds the same to me.

>Wrt. the cases: there is ablative and 'ellative' (what does the case
>name derive from?).  How is a locative expressed?  By a preposition?
I wasn't sure about that term; maybe I meant 'allative' -- it should mean
'to' (maybe lative case is better?), like my example: Roma - Roment (Rome -
to(wards) Rome) and for results as in 'change wine *to* water'. I don't have
a locative case, I just use prefixes: ban kastar (in the house)/ban kastum
(into the house).

>The case system seems to be quite similar to my Fukhian, there is even
>the predicative case.  I did not split the genitive though, and had a
>locative (and the case names are slightly different, but very similar
>in usage).
>
>Of course, I like the evidenciality markers.  Very handy. :-)
>
>Is the lexicon completely a priori?  It seems like a posteriori
>sometimes ('préne' < frz. 'prendre'?).
Instead of making my own words, I often take some from other languages and
change it a bit, but the grammar and phonology is not taken from a specific
language.

>Apart from the grammar itself, I found reading it in Dutch
>entertaining because of the Germanic linguistic terminology that
>German uses Latin for.  It's a quiz for Germans.  I knew some words,
>but sometimes it was a challenge to guess what something meant (e.g.
>wederkerende/wederkerig/betrekkelijk voornaamwoord).  And then using
>Dutch abbreviations is also fun (e.g. for nom, acc, dat, the tables
>are sometimes labelled O, LV, MV).  I like Dutch for this. :-)
And I have trouble with the Latin words myself; maybe this will help:
http://odur.let.rug.nl/~zwart/college/1999/syn1term.htm

>BTW, I think in 5.2.1, the third example sentence seems to lack the
>translation of 'will autorijden'.
Indeed, that should be something like 'piltürak tui šujos éxikipeigaþ'.


Pieterson

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