Subject: Re: conlang servey

No way are you collecting all this information! So many questions!
Here you go anyway.

Heather Rice wrote:

>Language name
Rhean (Rheava Izka)

>creator's name
Nihil Sum (oh, okay. Michael E~)

>realative date of creation
1998-present.

>country and first language of creator
Canada, English.

>purpose of conlang (auxlang, conlang, loglang, . . . )
Started as gibberish, with its purpose only to "look cool" on signs etc in
the background of a comic. Grew. GREW.

>Phonetics: number of consonants, number of vowels,
25 consonants: b, c (ts), c' (tS), d, f, g, g' (G), h, j (dZ), k, k' (x), l,
m, n, p, r, rh, s, s' (S), t, v, w (B), y, z, z' (Z)
(Those apostrophes should be haceks). N occurs as well from n+k, but isn't
considered a seperate phoneme. Some dialects pronounce r and rh (a longer
sound like Spanish rr) the same, and some pronounce v and w the same. So the
count varies.

7 vowels: a e i o ö u ü

>presence of nasalization,
No.

>where the accent generally falls.
No general rule as to where the stress falls in the root, and even then it
shifts with the addition of certain suffixes. The real rule is "wherever the
hell I think sounds best in any given word".

>Morphemes:
(snip snip snip)

That's a lot of questions!! Allomorphs: yes. Mutation: no. Assimilation: not
officially, but in spoken Rhean, yes. Prefixes: yes. Suffixes: yes. Infixes:
no. Suprafixation: no. Discontinuation: no. Exclusion: what? Total fusion:
there is some fusion... Subtraction: yes. Reduplication: no.
Phew.

>Is the conlang agglutinating, isolating or fusional?
Somewhat agglutinating, and somewhat fusional (if fusional includes
inflecting). Not even close to isolating.

>Nouns and such:
(snip snip snip)

Again, many questions. Here we go. Nouns only fall into "classes" as far as
their ending determines what forms they take. This is not "gender" so much
as phonology dictating what sounds better when stuck to what else. But I did
invent some clever "internal history" excuses for them.
No gender, no articles. Singular and plural numbers.

>presence of cases and how many and what kind
Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, Dative, Instrumental.
The "vanilla-chocolate-strawberry" of cases. Nothing too exotic here.

>Do pronouns express gender, number, declension?
Gender: no. Number: yes. Declension: yes.

>Are
>there indefinite pronouns, possessed pronouns?
Yes.

>Others?
A hell of a lot of correlatives.

>Are prepositions bound, unbound?
What does that mean?

>How many prepositons (approximate).
Many. Some are too precise. I may have to whittle it down.

>Are person, number, object expressed with the verb?
Person, yes. Number, yes. Object, no.

>Are there static verbs (to be)?
Yes. But no "to have".

>Verbs and such:
(snip snip snip)

Plain: Past, present, future. - 1p, 2p, 3p; singular / plural.
Hypothetical: Past, present, future. - 1p, 2p, 3p; singular / plural.
Imperative - 1p, 2p, 3p; singular / plural.
Participles: passive (an adjective), past active (an adjective), gerund (an
adverb),
Probably some more I'm forgetting.

>Presence of adverbs
Yes.

>Pro-drop
Yes.

>Can nouns, adjectives, adverbs be changed to verbs and vice versa?
Yes, and with a load of many different and maddeningly precise ways of doing
it, too.

>Presence of adjective, adverbial clauses and relative pronouns.
Yes, yes, and yes.

>Word order and is it free or strict?
Sort of free, favoring SOV and verb-final constructions. OVS comes in second
though.

>Are
>adjectives, adverbs and prepositions before or after
>the modified word?
Adjectives and adverbs could go either way. Prepositions are usually before.

>Is the word order changed in a question?
Not usually.

>How many (approximately) conjugations are
>there?
See above.

>What is the number base for the numeral system
Ten.

>Presence of idioms, irregular forms of nouns and verbs.
Plenty.

>Is the language syntax very predictable
Predictable by whom?

>How much literature has been produced and what kind (I'm not talking about
>translations, but stuff you wrote yourself).
A little. Probably more in translations than original work though.

>Is there a history and dictionary of the conlang?
Yes, and yes.

>Script invented?
Based on the Roman alphabet. The haceks are a result of a relatively
computer-illiterate NS writing a whole language on paper with no idea of
what is (im)possible within ASCII. My other lanugages have some nicer
scripts though.

>Other conlangs produced by the creator of this one.
Omurax - recent, semi-developed verbless language.
Tolborese - concept-phase ergative switch-marked Bantu-inspired nightmare
conlang from hell.
Lididric - in concept-phase. Grammar only, no vocab yet.
Barse - my first. Got like fifty words, and I could never figure out what to
do for grammar.
Karsi - stillborn.
Euroblab - a joke I used in an animated cartoon once.
and... Tupua, Kh'upuuqq-X!ochha, Grengarlhas, Dementian - all "blurblangs".
May post the blurbs here someday.

>If you could summarize your conlang in a sentence, what would you write?
Rhean is essentially a pile of features that I liked in other languages,
thrown into one, with complete disregard for things like historical
plausibility or consistancy.

>If you want to provide any other information about the conlang, just keep
>typing!
Nah, that's about it I guess.

NS

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