Re: THEORY: Non-Content/Auxiliary verbs (was: Re: THEORY: Temporal Auxiliaries ...)

On Wed, 6 Jul 2005 13:25:02 +0200, Carsten Becker
<naranoieati@...> wrote:

>I hope I'm not too late and you already answered this question
>elsewhere ...
not really. BTW, I probably should mention that I've been "under the
weather" in more than one way ....

>From: "Jeffrey Jones" <jsjonesmiami@...>
>Sent: Tuesday, July 05, 2005 9:05 PM
>Subject: Re: THEORY: Temporal Auxiliaries, Aspectual
>Auxiliaries, Modal Auxiliaries
>
> > In a couple of my conlang projects, I have a marker that
> > makes any content verb into an auxiliary (if it makes
> > sense). I don't know if I'll have any non-content
> > auxiliaries. This mechanism handles tense and mood
> > auxiliaries, evidentials and attitudinals, and some other
> > stuff, but not aspectual auxiliaries, which are handled
> > using the compounding mechanism.
>
>Could you please elaborate on that? It's because I'm
>currently thinking about whether to start
If you mean the compounding mechanism, I made a completely incomprehensible
(i.e. not even Henrik could understand it) post about it at

http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-
bin/wa?A2=ind0506b&L=conlang&F=&S=&X=07F1F778B8CE64D603&Y=jsjonesmiami%
40yahoo.com&P=3977

(Note: That monstrosity of an URL is what I got from copying the browser's
address field. Some of it seems to be unnecessary.)

If you mean the auxiliary part, how about:
3E-(see)-1X  Ani.(dog) -- I see a dog (or dogs; I haven't worked on number
yet)
Aux-(see)-1X  Ani.(dog)  3A-(run) -- I see the dog running.

3E- 3rd person explicit
3A- 3rd person definite animate
Aux- makes the argument refer to a situation instead of an entity

I don't have enough good examples yet, especially where tense, mood and
aspect are centrally involved.

>  a) a completely new conlang project from scratch
>     -> Grammatical features not sure yet, I'd like to
>        try on an ergative/split-whatever and isolating
>        language, though.
>
>or
>
>  b) try to tweak Ayeri to make it look like e.g. Sanskrit,
>     or more like Indonesian, i.e. starting to derive
>     daughter languges
>     -> Active language? Inflecting!
>     -> Ayeri is already Austronesian inspried, but its
>        sound went into a direction I did not want it to go
>        actually. So back to the roots!
>
>or
>
>  c) invent a good many strange sound changes to
>     "reconstruct" Proto-South-West-Kataytanian in order to
>     make a different language that is related to Ayeri
>     like e.g. Russian (or even better, Farsi) is to
>     English in order to try out some of Tom Chappell's
>     nice thoughts about languages that have e.g. the
>     indirect object marked for Ergative (Erg. indirect?)
>
>or whether to stick to Ayeri and stop producing any grammar
>for the near future.
I think (c) would be best, if possible, and (a) would be good. Failing
that, (d). In other words, I think Ayeri is pretty good as it is.

>You see, that's why I'm collecting information about anything
>that seems interesting at the moment.
>
>Carsten
>
>--
>Edatamanon le matahanarà ea Bahis Venena, 5 Iran B18 ea
>15:06:10:1B ena Curan Tertanyan Cuperin.
>=========================================================================
glad that Noimi seems interesting.

Jeff

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