Re: Rating Languages

Basilius wrote:
>Hear, hear! Somali is indeed no.1 in my list, too.
>Plus tones. Plus semitoid morphology. With I forget how many articles,
>partly conveying tense (in nouns!) And on the top of all that, the most
>alien syntax I've ever dealt with.

I picked up a Somali dictionary on sale, some years back, and it looked
daunting indeed.  Someone cited a Somali web-page in this thread; I recall
the phonology being MUCH more complex than that webpage indicates.

>No.2 in my list is Tagalog. Mainly 'cause I don't know if it's still
>nominative-accusative, and I don't understand how its four passives
>interact with word order, and no grammar I've seen cared to describe
>the exact rules for secondary stress/vowel length/vowel deletion...

My knowledge of Tagalog comes mainly from reading the dictionary, and
occasional articles, but:   Nom-Acc doesn't seem to be a consideration.
Word order may not be all that important either, since the verb form and the
various nominal markers usually indicate what's what.  For ex:

"Mary sliced the chicken with a knife in the kitchen"   As you probably
know, you can focus (more or less: subjectivize) on any of  _Mary, chicken,
knife, kitchen_ (and I think there may be a verb/action focus too-- at least
there is in some related langs.)   In each case, the verb has a special
prefix/suffix, and the corresponding focussed noun has a distinctive marker
and IIRC comes right after the verb. (Tag. is generally verb-first.)  Nouns
not in focus may or may not have special markers, and word order may not
matter if context is clear.

Stress, I know, is difficult.  It can be contrastive for CVCV and CVCVC
forms; predictable (ultima) for CVCCV(C).  Some suffixes shift stress,
others don't; some prefixes and reduplications require a secondary stress
(equiv. to vowel lengthening), and _I think_ there are rules.;-)  The big
problem is that it isn't indicated in writing.   Vowel deletion IIRC isn't
all that common and probably has to do with historical factors, so you just
have to memorize.

Bloomfield, way back in 1917, did a very exhaustive and well known study.
There's also Paul Schachter and Fe Otanes, _Tagalog Reference Grammar_,
Univ. of Calif. Press, 1972.

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