Re: I'm new!

> From: James O'Connell
>
> Thank you all for the compliments!
>
> Anyway, to make it readable I have quickly html-ised the language
> texts and
> it is now reachable at http://website.lineone.net/~istari/ling.htm - it's
> still not perfect but it is ok. Any comments appreciated.
> Look forward to talking again to you all later.
James,

I just looked at your language sketch.  Nice work.  A couple of comments.

Phonology
1) You might want to describe your phonemes using IPA or an equivalent.
English tends to be pronounced in many different ways depending on dialect,
so English equivalents aren't really definitive.
2) What led you to use 'c' for /s/ and 's' for /S/?
3) Your labial fricative 'mf' is unusual.  What prompted this?
4) 'ae' for /aI/ is most unusual.

Case
1) I see that you have adopted a split ergative system motivated by animacy
considerations.  I should warn you that the tripartite system that emerges
for 3rd person pronouns is somewhat rare, existing in a few Australian
languages and of course in amman iar.
2) I don't see this tripartite distribution of cases for 3rd person pronouns
in your pronoun table.  There seems to be a missing ergative form.

Verb structure
1) Aspect ( can be a very subtle concept.  Aspect coincident with tense (as
it very often is) can be even more subtle and they don't always work the way
they do in English.  You might want to give some examples of these (present,
perfect, imperfect, pluperfect, future)

Adjectives
1) I very much like the use of prenominal adjectives to provide additional
force for the modifier.
2) Could you give some examples of the syntax of adjective degree (equative,
comparative, superlative)?

Adverbs
1) Same question about adverb degree

Word Order
1) I like the use of animacy to determine word order in transitive
sentences.  How will you handle pragmatic considerations like topic and
focus?

Again, nice work!  I like the texture of the language.  You really have to
give it a name, however.  A conlang without a name lacks soul.

David

David E. Bell
The Gray Wizard
    dbell@graywizard.net
    www.graywizard.net

"Wisdom begins in wonder." - Socrates