Re: The deliberate redundancy; was: Idioms

Chris Peters <alpha_leonis@...> wrote:
>=20
>      How many of you have created dialects like these in your conlangs?
> Especially, dialects as different as the Japanese "Hyojungo" or "Kansai=
ben"
> (Tokyo or Osaka Japanese)?
I really don't know the difference, but I have sketched
some dialects for Drasel=E9q. The division is mainly north
vs. south dialects, because there were two main groups=20
of immigrants coming in two different waves and settling
in different places. The southern dialects are a bit more
conservative, especially the central ones, where the capital
is, and speaking "more classical" is important for your
status. In the far south, some strange developments have
occurred after contact with the Desert Peoples.

The northern dialects of the coast tend to change faster
because of the contact with sea traders. Some of the
features they show:

1. Syncope + Umlaut in post-stress syllables. For example,
ending -as + genitive -es, while still agglutinative -ases
in the central dialect, becomes -=E4s /&s/.

2. Nasal infixion to mark the accusative case (Standard D.
sufffixes -n or -en). For example: Std. _n=FCbn_, Northern
_n=FCmp_.

3. A tendency to nasalize vowels and drop nasal consonants
in final unstressed syllables.

4. Simplification of verb endings, and extensive use of
pronouns to compensate (this undoubtedly by influence of
Ciravesu, the language of an empire right north across the
sea).


--Pablo Flores