CONLANG Digest - 22 Nov 2000 & Daimyo verbs

> From:    Oskar Gudlaugsson <hr_oskar@...>
> Subject: Re: Hell(en)ish oddities
>
> That's very interesting, thank you. I hadn't thought the Greeks had been
> Romanized enough to ever call themselves Romans. I thought the Eastern
> empire to be, on the contrary, strongly Hellenized, in spite of a Roman
> administration. So this is very significant new information to me, which I
> wish they had mentioned at school.
The Greek language had, IIRC, taken on quite a bit of Latin, and the use of
the name "Romaic" to apply to it was at first not entirely complimentary, at
least by traditionalists.   (I'm not quite sure where I read that, or if
it's entirely so...)

> From:    BP Jonsson <bpj@...>
> Subject: Hellenish oddities
>
>  >I have not found the Greek language courses I use completely trustworthy
>
> Allow me to recommend the newer "Teach Yourself Ancient Greek" by Gavin
Betts.

Mm, I have his "Teach yourself Latin" book.

> From:    Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>
> Subject: Re: Hell(en)ish oddities
>
> It's said, e.g. that Caesar's dying words were not
> Shakespeare's "Et tu, Brute?" but rather: kai sy, Broute;
[ !! ]

> From:    Robert Hailman <robert@...>
> Subject: Re: Hellenish oddities
>
> On it's own, I say it [T], in words like <diphthong> I say [fT]. [fT] is
> just too hard to begin a word with for me.
Most people seem to pronounce (and misspell) it "dipthong", i.e, with [pT].

*****

Anyway, I've been reading Whorf, and thinking about how to make my Daimyo
language less Europoid...

Background:  Daimyo be spoken by non-human winged humanoids (conmundially
native to Earth).  As a species one of their distinguishing traits is that
they have little to no capacity for mental imagery (no imagination... sounds
familiar, urrh..)

Now, since the language they use is their own (and not a human-derived
language like the terras' Hadwan) I figure it should reflect them somehow,
and not have the same rehashed IE-type grammar.

So:

I figured that I could throw out the notion of verb tense, and replaced it
with something like Whorf's description of 'assertion' in Hopi, but not
quite.

A verb can be in either of two tense/assertions (anyone who can supply
better names, for the category or the individuals, please feel free!)

- 'gnostic', for things that the speaker knows:
      the visible (known present),
      that in one's own thoughts,
      the planned (known future),
      remembered history (known past)
- 'agnostic', for things that are the speaker does not know:
      the unseen (unknown present),
      other's thoughts,
      the unplanned (unknown future),
      forgotten history (unknown past).

So, say, instead of:

     -John is coming Thursday.        [present/future]
     -Are you angry with me?          [present]
     -He is holding a cat.            [present]
     -The house may have burnt down.  [present/past]
     -I don't know the answer.        [present]
     -Loose lips sink ships.          [present/timeless]

One might do:

     John comes.GN Thursday       [known]
     You are angry.AGN with me?   [unknown]
     He holds.GN a cat            [known]
     The house burns down.AGN     [unknown]
     I know.GN not the answer     [unknown]
     Loose lips sink.GN ships     [known]

Note that one can know one doesn't know something.  Also, the Daimyoish
structure of the 'angry' sentence would likely be much different (emotion
verbs will probably have to behave differently here) but it'd still be AGN.

What do you think, sirs?  Is this feasible?


     *Muke!
--
http://muke.twu.net/