Re: Thylean, continued

En réponse à Oskar Gudlaugsson <hr_oskar@...>:

> >
> >Nice and logical. I've been really boring by keeping in "Roumant" the
> normal
> >Western Romance tongues future: infinitive + "to have" endings. But I
> like
> it
> >this way :) .
>
> Boring or perhaps realistic? Thylean is in many ways a flight of
> fantasy,
> while I perceive Roumant as more realistic (especially its horrible
> spelling, in keeping tradition with French orthographic practices). I'm
> always trying to find the perfect balance between realism and
> originality.
>
Exactly like me. That's why, since I've decided that "Roumant" will be a Western
Romance language, I had to keep with some changes common to all Western Romance
languages. But since yours takes place in Iceland, you're much freeer about your
changes (after all, in Romanian the future is not formed with "to have" +
infinitive AFAIK, but with a construction looking like "to want" + infinitive -
from what I know, it would be an areal feature shared with Modern Greek,
Bulgarian, etc...).

>
> "Reman", hehe. How many Romancelangs have you made? And, heh, do they
> all
> have names derived from "Rom"?
I only have two now, Reman and "Roumant". But "Roumant" is not the final name
the language will have, because I don't want to derive its name from "rom"
again. So I'm looking for something better. For now, I know that the name of the
language will end in -ósc /os/, corresponding to French -ais/-ois, Spanish -és,
and crossed with Frankish -isc. I had thought of something like Gaulhósc
/go'l_jos/, but this name is better as a generic name for the different celtic
dialects of France before they disappeared ("Gaulish" in English). Now I'm
trying to find on the map of France a nice place in the South and look for its
original Latin name. The language will be named after it (or maybe after the
name of a tribe that settled there, a little like "French" from the Francs).
It's still undecided though. As for "Roumant", it will be the name of the
language in an earlier stage of life (a little like "Roman" is used by French
people to refer to the stage of language between Latin and French).

 But "esse" as a continuous marker is
> quite
> realistic. I thought of doing that, you see, because Icelandic does
> exactly
> that. The continuous aspect with "vera" (to be) + inf in my language has
> expanded enormously and is now quite popular for all kinds of uses. I
> wanted
> to do the same, only I though using 'esse' wasn't quite "striking"
> enough,
> which is why I chose 'ducere' (a rather unconventional auxiliary, though
> I'd
> think perceivable).
>
I think so too, it has the value of continuity needed. And when I think of
Spanish (or at least Castillan Spanish) which doesn't use only ser, estar and
haber as auxiliaries (I can think of llevar, which is often used intead of
haber), it sounds very reasonable to me.

>
> Cool. Moving more towards the Germanic verb system (which I like much
> more
> than the Romance verbs). I enjoyed killing the imperfect tense in
> Thylean ;)
>
:))) .

> >Also, tenses in subclauses are relative to the tense of reference of
> the
> >principal clause (instead of absolute like in other Romance languages),
> which
> >explains the disappearance of tenses like the pluperfect, future
> perfect
> and
> >others...).
>
> I'm not very strong in syntax...phonology is my specialty. But oh yes,
> now I
> get it. So the subjunctive would take on the same tense as the principal
> clause's verb.
>
In fact, it means that the tenses in subclauses (whether they are indicative or
subjunctive) are defined only relatively to the tenses in principal clauses, so
that the present in a subclause really means: simultaneity with the principal
clause action, the past: anteriority to the principal clause action, the future:
posteriority to the principal clause action.

>
> >So if the passive has become middle voice, how do you mark passive? Or
> did
> you
> >discard completely the passive voice in Thylean?
>
> Well, good point. It's kind of a crisis. Perhaps I'll draw back and make
> it
> passive/middle as it was. Ok, the idea was that the old passive would
> become
> middle and the passive would be exclusive composed of 'esse' +
> participle.
> The problem is, then I'd have to invent whole new conjugations of
> perfect
> and pluperfect middle voice, which would be, to say the least,
> extraordinary
> feats of analogy. In short, not realistic. The easiest solution seems to
> keep it the way it was in CL. Any suggestions?
>
I don't know. When I see that deponent verbs completely reanalysed their
conjugations to become active, I don't think that inventing new conjugations for
the perfect and imperfect would be too unrealistic. By the way, what do you do
with the deponent verbs? Do you keep them?

Christophe.