TAK collaborative conlang - observations

On Oct 9 I started another collaborative conlang project. The forum now has 16
registered users, and 97 posts. There has been little or no activity in the
last week or so. <http://fiziwig.com/forum/>

The language was initially called "TAK", but now being called "Lese" or "Minujaninya" by some.

The tendency has been for the grammar to lean toward being a relex of English,
which got boring real fast. To try to subvert that tendency I've introduced
some alternate sentences into the "tutorial"
<http://fiziwig.com/tak/tak01.html> using topic-prominent structure. There are
not many sentences so far, and a large number of them use the copula, so moving
toward topic-prominent often required nothing more than replacing the copula
with the topic marker "na":

Afe apoli ets kerko. (this tree it-is oak.) becomes
Afe apoli na; kerko. (this tree TOPIC; oak.)

Other sentences require more radical surgery:

Wepulu et ayo ame topo. (Rain it very much falls) becomes
Wepulu na; ayo ame. (Rain TOPIC very much.)

Marsha cha di luki a telu ufe puka. (Marsha she did read d.o. sentence from book.) becomes
Telu ufe puka na; Marsha luki di. (Sentence from book TOPIC Marsha read did.)

Saya viddi a pikasa umi voka. (I see d.o. fish in water.) becomes
Umi voka na; viddi pikasa. (In water TOPIC; (I) see fish.) or
Pikasa na; viddi umi voka. (Fish TOPIC; (I) see in water.)

Of course, as an exercise in linguistic anarchy, I can't and won't FORCE the
language in any particular direction. If members pick up on the "topic na;
comment" structure, fine. If not, that's the way it goes.

At least the project has not been overwhelmed with garbage words and sentences
like my old Kalusa project was.

--gary