Re: New to Language Construction

Shreyas Sampat wrote:
> No syllables closed with a consonant, no consonant clusters, that
> sort of thing.
Cool.  My conlang, Watakassí started out that way, but I had trouble
keeping words from getting outrageously long, so I compromised by
allowing some closed syllables and some clusters, but still it prefers
the oppen structure.

> I'm having trouble with verb forms,
> though: I don't want to have huge, cumbersome charts of conjugations,
> like Latin does, but under the current grammar, it's possible to put 5 or
> 6 affixes onto a verb stem, and that's equally unpleasant.
I don't think so, I like agglutination.  But, what's unpleasant about it
to you?  Is it the length that it makes the words?  Or is it just that
you prefer having few affixes on a word?  Agglutination is inevitably
going to make for long words, but one solution would be to allow some
forms to be assumed.  For instance, if you have a "present" affix, you
might want to drop it and let present tense be assumed if no tense is
listed.  For instance, Watakassí verbs can have up to 5 prefixes and 2
affixes, but of the prefixes, none are required.  The first prefix, for
instance, is voice.  If no prefix is used, it means the verb is active,
the second is tense, no prefix means present, and so on.  Of the
affixes, one is required (person) and the other is not always present,
it's aspect and no affix indicates "punctual" (specific point in time,
like "he fell" as opposed to "he was falling" or "he used to fall",
etc.)  But, in theory, it's possible to use all 7 affixes, like:

Suvvipasluláwuv (if I used to be able to cause [someone] to eat; from
the verb láu, to eat), but it's hard to conceive of a situation where
that would be used.  :-)

Also, alot of them have alternate forms, like past tense is f(a)-, or v-
in front of another v, so that in the above word, the past tense is
simply v-.  Antipassive is s(u)-, where the vowel is dropped before
another vowel or y, w, or l.  That also helps to cut down on length
alot.

What kind of affixes are used in your lang?

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