Re: A New Language

On Mon, Feb 02, 2004 at 07:50:41PM +0000, Joe wrote:
> So, after a conlanging hiatus, I begin a new Conlang.  A small
> comprehensive summary:
[...]
> Voice is inflected on the noun  There are four 'vocal' cases.
> Transitive Actor, Transitive Patient, Intransitive Patient, and
> Intransitive Actor.  There is a fifth case, which, unqualified, is a
> verbal locative(describing where something is done).
Voice inflected on a noun? Wow.

[...]
> However, sometimes the actor is the grammatical object.  For instance,
> in the sentence "The small dog is being cooked by the man".  In this
> case, more cases are neccesary.   These cases are different, according
> to tense.
>
> na- Ergative
> pa-  Absolutive
> (In present)
> i(?)-  Nominative
> l=/l- Accusative
> (In past)
>
> pedl\z paqOtan na?o?a
> cook ABS-man-TRN.ACT ERG-small.dog-TRN.PAT
> The small dog is being cooked by the man
Just out of curiosity: how does the language handle indirect objects (or
their equivalents thereof)?

[snip]
> Adjectives agree with the nouns.  Though 'agree' is a stretched term.
> For instance - 'pin', good, turns to 'pon' next to masculine nouns,
> 'piñi" next to feminine, remains 'pin' next to undefined, 'pongo' next
> to neuter.  On the other hand, 'kan', good, turns to "qOng" next to
> masculine nouns, "n`i" next to feminine, the same next to undefined,
> and "qOngo" next to neuter.
Well, agreement need not be in the surface morphology. For example, in
(Attic) Greek _hodos_ (road) is inflected like a masculine noun, but
agrees with the feminine article: _he: hodos_ rather than _ho hodos_.

> Orthography:
>
> The true orthography, is, of course, insane.
[snip]

As with all conlangs invented after Maggel. :-P


T

--
Which is worse: ignorance or apathy? Who knows? Who cares? -- Erich Schubert

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