Z500 wrote:
word order is free, but tends towards VOS in independent phrases and SOV in subordinate phrases.
Odds are, then, that its recent or near-recent ancestor was an SOV language but it has evolved to be a VOS language.
Is such diachronics attested in natlangs?
I know word-order does change, and I know that subordinate clauses tend to be more conservative than main clauses; but the only examples I know about are SVO from SOV.
Is a complete reversal in word-order (OSV from VSO or vice-versa, OVS from SVO or vice-versa, SOV from VOS or vice-versa) actually attested among natlangs?
Is a rotation (one of {OSV, SVO, VOS} from one of the others in that set, or one of {OVS, SOV, VSO} from one of the others in that set) attested among natlangs?
[EDIT]: Fijian, an Oceanic language, is argued to have undergone a change from SOV to VOS.
But she gives no reference for that one sentence (though she does for each of the others.)
[/EDIT]And BTW, how does it achieve free-word-order? Is it double-marking (usually both head and dependent are marked)? Or are all dependents marked (e.g. a robust case-system)? Or are all heads marked (e.g. robust agreement among verbs and adpositions and modifiers with the gender and number of the nouns involved)?
Z500 wrote:
<r > + <b > across word boundaries is pronounced the same as <br >
(1) Brackets and SlashesIf you're talking about phonemes (speech-sounds as thought of in your conspeakers' metal conception of their language) rather than graphemes (letters or characters in your romanization, or "con-script" characters in your conlang's "native" orthography), use slashes instead of angle-brackets. That is, /r/ instead of <r >, and /b/ instead of <b >, and /br/ instead of <br >.
If you're talking about phones (speech-sounds as distinguishable by a spectrogram or other scientific instruments used by linguists) rather than either phonemes or graphemes, use square brackets instead of slashes or angle-brackets. That is, [r ] instead of /r/ or <r >, and [b ] instead of /b/ or <b >, and [br] instead of /br/ or <br >.
If you're talking about graphemes instead of phonemes or phones, use angle brackets instead. That is, <r > instead of /r/ or [r ], and [b ] instead of /b/ or [b ], and <br > instead of /br/ or [br ].
(2) Metathesis across a word-boundary? Is such a thing attested among natlangs?
Apparently so; see the links in
this search. Singapore English, Istanbul Judeo-Spanish, are the two examples I can easily see on the first page.
Does your 'lang prohibit metathesis across a phrase-boundary? One of the hits in that search seems (upon not actually reading it so much as just looking at it) to hint that (nearly?) universally languages do not allow metathesis across phrase-boundaries.
It would be very interesting if your 'lang does something no natlang does, especially if "naturalism" and "realism" weren't among your design goals. OTOH if some natlang does do that, it would be very interesting to know that your conlang does something that's rare, but not unknown, among natlangs.
Z500 wrote:
syllable structure
Thanks for including that!
Z500 wrote:
syllables are in the form (C)(A/T)V(C)
What's "(A/T)" stand for, again?
Z500 wrote:
stress
Thanks for including that!
And the rest of the phonology, too.
Z500 wrote:
nouns
Thanks for including enough examples!
Z500 wrote:
fractions are expressed by giving the denominator in the genitive case. one half is brigt [ɾʷʊːʔ]
That's cool!
What a neat idea!
In my conlangs I might use the partitive or the elative of the denominator.
That's if those cases exist and if cardinal numbers have noun forms.
English uses the ordinal form of the denominator; this is a leftover from a phrase where "one-third (1/3) of ..." was said as "the third part of ..." and so on. Halves and quarters have their own words outside of that system, although "the fourth part of ..." was used concurrently with "a quarter of ...".
Z500 wrote:
phrases
In Thsäv, as in the related Memeyk languages, phrases are the building blocks of sentences. Phrases have two types of word order. Independent phrases have free word order, tending towards VOS:
I am sure, based on your examples (which I don't quote), that you meant "clauses" instead of "phrases".
I don't know what your native language is, but in case it's French instead of English, linguists writing in French use "proposition" where those writing in English would use "clause", and French-writing linguists use "phrase" where English-writing ones would use "sentence".
Z500 wrote:
In subordinate phrases, the verb is required to be at the end; the word order overall tends toward SOV. In this order, the verb and head of the phrase are adjacent to the modified word.
Which verb? Which phrase? What's the head of that phrase?
Your example seems to answer that;
Z500 wrote:
[kᶣuɪʔ tsʰɪp kɛɾ.mo kɐ.kɒː aː]
Ky [ygit thsip kermo] kakā ä!
is [ACC-alcohol my steal.3-PAST] cloud that
That's the cloud [that stole my alcohol!]
Here, the RC (relative clause) must precede the noun it modifies. (Though genitives and demonstratives must follow the noun they modify.)
The RC is externally headed, and the RC's nuclear verb immediately precedes the head-noun.
How would you say
"That's the alcohol [that my cloud stole!]"
Ky [kakā thsip kermo] ygit ä!
is [cloud my steal.3-PAST] ACC-alcohol that
Z500 wrote:
when used attributively, adjectives are negated with the adverb met "not":
[paː.ɾɐ ɥɒ̤ː mɛʔ nɶː pʰaː / naː.ɾʷɐ ʉ ɐ̤ʔ ɾˠo wɒːw mʲaːk naːb]
Pädra dy āhg met näb phä, näbra dy hat gro ogādo mjäk näb
lie-3.IRR POT forever not dead it, die-3.IRR POT strange through LAT-time also death
that which is not dead may eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die.
I didn't quite understand this.
Can't adjectives be used attributively but not be negated?
Also, is your examples translation as near to perfect as you can make it?
Z500 wrote:
regular verbs
overview
realis irrealis
1p -h, -s, -ā -ma
2p * -mi
3p -r, -r-, -y -ra
Which participant's person is being agreed with here?
What about verbs that have no participants?
Z500 wrote:
conjugation affix
past tense realis -o after consonant (pronounced -w before another vowel), -w after vowel
negative irrealis -t
future irrealis -
subjunctive irrealis -s
optative irrealis y-
imperative realis y-
Why is the imperative considered realis instead of irrealis?
__________________________________________________________________________________________All told, an excellent start, more completed than many conlangs are when first posted, with many good ideas already evident.
You have maybe one notational difference (the brackets and slashes thing) that you probably should conform to the rest of us; and one terminology difference (phrase instead of clause) that you also should probably conform to the rest of us.
But, just putting up enough to criticise, is a major accomplishment; and you've done better than that IMO.