In Her Web She Still Delights

Ways to Talk

posted Wednesday, 21 September 2005

So I really like triconsonontal roots, but I haven't been able to find even a little bit of information on how they age and spawn daughters.  Since part of my idea here is to have a parent language and its descendants, 3cs are right out, alas.  Unless I just punt to "the sounds may change but the patterns stay the same," which seems like a cop-out.

Ergativity is fun.  Also polysynthesis, but I think I'm going to stick with one or the other.  And since I understand ergativity much better than I do polysynthesis, ergativity wins.  Maybe one of the daughters can transition to nom-acc and then develop polysynthesis.  It hasn't happened anywhere in the real world that I know of, but that's OK.  This implies a case system, and explain why I do this to myself again?  I'd really love to be able, someday, to actually speak one of my conlangs.

Head-initial or head-final?  I rather like head-initial, only really, like Welsh, instead of half-assed like English.  OK, verbs go at the beginning.  This implies modifiers following their heads, like in French, and prepositions. 

I'm sure I'll come up with more later.

links: digg this    del.icio.us    technorati    reddit