On Thu, 20 Jan 2000, dirk elzinga wrote:
>
>Hmmm. Seems I've been scooped! I also have a PIE conlang,
>Shemspreg, which uses many of the same sources (the Dutch
>grammar must be the one by Robert Beeke; it's a very nice
>summary, IMO).

There's three or four of that are working on early IE conlangs.
Mine is Tallarian, the culture of which shows up on Conculture
with some frequency. I really do need a good IE grammar, though.
Can you give the title of Beekes work?

>Shemspreg actually started out life as a mock-IAL, but quickly
>wandered away from an "IAL esthetic" to a (more-or-less) fully
>fledged language complete with grammatical idiosyncracies. And
>if I ever get a stretch of time away from class obligations, it
>will appear on the web.

Nice to see you've grown out of IALs. ;^)

>
>> On top of that it has some really fun sandhi stolen
>> from Sanskrit.  They don't exist in this history but seem to exist in a
>> kingdom in the equivalent of Central Asia in a fantasy world I explored
>> some years ago.  I don't know if they will thank me for that - looks
>> very dry and cold, but it has to do with a parallel interest in the
>> story of Prester John.  Because of this connection they use Aramaic for
>> the basis of their script.

Pretty cool. In this world, Prester John is thought to be in Nubia
somewhere. The Roman historiographer Manius T Cicero, amongst others,
speak of a land called by the Sabaeans "Azzimbabwe", which is "...
unlikely to be anything but Prester Johns Empire ..."

>
>I really like this, especially using Aramaic as the script. I
>roughed out a Greek-derived script for Shemspreg, but the
>language doesn't have a fictional setting yet since it was
>originally intended as an IAL. I guess I'd better get on the
>stick and put one together.

Indeed you'd better!

>
>> Now I shall go and sit down and try and write up some verb paradigms
>> which I've been meaning to do.  Enough rambling for now, I'll come back
>> and ramble later!
>
>I can do that for a common Shemspreg verb:

I'll put in a Tallarian one. All forms are 3sing.

Helum, swallow, drink.

Indicative
        Pres. Aorist: helet
        Pres. nonperf.: helpet
        Pres. anterior: ahelti

        Past aorist: holso
        Past perfect: seholo
        Past nonperf.: holet
        Past ant. perf.: aholit
        Past ant. nonperf.: aholet
        Past ant. aorist: aholsit

Optative
        Present aorist: helsiti

        Past aorist: seholiot

Subjunctive
        Present aorist: helso

        Past aorist: aholso

Pres. part.: helomt
Imperative: hel

T. has person and number inflections, some derived from IE, some
borrowed from an other tongue. It has two tenses and a variety of
aspects, the most popular of which is the aorist. More than 80% of
normal speech and prose is aorist.

I'm not entirely certain if I'm using "aorist" correctly, but what I
mean here is an aspect that is not marked as being perf. or impf. or
habitual, but could be any of them. I never got far enough in Greek to
learn what the aorist actually is, so may be using the term wrong.

There are three numbers: sing, dual, pl.; there is no 3du or
3rd-medio-passive. a- marks anterior aspect; ablaut marks past tenses
in thematic verbs only (except welim, which has ablaut as well);
reduplication marks perfect aspect.

Helum is cognate with swallow, but the sound changes have wrecked holy
havoc on the IE sound system.

Padraic.

>
>nem- 'take'
>        nemes 'takes, is taking'
>        enmi 'was taking'
>        nenmi 'took'
>        nement 'taking'
>        nenment 'taken'
>
>There are no separate person/number inflections. Tense is
>distinguished by stem gradation* as well as suffixation: full
>grade (nem-) and the suffix _-es_ mark present tense, and
>reduced grade (-nm-) with the suffix _-i_ marks past tense.
>Aspect (perfective/imperfective) is only distinquished in the
>past tense; the prefix _e-_ marks the imperfective, and partial
>reduplication* (in this case _ne-_) marks perfective aspect. The
>participle ending _-ent_ is the same for both the present and
>the past participles; the present participle is built on the
>present stem, and the past participle is built on the perfective
>stem (reduplicated reduced grade).
>
>Dirk
>
>[*] See my earlier post on morphological processes.
>
>--
>Dirk Elzinga
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