Marcus Smith wrote:

> On Thu, 28 Dec 2000, Eruanno none wrote:
>
> > Needless to say, it being my first attempt, it failed miserably.
> > I had no cases,
>
> Nothing wrong with that. My current project Igassik (name to be changed
> soon) has no case distinctions. Furthermore, I've done work with a couple
> natlangs that have no case.

Many modern European languages do not have case: Romance languages, Germanic
languages (except German, Icelandic and Faeroese), even a language which was
so inflective in the past as Bulgarian has today lost its case system,
iirc - Vasiliy? When I was younger I thought that cases were a strange
feature only two ancient languages had: Latin and Greek (the ones I knew
something about). How is the situation worldwide? Are there more languages
with or withour a case system?

>  no distinction between verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs,
> > and what not...
>
> My conlang Telek only distinguishes verbs, nouns, and particles. No
> adjectives, adverbs, or adpositions. That isn't unheard of at all in the
> natural language sector -- some people even claim there are languages that
> only have one part of speech, ie. verbs. (I'm skeptical - I think you
> need at least verbs and nouns))

Are these languages Amirindian ones? An old book of mine describes the
verbal system of some Amerindian tongues as 'so powerful that nouns do
appear as diminished.' It says that some langs use verbal phrases as 'I live
here' to translate 'my house': is this true?

> > So far, I have 8 or 9 cases for the noun, with 2 numbers, the aorist
 Greek
> > form ) form of the verb, future, past, present, and perfect versions of
> > future and past.  I am working on the adjective and soon the adverb.
>
> A healthy inflectional system.
>
> > Here is where you come in ( and I thank you for your time if you have
made
> > it thus far ).  I cannot decide what I should do about the articles, IE:
The
> > thing, compared to A thing.
>
> There are a few things you can do.
>
> 1) don't have either. Lots of languages don't have either.
> 2) have the indefinite _a_ but not _the_.
> 3) have both, like English.

Why can't I have _the_ but not _a_?



Luca

> From a different direction, the articles could be:
>
> 1) independant words (eg. English)
> 2) suffixes (eg. Scandanavian langs)
> 3) prefixes (I can't think of my examples, but I've seen them)
> 4) make the distinction in the cases (eg. Turkish)
>
> > If I had formed some of my stems/roots, I would form a basic sentance.
> > Alas, I have yet to start forming the lexicon, and won't do so until the
> > grammar system is complete ( all my last language was just lexicon where
it
> > was just another English clone ).
>
> I find it useful to develop the lexicon and grammar simultaneously, just
> so I can see what my grammar actually looks like. Some things look great
> written out in a paradigm, but once they are applied to real words, they
> look awful.
>
> So let's see some details on the grammar you're developing.
>
> Marcus