On Nov 6, 2009, at 1:28 PM, Daniel Prohaska wrote:

> HI Kelvin,
>
> As a fellow Romlanger I would like to answer your question.
>
> Well, it depends on various things. What stages of development is your
> Romlang going through. Do you want to keep the cases, reduce the  
> case system
> or drop the case system (to a stage of most modern Romlangs)?

I'm keeping four cases (the ablative merges with the dative).
>
> What phonological developments will your Romlang go through and how  
> will it
> affect the article? Is the article positioned before or after the  
> noun it
> determines?

Before the noun.

> Will the phonological development differentiate between a
> proclitic/clitic article and a stressed/unstressed personal  
> pronoun? What's
> the relationship between your articles and your personal pronouns?
>
The pronouns will come from the "is, ea, id" as well. But they will  
certainly retain all four cases. As for clitics—maybe the accusative  
pronouns will attach to the verb.
>
> My first instinct for {is, ea, id} as an article, would have been  
> i, a - off
> the top of my head: i om "the man", a femna "the woman"; or om'i  
> and femn'a;

With my current set of sound changes, and assuming minimal grammar  
change (I plan to clean up the grammar, but I don't have enough  
example yet to know what the prevailing patterns will be), those two  
would become _s-ómó_ /'somo/ and _e-vjémjn_ [log in to unmask]

> You've noticed that I've left out id; well Latin final -d is very  
> unstable
> and was often dropped quite early. Of course you can keep it give it a
> singular development such as assibilate it through dz to z, or  
> whatever you
> want. This needn't be used as an article (that is if you lose the  
> neuter
> gender category), but could be a neutral abstract pronoun, such as  
> z'plovi
> "it's raining".
>
>
>
> Maybe in steps:
>
> -          sort out what the pre-literary stage of your Romlang ca.  
> 8th
> century looks like; what stage of grammatical simplification has this
> dialect of Vulgar Latin reached; which case distinctions are made;
>
> -          think of a phonological development of pro-clitic or clitic
> varieties of is, ea, id in the surviving cases; make examples with  
> common
> words;
>
> -          then you can age your Romlang from there.

Okay.