On 22/12/2010 00:28, Gary Shannon wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 2:26 PM, Jörg
> Rhiemeier<[log in to unmask]>  wrote:
[snip]
>> What you do when you derive an isolating conlang from
>> an inflecting language, is of course your own beer.  If
>> you want to make it naturalistic, apply plausible sound
>> changes to it.  If you just want an auxlang or an
>> engelang, do what pleases you.
>
> Interesting. And how do they pick up new particles? For
> example, suppose I wanted to use a naturalistic process
> to turn Latin into an isolating language. What would be
> the likely origin of something like a case-marking
> particle or a verb tense particle?

My advice would be look at the way real life examples have 
evolved, i.e. the medieval Lingua Franca of the 
Mediterranean seaports and modern examples of Portuguese & 
Spanish based creoles.

> Is it possible that case endings could become separated
> from their nouns? Could, for example, "am" and "arum"
> become particles that followed a noun rather than
> disappearing?

No. For a start, we know that, except for monosyllables, the 
final -m became silent way back before the end of the BC(E) 
period. Some hold that it marked nasalization of the vowel, 
i.e. -am = [a~], but that is far from certain.  _All_ the 
evidence is that -am was treated in subsequent phonological 
developments as -a.

> Or would the endings disappear first and
> then a new particle be invented to fill that function?

No - the two things went hand in hand.

As far as -am was concerned no new particle developed; the 
object was shown by the simple expedient of placing after 
the verb - just like we did when we dropped the Old English 
case endings  ;)

As for -aru(m), we find as earlier a the Classical period, a 
tendency for the preposition _de_ to take over some of the 
genitive function. As _de_ assumed this role more and more 
in the spoken language, the need for a distinctive ending 
-aru(m) (or any of the other genitive plural endings) 
disappeared and thus the ending was dropped. It survives in 
the modern Romance languages only with pronouns or 
determiners, e.g. Fr. _leur_, It. _loro_ <-- (il)loru(m).

-- 
Ray
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