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Tuesday 19 June 2012

Relative clauses

Relative clauses are formed much like normal sentences. You only leave out the topic, as that is the word preceeding it, and end with an "end relative clause"-conjunction, that I have yet to come up with.

, p V C1 C2...Cn c,

It will be surrounded by commas, and (if I haven't been clear enough on that) it follows the noun it modifies. This is the only way to describe nouns, but it is a very versatile and potentially simple way, as I intend to have a zero copula.

Sunday 17 June 2012

Phonology change and spelling reform

I thought my phonology was pretty much set in stone, but I can't bring myself to keep the distinction between glottal stop onset and zero onset. It's going out! And with it goes the grapheme <‘> - which I have also realized is the wrong codepoint; I've been using is U+2018 "Left single quotationmark", when I should have been using U+02BB "Modifier letter turned comma" (or ʻokina). Very embarrassing as I consider myself one to know better about such things.

But that is the past. I won't be using either. From now on the glottal stop is unmarked as it is the realization of zero onset. The name of the language will therefore be spelled Mhmmz, but the pronounciation is the same. Luckily I haven't much vocabulary, but the few words I have will no longer distinguish glottal stop and zero onset.

The spelling reform is somewhat related to this issue. As <f, k, x> can be both onset and coda of a syllable, in words of multiple syllables I wan't to be able to show when this is the case. I will use a simple apostrophe (not ʻokina, for ease of typing) where the sound is in the coda position. For example the words mxnnz will potentially be a different word from mx'nnz, and so will mkfqql and mk'fqql.

So the rule is: When you come across a intervocalic consonant cluster as many consonants as possible/allowed are read as the onset of the second syllable. Unless an apostrophe is used, in which case this is where the syllables break.

Saturday 2 June 2012

Sentence Structure

Let's look a bit into the sentence structure of the language. Again here is a bit of asian influence as sentences start with a topic (T), then comes a particle (p), then the verb (V) and the remaining complements and adverbials (C1 C2...Cn):

T p V C1 C2...Cn
 
For simplicity, so far all T's and C's consist of NP's (noun phrases) which I have talked a bit about in the post on reduplication. I haven't worked too much on the NP's yet, and there will probably also be a way to make complement clauses, but those are subjects of a different blogpost.

Back to sentence syntax. The particle is the fun part. It shows the tense, mood and voice of the verb. There are two tenses: future and non-future. And I still haven't decided on what moods to include, but maybe something like realis, irrealis, interrogative and imperative. That's as far as I will go into that for now.

The interesting part is the voicemarking. You can also think of it as marking the case of the topic, because it shows the topics role in the sentence. There are five voices in ‘Mhmmz:

Active (ACT)
Passive (PASS)
Dative (DAT)
Instrumental/genitive (INS)
Locative/temporative (LOC)

Active shows that the topic is the subject or agent of the sentence, as in "I run" or "He kicks the ball". And passive that the topic is the patient of the sentence, as in "It was given to me" or "This coffee, I like". Those are pretty conventional.

Now, dative is not normally a voice, but it is here. It shows that the topic is the indirect object of the sentence, for example "Peter was given a present". The next ones have multiple functions: The instrumental/genitive may mark the instrument of the sentence ("With the pencil he wrote a letter"), or that the topic is the possessor of one of the other complements ("The pencil has a dull tip" or "About the pencil, its tip is dull"). And finally the locative/temporative marks time and/or place, which I find pretty natural as they are often mixed up, as in "At the wedding he danced a lot" or "Now I am tired" or "There I will go next summer".

I'm sorry I haven't got any in-language examples, but it's simply not that developed yet, for which I have only myself to blame. I'm off to a party now, have a nice weekend guys (and gals).