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Re: [westasianconlangs] Howdy

Veslerel (you wrote):

<<Makdamo be-kheiro, David, salám aleikom! (=welcome!)
Sómos falítzos se-bér a' Ostád ákí / We are glad to see you here>>

Wa al-laikam as-salaam.  :)

<<<<<so I imagine I'm on here mostly for my Turkic language, Zhyler.>>>

Turkic? Sounds intriguing. Is it aposteriori / naturalistic Turkic, or
just apriori Turkic-styled?>>

Apriori, Turkic-styled.  Though not entirely.  My good languages usually start with one language as it's main inspiration, and then I create them however I feel.  So, I don't try to make it act like a Turkic language, but that's where it started, so the phonology, morphology and vowel harmony look a lot like Turkish.

<<I won't write about it now,
but it involves changing the infinitive ending I came up with to a
noun class.>>>

I don't think I understood your point, but, in fact, if the lang is
aposteriori, you have no much choice in infinitive endings.>>

Ah, one non-Turkic thing about my language is that it has noun classes, a la Bantu.  Currently, there are seventeen (e.g., Class I: sensient, untitled human beings; Class II: Hairy land animals; Class III: Flying, non-insect animals, etc.).  One of the noun classes, Class XIV, is the action class.  So, if you have the root /us/, which has something to do with eating, then /usnu/ is "eating", the class suffix being -nQ, where Q is underspecified vowel: /u/ after high vowels, /o/ after non-high vowels.

Along with this, I have a nominalizer/infinitive suffix -(A)(l/n) (A is underspecified just like the Turkish, so it's /A/ after back vowels, /e/ after front vowels, and with the /l/ ~ /n/ variation, Zhyler doesn't allow /lVl/, so when that occurs, the second /l/ becomes [n].  The same things happens with /rVr/, the second /r/ becoming [z]).  However, I've noticed, after writing in the language for awhile, that I never actually use the infinitive.  The verb is always conjugated, and for actions, I use the Class XIV suffix.  So what my idea was was to delete the Class XIV suffix, and replace it with the infinitive, thereby making the infinitive a noun class in itself.  I don't know what the ramifications of this would be (haven't tested it yet), so I haven't made it permanent, but that was my idea.  I was unsure what it would mean to do this, though, and I was wondering if y'all had any insight.

<<1. Well, we aren't so formalistic here...
2. And this part of the world is not yet covered with workshops...
3. Hausa and its relatives, btw, fit the picture...
4. If it is Kwa or Gur, see item 1...
5. Feel free and share. We're definitely non-IE, non-Tolkienoid here!>>

Well, then, I may post about that language, later.  :)  It's called Njaama, it's a tone language, somewhat isolational, though infixing, and it works via this adjunct structure, is what I'm calling it (the way a friend of mine here in the Berkeley linguistics department analyzed Leggbo negation).  It also has drawn some influence from Middle Egyptian, which I've been studying this semester.

So, that's it for me so far.  :)  Looking forward to hearing about other people's ideas, because they always give me more ideas, and more ideas is what I like.

-David

"imDeziZejDekp2wilDez ZejDekkinel..."
"You can celebrate anything you want..."
               -John Lennon