Re: conlang servey

Heather Rice wrote:
>
>Language name
"Tairezazh". Might be anflicized as "Tairezan", if one feels like it.

>, creator's name,
Andreas Johansson

>realative date of
>creation (just any old number will do),
It kind of grew organically out of general conworlding ... around 1998ish it
arose as proper conlang. It was inititially called "Terranian"; but the
present name has been around as long as the oldest bit of grammar (some bits
of vocab and phonology are rather older).

>country and
>first language of creator,
Sweden, Swedish.

>purpose of conlang
>(auxlang, conlang, loglang, . . . ).
A posteriori conlang, made as part of a quite elaborate coniverse.
World-building was my starting point - I've done it since I can't remember,
whereas I only started conlanging 'round '98.

>Phonetics:  number of consonants,
18, or 22 if you count /ts tS dz dZ/ as monophonemic.

>number of vowels,
Five short, three long and five diphthongs.

>presence of nasalization,
Two nasal consonants /n/ and /m/, that however only contrast initially. No
nasal vowels.

>tone and how many,
No tones.

>where the
>accent generally falls.
First syllable of the stem, gener'ly
>
>Morphemes:  presence of allomorphs,
Sure. Usually phonologically explanable (tho' often not predictible), tho'.

>mutation,
No

>assimilation,
Voicing sandhi is ubiquitous, and occurs both within and between words. Some
other assimilations.

>prefixes, suffixes, infixes,
Plenty of suffices, a few prefices and no infices.

>suprafixation, dicontinuation, exclusion, total
>fusion, subtraction,
Don't know what these means.

>reduplication.
No

>  Is the conlang
>agglutinating, isolating or fusional?
Largely agglutinating.
>
>Nouns and such:  subclasses of nouns (common/proper,
>abstract, things that may not be expressed explicitly
>in affixes),
Not formally marked.

>presence of cases and how many and what
>kind,
Four cases; Nominative, Accusative, Dative and Genitive.

>kind of possession (alienable, inalienable, no
>distinction, etc.)
Not such distinction. NG syntax.

>presence of gender,
No grammatical gender, but gender-specific suffices are common on nouns.

>number,
Singular and plural. Pl ending _-(e)n_.

>articles,
Definite article _ez_.

>demostratives,
Stems _a_ "this" and _li_ "that", inflect as nouns.

>adjectives,
English-like adjectives that are easily used as nouns.

>quantatives.
This means?

>  Are
>comparatives expressed by affix, word order or both?
Prefixes. The presence of negative degrees of comparation is notable.

Eg: _taiks_ "big", _dataiks_ "bigger_, _tshetaiks_ "biggest", _metaiks_
"less big", _sistaiks_ "least big".

>Do pronouns express gender, number, declension?
Express number, and the 3rd sg and pl has optional gender-specific forms.
Also express case, naturally.

>Are
>there indefinite pronouns, possessed pronouns?
There indefinite pronouns, altho' there's no sharp boundary 'gainst nouns
meaning  "a thing", "a person" or similar. What are possessed pronouns?

>Others?
Interogative pronouns are found.

>  Are prepositions bound, unbound?
Tairezazh prepositions are things sentences cannot be be ended with.

>  How many
>prepositons (approximate).
Um, don't really know.  A dozen-odd are listed in my lexicon right now, but
there ought to be more.

>Presence of clitics.
No.

>Is
>derivational morphology mostly by compounding words or
>by affix or both?
Both.
>
>Verbs and such:
>Are person, number, object expressed with the verb?
No.

>Are there static verbs (to be)?
A few.

>Is the object
>incorporated into the person marker (making a
>phonetically different affix like in the Native
>American languages)?
No.

>Is transitivity marked for
>transitive, intransitive, bitransitive or other?
No.

>  Is
>the person inclusive, exclusive, no distiction?
No inclusive~exclusive distinction.

>  Kind
>of gender.
Again, no grammatical gender.

>  Are past, present, future expressed?
Yep, by suffices.

>Recent, remote?
No.

>  Is mode express, what kind?
There's a bunch of "modal adverbs", that allows you to express some
eight-ish modes (including the unmarked indicative).

>  Is voice
>expressed?  What kind?
No passive or middle voice.

>  Manner?
Means?

>  Aspect?
No aspect marking.

>Please list
>what kinds of manner and aspect the conlang expresses
>in its verbs.  Presence of adverbs,
Plenty of 'em.

>pro-drop.
No.

>  Can
>nouns, adjectives, adverbs be changed to verbs and
>vice versa?
Yes, but this usually involves affixation.

>Presence of adjective, adverbial clauses and relative
>pronouns.
Yep.
>
>Sentences:
>Does the conlang have an ergative or accusative
>system?
Accusative.

>Word order and is it free or strict?
Pretty free.

>Are
>adjectives, adverbs and prepositions before or after
>the modified word?
Adjecitves and adverbs behind, adpositions before.

>  Is the word order changed in a
>question?
Not mandatorily, but the thing asked about is often fronted. Or placed last
with alot of stress on it.

>  How many (approximately) conjugations are
>there?
One, plus assorted weirdities. Or two,  if you count the so-called i-verbs
as a conjugation. Hm, hasn't really thought of that.

>Other:
>What is the number base for the numeral system (10?
>12?)?
10.

>Presence of idioms, irregular forms of nouns
>and verbs.
Yep.

>Is the language syntax very predictable,
>or are there many exceptions?
I'm not entirely sure what you mean. Syntax is pretty free in that subject,
objects and verb may come in different orders without changing meaning , but
there are few words/constructions that break the rules that are.

>How much literature has
>been produced and what kind (I'm not talking about
>translations, but stuff you wrote yourself).
Little.

>  Is there
>a history and dictionary of the conlang?
Yes and yes. The dictionary is Tairzazh-Swedish, and would probably be hard
to use for anyone but myself, tho'.

>Script
>invented?
Yep, but I revision it now and then; it's not found a stable form yet.

>  Other conlangs produced by the creator of
>this one.
Kalini Sapak, Yargish, and a variety of sketchy ones.
>
>If you could summarize your conlang in a sentence,
>what would you write?
Since I can't, I won't!

But if I shall try not to be obnoxious, what about "A language that in many
ways is unexotic to Westerners, but with a few evil twists."?

>On my servey, I knew I couldn't possibly cover
>everything that conlangs will be, so I included a long
>notes section.  If you want to provide any other
>information about the conlang, just keep typing!
As mentioned, Tairezazh lacks a passive. English passives with an explicit
agent would be rendered by changing the syntax of the corresponding active
sentence. Ones without an explicit agent are handled by Tairezazh's
liberal-minded failure to require that transitive verbs have subjects; you'd
say what amounts to "him saw" for "he was seen".

Oh, and in defiance of linguistic universals, Tairezazh prepositions govern
the nominative.

The language allows some scary, albight less than Georgian, initial
clusters; eg [dZdad] "tall", [kstrOl] "son".


            Andreas

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