When I decided to get rid of the verbs, the language was not an auxlang any more. I shifted the goals, from “this language should help people to communicate with each other” (auxlang) to “this language should have weird features, for fun and other of my future conlangs” (grammar toy).
Isn’t the difference between verbs and nouns one of the few true universals?
Yes, it is. And yet the conlang is still somewhat functional, albeit awkward to use; it does not work as an auxlang at all, but it’s still interesting IMO. Semantically speaking all utterances have an implicit “to have, to hold”, but it has null phonetic realisation, and the boundary between subject and object is given by the lack of preposition.
And the whole language is just three parts of speech: nouns, prepositions and encirclers. Encirclers are particles that always come in pairs, around a whole NP; they’re used for focus, topic, and disambiguation.
Easier shown with an example. I’ll place a “Ø” in the boundary between subject and object, just for easier parsing. No phonetic transcription because you can read it as in IPA.
[Sentence] garja Ø wejde modo trejes. wejde de ojno Ø berga de murto, wejde de dujo Ø akitano, wejde de treje Ø homo kon eri* dengowa ara kerta ire*, iro Ø nomen modo “Galli” de an* towo ke mego na*.
[Gloss] Gallia Ø division way three. division of one Ø Belgae of many, division of two Ø Aquitani, division of three Ø person with <topic> language as Celtae </topic>, <ref. to the topic /> Ø name way “Galli” of <disambiguation> you and I </disambiguation>.
[Sensible translation] Gallia is divided in three. The first division has many Belgae, the second division has Aquitani, the third division has people of Celtic language, which is named “Galli” by me and you.
Elaborate. Isn’t the difference between verbs and nouns one of the few true universals? Why wouldn’t an auxlang have it?
When I decided to get rid of the verbs, the language was not an auxlang any more. I shifted the goals, from “this language should help people to communicate with each other” (auxlang) to “this language should have weird features, for fun and other of my future conlangs” (grammar toy).
Yes, it is. And yet the conlang is still somewhat functional, albeit awkward to use; it does not work as an auxlang at all, but it’s still interesting IMO. Semantically speaking all utterances have an implicit “to have, to hold”, but it has null phonetic realisation, and the boundary between subject and object is given by the lack of preposition.
And the whole language is just three parts of speech: nouns, prepositions and encirclers. Encirclers are particles that always come in pairs, around a whole NP; they’re used for focus, topic, and disambiguation.
Easier shown with an example. I’ll place a “Ø” in the boundary between subject and object, just for easier parsing. No phonetic transcription because you can read it as in IPA.