Tuesday 16 November 2010

More on the incorporating romlang

Here are a few more ideas I've had on my incorporating Romance language.


  • Latin adjectives follow the noun. However, that won't be possible for objects that are incorporated into the verb, so in this language adjectives preceed the noun.

  • When a verb beginning with h incorporates its object, the h is lost.

  • If the accusative singular ends with a consonant, and the verb begins with a consonant other than h, an epenthetic syllabic nasal is inserted between the noun and the verb - it's a relic of the old accusative ending

  • Unstressed vowels are lost before a nasal.

  • When an accusative plural ending in s is incorporated by a word beginning with a voiceless stop, the the s+stop combination becomes a voiced stop

  • /k_w/, represented by <qu> becomes /w/ (I haven't decided what becomes of /g_w/ yet). The letter q represents the sound /w/ from now on.

  • Unstressed /i/ and /u/ become /j/ and /w/ unless followed by a vowel. /rj/ becomes /l/


  • When the old accusative ending was lost, a lot of words became homophones in the accusative, and where it was important to distinguish between them, other words shifted in meaning. For example filius (son) and filia (daughter) both become * filj in the accusative. Both words have been replaced, by puer and pqell, form puer (boy) and puella (girl) respectively. The meanings "boy" and "girl" are now conveyed by naut (from nauta, sailor), and hncill (from ancilla, female slave).


  • The copula hesse (sm, hes, hed, summus, hedis, sunt) does not incorporate either of its arguments, both of which appear in the accusative.


  • The ship on which the original colonist sailed was called Mercurius. Their village is named after it, Mercul

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