blog: reconlangmo 3 - morphosyntactic typology (#145)

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@@ -83,7 +83,7 @@ Particles will mostly fall into the following forms:
 Proper names _should_ end with consonants, but there is no hard requirement.
 
 L'ewa is a stressed language, with stress on the second-to-last (penultimate)
-syllable. For example, the word "[zh]asko" would be pronounced "[ZH]Asko".
+syllable. For example, the word "[z]asko" would be pronounced "[Z]Asko".
 
 Syllables end on stop consonants if one is present in a consonant cluster. Two
 stop consonants cannot follow eachother in a row. 
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+---
+title: "ReConLangMo 3: Morphosyntactic Typology"
+date: 2020-05-11
+series: reconlangmo
+tags:
+ - conlang
+ - lewa
+---
+
+# ReConLangMo 3: Morphosyntactic Typology
+
+In the last post of [this series][reconlangmoseries], we covered the sounds and
+word patterns of L'ewa. This time we are covering morphosyntactic typology, or
+how words and sentences are formed out of root words, details about sentences,
+word order and those kinds of patterns. I'll split each of these into their own
+headings so it's a bit easier to grok. This is a response to [this
+prompt][rclm3].
+
+[reconlangmoseries]: /blog/series/reconlangmo
+[rclm3]: thttps://www.reddit.com/r/conlangs/comments/ghvo48/reconlangmo_3_morphosyntactic_typology/
+
+## Word Order
+
+L'ewa is normally a Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) language like English. However,
+the word order of a sentence can be changed if it is important to specify some
+part of the sentence in particular.
+
+I haven't completely finalized the particles for this, but I'd like to use `ka` to
+denote the subject, `ke` to denote the verb and `ku` to denote the object. For
+example if the input sentence is something like:
+
+```
+/mi/ /mad.sa/ /lo/ /spa.lo/
+mi   madsa    lo   spalo
+ I   eat      an   apple
+```
+
+You could emphasize the eating with:
+
+```
+/kɛ/ /mad.sa/ /ka/ /mi/ /lo/ /spa.lo/
+[ke] madsa    ka   mi   lo   spalo
+V    eat      S    I    an   apple
+```
+
+(the `ke` is in square brackets here because it is technically not required, but
+it can make more sense to be explicit in some cases)
+
+or the apple with:
+
+```
+/ku/ /lo/ /spalo/ /kɛ/ /mad.sa/ /mi
+ku   lo   spalo   ke   madsa    mi
+O    an   apple   V    eat      I
+```
+
+L'ewa doesn't really have adjectives or adverbs in the normal indo-european
+sense, but it does have a way to analytically combine meanings together. For
+example if `qa'te` is the word for `is fast/quick/rapid in rate`, then saying
+you are quickly eating (or wolfing food down) would be something like:
+
+```
+/qaʔ.tɛ/          /mad.sa/
+qa'te             madsa
+is fast [kind of] eat
+```
+
+These are assumed to be metaphorical by default. It's not always clear what
+someone would mean by a fast kind of language (would they be referencing
+[Speedtalk][speedtalk]?)
+
+[speedtalk]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speedtalk
+
+L'ewa doesn't always require a subject or object if it can be figured out from
+context. You can just say "rain" instead of "it's raining". By default, the
+first word in a sentence without an article is the verb. The ka/ke/ku series
+needs to be used if the 
+
+## Morphological Typology
+
+L'ewa is a analytic language. Every single word has only one form and particles
+are used to modify the meaning or significance of words. There are only two word
+classes: content and particles. 
+
+### Alignment
+
+L'ewa is a nominative-accusative language. Other particles may be introduced in
+the future to help denote the relations that exist in other alignments, but I
+don't need them yet.
+
+### Word Classes
+
+As said before, L'ewa only has two word classes, content (or verbs) and
+particles to modify the significance or relations between content. There is also
+a hard limit of two arguments per verb, which should help avoid the problems
+that Lojban has with its inconsistent usage of the x3, x4 and x5 places.
+
+As the content words are all technically verbs, there is no real need for a
+copula. The ka/ke/ku series can also help to break out of other things that
+modify "noun-phrases" (when those things exist). There are also no nouns,
+adjectives or adverbs, because analytically combining words completely replaces
+the need for them.
+
+Nouns and verbs do not inflect for numbers. If numbers are needed they can be
+provided, otherwise the default is to assume "one or more".
+
+## Conscript
+
+I am still working on the finer details of the conscript for L'ewa, but here is
+a sneak preview of the letter forms I am playing with (this image below might
+not render properly in light mode):
+
+![The letters in the L'ewa
+conscript](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EXwr2rIWAAE95co?format=png&name=4096x4096)
+
+My inspirations for this script were [zbalermorna][zbalermorna], Hangul, Hanzi,
+Katakana, Greek, international computer symbols, traditional Japanese art and
+the [International Phonetic Alphabet][ipa].
+
+[zbalermorna]: https://mw.lojban.org/images/b/b3/ZLM4_Writeup_v2.pdf
+[ipa]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet
+
+This script is very decorative, and is primarily intended to be used in
+spellcraft and other artistic uses. It will probably show up in my art from time
+to time, and will definitely show up in any experimental video production that I
+work on in the future. I will go into more detail about this in the future, but
+here is my prototype. Please do let me know what you think about it.
+
+---
+
+As a side note, the words `madsa`, `spalo` and `qa'te` are now official L'ewa
+words, I guess. The entire vocabulary of the language can now be listed below:
+
+**Content Words**
+
+| L'ewa word | IPA        | English                     |
+| ---------- | ---        | -------                     |
+| `l'ewa`    | `/lʔ.ɛwa/` | is a language               |
+| `madsa`    | `/mad.sa/` | eats/is eating              |
+| `qa'te`    | `/qaʔ.tɛ/` | is fast/quick/rapid in rate |
+| `zasko`    | `/ʒa.sko/` | is a plant/is vegetation    |
+| `spalo`    | `/spa.lo/` | is an apple                 |
+
+**Particles**
+
+| L'ewa word | IPA  | English                   |
+| ---------- | ---  | -------                   |
+| lo         | /lo/ | a, an, indefinite article |
+| ka         | /ka/ | subject marker            |
+| ke         | /kɛ/ | verb marker               |
+| ku         | /ku/ | object marker             |
+| mi         | /mi/ | the current speaker       |