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2007-Sep-14, Friday 22:07![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qiihoskeh* Since last Friday, I've been working on MNCL5, the newest version of an old project. It's complicated and not stable yet, so I'll just give a bit of the history.
MNCL wasn't so complicated. It had strictly CV syllables and three types of morphemes:
roots or "initial" morphemes of the form C- or CVC-,
non-final suffixes or "medial" morphemes of the form -VC-, and
final suffixes or "final" morphemes of the form -V.
The finals determined how the word functioned syntactically:
-e made the word a verb,
-i made the word adverbial,
-a made the word a noun with absolutive case, and
-u made the word a noun with ergative case.
-o was used if the word wasn't the last word of a phrase; this could mean that the word was an adjective or a noun with the 3rd case.
Actually, "noun" and "adjective" here are probably misleading, since the noun wasn't necessarily a lexical noun, nor the adjective a lexical adjective (i.e. a static verb to which comparison could be applied.)
The basic system has been kept except that diphthongs and clusters were introduced at some point. MNCL5 allows some final consonants, but has dropped onset clusters. An addition which impacts the orthography is the introduction of short medial syllables. These are written as single consonants, with the preceding short vowel determined by its context.
The final consonants and diphthongs allow tense and mood to be marked by the finals and for number to be fused with case. The aspect and voice suffixes have become short medials instead of long ones. The syntax hasn't changed much; infinitives have been added, and the normal word order, which wasn't really fixed, will probably change.
MNCL wasn't so complicated. It had strictly CV syllables and three types of morphemes:
roots or "initial" morphemes of the form C- or CVC-,
non-final suffixes or "medial" morphemes of the form -VC-, and
final suffixes or "final" morphemes of the form -V.
The finals determined how the word functioned syntactically:
-e made the word a verb,
-i made the word adverbial,
-a made the word a noun with absolutive case, and
-u made the word a noun with ergative case.
-o was used if the word wasn't the last word of a phrase; this could mean that the word was an adjective or a noun with the 3rd case.
Actually, "noun" and "adjective" here are probably misleading, since the noun wasn't necessarily a lexical noun, nor the adjective a lexical adjective (i.e. a static verb to which comparison could be applied.)
The basic system has been kept except that diphthongs and clusters were introduced at some point. MNCL5 allows some final consonants, but has dropped onset clusters. An addition which impacts the orthography is the introduction of short medial syllables. These are written as single consonants, with the preceding short vowel determined by its context.
The final consonants and diphthongs allow tense and mood to be marked by the finals and for number to be fused with case. The aspect and voice suffixes have become short medials instead of long ones. The syntax hasn't changed much; infinitives have been added, and the normal word order, which wasn't really fixed, will probably change.
