Island Notes - suffixes and word order

[becka_sutton]

Island is an aggluinative language so Noun Classes and Cases and number have seperate affixes as do certain adjectives (there are suffixes for things like like large and small, light and dark, near and far and similar - I haven't decided on the entire list yet). Suffixes come in a particular order.

Noun-gender-(adjective)-(number)-case. (Brackets mean they are not always used).

So far I've only decided on the gender and case suffixes

Noun Class/Gender Suffixes

Animate (edible)	-pik
Animate (inedible)	-ap
Inanimate	-lu

Case Suffixes

Note that for now I've decided to drop the Dative for now. As I said previously the dative is usually the object of a transitive verb since it the noun to which something is given so it can merge with the absolutive quite nicely. There is also a Vocative case but this is shown as unmarked like Absolutive and also loses the gender marker unless you're being formal.

Absolutive	unmarked
Ergative	-sak
Genitive	-im

The absolutive is the basic form. So an edible crab is upapik and a crab from an inedible species is upaap. If for some reason you are talking to a crab it's just upa. If you were talking about the crab's shell. It would be (word for shell) upaim.

Word Order

Word order is Verb-Object-Subject like Tzotzil and Fijian in the real world.

Opinions?

Comments

[capriox]

A small thought on the sidenote about suffixes for things like near and far, etc. Near/far suffixes could be the same as the large/small suffixes, because of how things seem to get "bigger" in perspective, the closer you get to them. Just a nifty little half-penny for consideration.

Out of curiousity, why did you choose VOS word order?

[becka_sutton]

Well I didn't want to use SVO as it's too much like English, SOV is too much like Japanese and OVS is often just trying to be clever. Since this is a vaguely Pseudo-Polynesian I had a look at the Word Order page on Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_order and noticed that Hawaiian is VSO and Fijian is VOS and VOS makes a lot of sense for an ergative language.

And the idea about small/large, near/far is quite cool, thanks.