Interesting features thread
Interesting features thread
Anthologica Universe Atlas / Forums / Department of Creativity / Interesting features thread / Interesting features thread

? Nortaneous ? ?????
posts: 467
, Marquis message
Because this.

Having just a few interesting quirks specified pretty much immediately translates into memorability. Consider one of our more Nortorious members. Most people's conlangs, when put into one sentence, would return something like "It has 25 consonants, ten vowels, is SVO and isolating." With this person, it is "it fucking inflects nouns for the TAM of the dominating verb @#!%!". The same goes for any good conlanger.

Amqoli inflects nouns for the aspect of the dominating verb:

Bgul tham tuqari.
man soup 3SM.TOP-eat
The man is eating soup.

Ebgil tham tuqari.
IPFV-man soup 3SM.TOP-eat
The man eats soup.

Duhai does something similar — verb tense markers take the place of case markers: (note that 'tense' doesn't exist in Duhai in the sense that it exists in English, but there are still temporal markers that can be called tense — more on this later, once I find the paper where I got the idea)

Da2 ha2 go4i6 ke3fat4.
1SG ABS barbarian punch.S.TEL
I punched the barbarian.

Da2 se6 go4i6 ke3fat4 ni3 dy6 si2tv4.
1SG PST.OBJ barbarian punch SR 3SG fall.S.TEL
After I punched the barbarian, he fell down.

Da2 go4i6 ge3 ke3fat4 ha2 dy6 si6tv4.
1SG barbarian GEN punch OBJ 3SG CAUS~fall.S.TEL
I punched the barbarian to the ground.

Da2 go4i6 ge3 ke3fat4 se6 dy6 si6tv4 ni3 da2 syt2tv2.
1SG barbarian GEN punch PST.OBJ 3SG fall.S.TEL SR 1SG walk_to_shore.D.TEL
I punched the barbarian to the ground and then started walking toward the shore.

(Duhai has accusative-aligned switch reference, but ergative-like case-like-thing marking: Da2 se6 syt2tv2. (Before X,) I started walking toward the shore. Ha2 doesn't show up in intransitive clauses, however.)