Okay, so here's the question: I've been feeling kinda sorta quite excited about the prospect of Koa once again, since a few instances have come up recently where it would have been really helpful for Karen and me to have our own language. But, I have that ubiquitous problem of just not knowing where the hell to go from the phonology—I don't want Japanese, I don't want Loglan, I don't want English; I have this idea that what I really want is Hawaiian, but I don't think that's actually the case. Hawaiian just happens to do very well with a very limited phonology, which is exactly what I'm going for.
Well, here's what we've got so far:
Ten consonant phonemes, {p t k s c h m n l ?}
Five vowel phonemes, {a E i O u}
/S/ can be realised as [S] or [tS] or whatever. /?/ > Ø / V_V
Syllable structure is uniformly CV. All root words are CVCV according to the oldest plan; newer plans propose a stressed CV addition that either carries no semantic content but produces fifty additional forms for every original root, or that has some kind of defined meaning (derivational). The problem with the second option is that one then has to decide which words are "worthy" of plain roots, and which ones need a prefix...and then, also, running out of prefixes and words to attach them to. That is: if well is "water-hole" or something, what do you call an actual hole in the ground full of water, such as what a gazelle might drink out of?
And then I have the somewhat conflicting needs of making this something Karen can learn easily, something I find elegant and interesting, and something I can reasonable put forth as an IAL (since that *is* why I came up with this in the first place). I think *some* logic to the prefix system is probably a good idea; it would help intelligibility, though, if some "basic" words were also formed with prefixes for more diversity in word shape. A principle of compounding needs to be invented to cope with the "water hole" problem.
But! But! What if you want to add two prefixes? That would make it look like a noun, which could mean something entirely different. I guess this means that the prefix-adding is non-productive—only compounding is available as a means for new-word formation. Example (random words):
hole: kosi
great, big: pu
water, drink: li
oil: puli
well: líkosi
ravine: púkosi
reservoir/oil well: puli kosi
This is always the problem with oligosynthetic languages—the number of available "units" for a meaning and the number of words needing a particular "unit" are not equally distributed. I suppose I could do it like that Nahuatl example Dirk Elzinga posted, although that was more of a joke than anything else...but really this is silly. I want something entirely isolating; why have such involved derivation?
Word order: SVO
Topicalisation: As in Yoruba—thus:
I see the well: Ni táse líkosi
It is I who see the well: Ni ha táse líkosi
It is the well that I see: Líkosi ha ni táse
I like the way Yoruba uses serial verbs and compounds "have," so "to be beautiful" is "to have beauty," and "bring the book" is "grab the book come."
I see that it's far more practical not to do all that case stuff—and indeed, with rigidish word order, why use it anyway, especially in an IAL? So then.
As an aside, I'm extremely uncomfortable and my stomach hurts. I think I need to eat. Yes. Will be back.
