Getting started on my first conlang, here's an idea I had:
Instead of having explicit adjectives, adverbs, etc., modifiers will be
represented by simile to some property of some object.
So, for instance, to represent it in English instead of saying "The truck
is
red" you would say "The truck has the color of an apple."
Of course, the object that is being compared to would have to be familiar
to
both the speaker and the listener, but this need not be enforced in the
language; it's just a matter of the speaker choosing an appropriate simile
at
the time. So if one wants to describe something as round, he could say
"the
shape of the Sun" one time and "the shape of a wheel" the next; it doesn't
matter.
Practically, this is accomplished via a prefix I am calling the
"adjectival
prefix" (although it can also be used for adverbs). My plan for
eliminating
ambiguity is largely positional--a "pseudo-adjective" IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWS
the
noun it modifies and a "pseudo-adverb" immediately follows the noun, verb,
pseudo-adjective, or pseudo-adverb it follows. However, this runs into
problems when a single noun, verb, pseudo-adjective, or pseudo-adverb has
more than one modifier, and I'm not sure how to get around it.
Any suggestions on how to do this?
Also, are there any known real languages or conlangs that work like this
that
I could study for examples and ideas? Does this actually have a name?
--
Kurt M. Weber
<kmw@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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