This is an artlang, specifically an exolang, It uses clause-chaining, indexing instead of 3rd person pronouns, and an ASCII orthography. There's no phonology (in the strict sense).
Clause chains, of some kind, are found in a fair number of natlangs. The principle characteristic is in the placement of the subordinate clauses; these occur sequentially along with the coordinate clauses instead of being syntactically embedded. In addition, both subordinate and coordinate clauses are typically headed by dependent forms, using the independent forms in the main clause. There are 2 basic kinds of clause chains: one placing the main clause at the start of the sentence and the other placing it at the end. In Jul23/C6, only the latter kind is used.
Since subordinate clauses aren't embedded in their matrix clauses, another means must be used to associate the clauses and possibly to share arguments. For clauses which modify (or replace) the head word of a phrase, correlative clauses are used. The difference between these and relative clauses is that instead of the head word appearing in the matrix clause, it appears in the correlative clause, with a pronominal morpheme replacing it in the matrix clause. So that it's clear which phrase in the correlative clause is the head, some coreferential morpheme is added to it.
But what happens if there are multiple correlative clauses in a chain? Multiple pairs of coreferential morpheme and pronominal morpheme might be used. Unlike the natlang examples that I've run across, Jul23/C6 does this. Each pair has a distinct index, with the coreferential morpheme being the index assignment and the pronominal morpheme an index reference. Note that once the index has been assigned, additional references to the index can be used in the sentence.
A final comment is that index assignment isn't limited to correlative clauses, but may appear in other kinds of subordinate clauses, and even in coordinate clauses. A complement clause (which precedes its matrix) doesn't have to be coreferential, but if it is, the shared phrase appears in the complement clause and is assigned an index; this index then appears in the matrix clause. Adjunct clauses are like complement clauses in this respect.
| (1) | man=Def | dog=Def=3A | see-Prf | large-3A | Fin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| "The dog the man saw was large." | |||||
| (2) | woman=Def | giraffe=Def | see | boy=Def | want-CC | Fin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| "The boy wants the woman to see the giraffe." | ||||||
| (3) | boy=Def=3A | giraffe=Def | see | 3A-want-CC | Fin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| "The boy wants to see the giraffe." | |||||
| (4) | boy=Def | eat-Prf | Tmp | woman=Def | dish-P=Def | wash-Pst | Fin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| "After the boy ate, the woman washed the dishes." | |||||||
| (5) | woman=Def=3A | eat-Prf | Tmp | dish-P=Def | 3A-wash-Pst | Fin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| "After the woman ate, she washed the dishes." | ||||||
Examples (1), (3), and (5) each use an index 3A. Example (1) begins with a correlative clause. CC refers to the preceding complement clauses in (2) and (3). Tmp marks the clauses it terminates as being temporal adjuncts in (4) and (5).
page started: 2015.Jul.23 Thu
current date: 2015.Sep.04 Fri
content and form originated by qiihoskeh
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