Zompist Bboard Again

Yes, I think this classification would work well. Then there are two types of predicates: ‘Intransitive’ predicates: when monovalent, A vs O marking reflects differences in agentivity; when divalent, has a causative interpretation with O being the original argument and A being the causer ‘Transitiv...

Um… I hate to say it, but this ain’t active-stative alignment. (Though it seems to be a common misconception amongst conlangers. zompist’s Old Skourene does the same thing, though he calls it ‘ergative’, which is at least reliably incorrect terminology.) If all predicates can take both agent and pa...

Thank you both for your comments! I’m curious to know if the following would also be an equally good translation of this sentence? The dangerous animal which bit the person ate the fish which was prepared by them (the person). It would! "Equally good" is a little tricky to gauge; I struggl...

:D :D Thanks Vardelm! So the classifiers basically tell us what the nouns are. Perhaps more precisely they tell us what the noun phrases are, even if you don't have words that are specifically classified as "nouns" or marked differently from other content words in traditional "nouny&q...

(I've added a List of Abbreviations to the first post in the thread; should have had that from the get go. Sorry for the oversight!)

§ 3: Evidence from demonstrative phrases Continuing with syntax, we can investigate the sorts of phrases that predicates can form—if predicates in a certain position, or with a certain feature, exhibit distinctive behavior with respect to how they combine with other kinds of words, we might be able...

§ 2: Evidence from constituent order and agent/patient marking In the absense of differentiating morphological structure, another thing we might consider is constituent order—whether particular positions within a phrase are privileged in some fashion, or serve distinct roles. If we can identify at ...

a) Kestu s lịdọq xụlqulhlịq. kest< u- s- lị >dọq xụlq< u- lh- lị >q The hunters are going west. ~ The hunters are about to be west of here soon. Precisely! (Although you might swap the patient marker on kestus lị dọq for an agent marker, kestu li sdọq . HW's morphosyntactic alignment is active-stat...

I like it so far! I think I need time to look and analyze more. Given my prior effort (Tibetan Dwarvish) and now Jin, I'm interested to see how well justify the argument. I remember Tibetan Dwarvish! Is it still coming along? It seems like the Dwarven in your scratchpad is something else—an ancesto...

§ 1: Evidence from morphology 1) Ịwhilhxk tí? ịwh< i- lh >xk tí Do you have a knife? (lit: 'is there a knife?') Hiding Waters content words (which my analysis calls "predicates") obligatorily inflect for mood and aspect; here, the "essential" aspect indicates an inherent, essent...

Yes, I know, another one of these ;) . I'll try to keep it interesting, I promise! Since around 2011, I've been trying to see if I can get Hiding Waters to lack a morphosyntactic noun/verb distinction. This is somewhat stronger than the claim that gets made about the Salishan family, which (as far a...

As for diachronics, that’s easy — plenty of languages (especially Papuan, but others also) have adjunct+verb constructions, where the the adjunct is drawn from a special word class which only occurs with verbs. Simply restrict each adjunct to occurring with only one or two verbs, add a rule that al...

Welcome back! Thank you! Great to see familiar faces about. Oh, wait a minute, I’ve just realised why your name seemed familiar — you’re the guy who made Hiding Waters ! I remember it was recommended in this very thread about a year ago, but I never got around to reading through the grammar. That's...

Also, I see this is your first post, so welcome to the board trailsend! Have some pickles and tea! Thank you! Oh, are they new? I thought I'd seen that name before. Looks like I hadn't. No, you likely have. I've been a member of various incarnations of the ZBB for a good while (I think I first regi...

It's a conlang; reality can be whatever I want it to be. Echoing bradrn, the thing you have full control over as a creator is the conlang's data ; you get to say what statements are grammatical, and what statements are ungrammatical, and in which contexts and for what purposes you might say a state...