Conlang Random Thread

[Travis B.]

[ˈẽnə ˈɣah naˈkʰet̪ʰɔ ˈqʼor]
/ˈẽnə ˈɣah naˈkʰet̪ʰo ˈqʼor/
Éñna gjâh nàkéto q'ór.
éñna ghâh nà=kéto q'ór
1.S POSSIBILITY 1.S=write.IPFV also
I can write too.

[Travis B.]

I have thought up how transitive relative clauses work in Reháľa Kâp, which is essentially as participles agreeing with the relativized argument as an adjective and any other arguments (but not the relativized argument) with agreement clitics, with relative agreement clitics only being found for relativized oblique arguments and in archaic language (where relative verbs do not receive participle marking or agreement as adjectives either). Relativized agents versus relativized patients are distinguished based on nominal hierarchy and inverse marking.

As for intransitive relative clauses, they would simply be the simple use of participles as adjectives.

(It should be noted that participles are fully marked for tense, aspect, passivization, and antipassivization.)

[Travis B.]

I have also removed the vestiges of accusative alignment, by shifting the inherited 'subject' agreement markers to being 'core' (or which there can be more than one of on a given verb) and the inherited 'object' agreement (note that in many cases these are identical to the now-'core' markers) makers to being 'oblique' (and now, ditransitive verbs will be marked for two core and one oblique argument).

[Richard W]

If you are really convinced that the cause isn't a “primary argument”¹, then it's a quirky subject in the accusative⁵, and again just like the German examples, but with an extra oblique argument in the genitive.

¹ I wouldn't be so sure. The genitive without a possesseum feels quite like a core argument to me, but this is a vague feeling from my² understanding of Latin, and you get similar constructions with the cause as a prototypical subject in the nominative and agreeing with the verb in clauses like sī dīs placet³⁴

According to the dictionaries, taedet and piget sometimes have the person affected as the subject, so in the nominative if present, with personal agreement in the verb. I'm not convinced by the examples quoted, though. (The person could simply have been elided in those examples. Person in the nominative probably works for 'Late Latin' though.)

[Travis B.]

[ləˈt̪ʰẽ ˈjɐɲ baˈqʰoːɾɛ bəˈt̪ʰaʁ rɛˈhɐʎə ɛ̃d̪ˈjawrɔpʰ ɛˈʁoːjɛ]
/ləˈt̪ʰẽ ˈjəɲ baˈqʰoːre bəˈt̪ʰaʁ reˈhəʎə ẽd̪ˈjawropʰ eˈʁoːje/
Latéñ yáň bàqóore batâg reháľa eñdyâwrop egóoye.
latéñ yáň bà=qóor-e ba=tâg re-háľ-a eñd'yâwrop e-góo-ye
Latin STAT 3.S.M.INAN=see.STAT-PASS 3.S.M.INAN=be_like.STAT NMLZ-speak.PFV-CONST Indo-European PART-make.PFV-PASS
Latin seems like an Indo-European conlang.

[Travis B.]

[ˈẽnə ˈjɐɲ nəhɪˈkʰost ˈmatsʰjə ɛˈʃiːβjə ˈkʼarbjə]
/ˈẽnə ˈjəɲ nəhiˈkʰost ˈmatsʰjə eˈʃiːβjə ˈkʼarbjə/
Éñna yáň nahikóst mâtsya ešíivya k'ârbya.
éñna yáň na=hi=kóst mâts-ya e-šíiv-ya k'ârb-ya
1.S STAT 1.S=3.P.M.INAN=love.STAT thing-P.M PART-align.PFV-P.M weird-P.M
I love weird alignments.

[Travis B.]

[ˈmatsʰjə ɛˈʃiːβjə ˈkʼarbjə ˈjɐɲ nəhɪˈkʰost ˈẽnə]
/ˈmatsʰjə eˈʃiːβjə ˈkʼarbjə ˈjəɲ nəhiˈkʰost ˈẽnə/
Mâtsya ešíivya k'ârbya yáň nahikóst éñna.
mâts-ya e-šíiv-ya k'ârb-ya yáň na=hi=kóst éñna
thing-P.M PART-align.PFV-P.M weird-P.M STAT 1.S=3.P.M.INAN=love.STAT 1.S
Weird alignments are loved by me.

[jal]

I have thought up how transitive relative clauses work in Reháľa Kâp, which is essentially as participles agreeing with the relativized argument as an adjective and any other arguments (but not the relativized argument) with agreement clitics, with relative agreement clitics only being found for relativized oblique arguments and in archaic language (where relative verbs do not receive participle marking or agreement as adjectives either). Relativized agents versus relativized patients are distinguished based on nominal hierarchy and inverse marking.

As for intransitive relative clauses, they would simply be the simple use of participles as adjectives.

Ok, so something along the lines of:

I see the man that kicks the dog -> I see the dog kicking man
I see the man that walks -> I see the walking man

If so, how do you handle adverbs?

I see the man that kicked his dog yesterday -> I see the "yesterday dog kickinged" man?


JAL

[Travis B.]

I have thought up how transitive relative clauses work in Reháľa Kâp, which is essentially as participles agreeing with the relativized argument as an adjective and any other arguments (but not the relativized argument) with agreement clitics, with relative agreement clitics only being found for relativized oblique arguments and in archaic language (where relative verbs do not receive participle marking or agreement as adjectives either). Relativized agents versus relativized patients are distinguished based on nominal hierarchy and inverse marking.

As for intransitive relative clauses, they would simply be the simple use of participles as adjectives.

Ok, so something along the lines of:

I see the man that kicks the dog -> I see the dog kicking man
I see the man that walks -> I see the walking man

If so, how do you handle adverbs?

I see the man that kicked his dog yesterday -> I see the "yesterday dog kickinged" man?

Yes.

[Imralu]

I see the man that kicks the dog -> I see the dog kicking man
I see the man that walks -> I see the walking man

If so, how do you handle adverbs?

I see the man that kicked his dog yesterday -> I see the "yesterday dog kickinged" man?

Ich sehe den den Hund tretenden Mann.
Ich sehe den gehenden Mann.
Ich sehe den gestern seinen Hund getreten habenden Mann.

All of these are 'grammatical' but utterly unhinged in German. (The second one is OK.) In very formal written German, these long participle phrases do sometimes appear, but they're not natural in modern German and I think of them as a bizarre artform. They help me with Turkish relative/participle clauses.

It's basically the opposite of what I once did in a German assignment at uni. I wrote without inflecting a single adjective because rather than using them attributively, I used them all predicatively in relative clauses because I found relative clauses easier than attributive adjective endings. (Predicate adjectives don't take endings.) Instead of "ein großes Haus; das große Haus; im großen Haus", I wrote like "ein Haus, das groß ist; das Haus, das groß ist; im Haus, das groß ist," My teacher was like "I know what you're doing! Stop it!"

[jal]

Ich sehe den den Hund tretenden Mann.
Ich sehe den gehenden Mann.
Ich sehe den gestern seinen Hund getreten habenden Mann.

All of these are 'grammatical' but utterly unhinged in German. (The second one is OK.) In very formal written German, these long participle phrases do sometimes appear, but they're not natural in modern German and I think of them as a bizarre artform. They help me with Turkish relative/participle clauses.

In Dutch the same. "Ik zie de gisteren zijn hond geslagen hebbende man" would be considered very weird, though I would consider the passive-like "Ik zie de gisteren door die man geslagen hond" slightly more acceptable.

My teacher was like "I know what you're doing! Stop it!"

Lol :D.

Yes.

So how are these adverbs (like "yesterday") embedded in the adjectival phrase? How do you prevent it "leaking" to the main clause?


JAL

[Travis B.]

Yes.

So how are these adverbs (like "yesterday") embedded in the adjectival phrase? How do you prevent it "leaking" to the main clause?

Adverbs come directly after any clitics attached to the verb, or in this case, participle they qualify, which helps with disambiguation. A bigger question is how are relative clauses distinguished from coverbs in SVC's, which is done through verbs in relative clauses being marked as participles, unlike coverbs.

[Richard W]

Given what you say, it seems that Jal used 'P' for transitive object. In some sense, 'S' makes sense as an abbreviation for 'sole'.

And now I've just been served with a Youtube video on ergativity using SAP in tis labelling. The 'S' was expanded to 'single'.

[Travis B.]

I decided to eliminate a problem with Reháľa Kâp where stems were being de-voweled due to stress and syncope rules by making a new rule that vowels in monosyllabic stems could not be treated as 'least stressed' and thus would not be subject to potential syncope. This change fixed the word 'kill', lit. 'die.IMP-CAUS', in the Seven Kill Stele translation, which previously was àqtsád, with the stem being reduced to qts (with palatalization from the -ád suffix), and is now àqotsád.

[malloc]

I decided to eliminate a problem with Reháľa Kâp where stems were being de-voweled due to stress and syncope rules by making a new rule that vowels in monosyllabic stems could not be treated as 'least stressed' and thus would not be subject to potential syncope. This change fixed the word 'kill', lit. 'die.IMP-CAUS', in the Seven Kill Stele translation, which previously was àqtsád, with the stem being reduced to qts (with palatalization from the -ád suffix), and is now àqotsád.

You sure? Stems losing their vowels sounds like an interesting feature that adds texture and naturalistic irregularity to the morphology.

[Travis B.]

I decided to eliminate a problem with Reháľa Kâp where stems were being de-voweled due to stress and syncope rules by making a new rule that vowels in monosyllabic stems could not be treated as 'least stressed' and thus would not be subject to potential syncope. This change fixed the word 'kill', lit. 'die.IMP-CAUS', in the Seven Kill Stele translation, which previously was àqtsád, with the stem being reduced to qts (with palatalization from the -ád suffix), and is now àqotsád.

You sure? Stems losing their vowels sounds like an interesting feature that adds texture and naturalistic irregularity to the morphology.

The problem is that it effectively merges all cases where words differ only in their vowel and the vowel in the protolanguage happened to be short. It is not a problem with longer words (and indeed longer works still can lose vowels), but in monosyllables it effectively significantly reduces the number of consistently distinguished monosyllabic words.

[rotting bones]

https://snapshotsofthelabyrinth.photo.b ... -language/

I'm too depressed to keep working on this.

[þeprussianfrog]

While I can't really work on new lexicon for Fevornian (and am frankly frustrated about this), have some lil phrases.

Трожинꙓз тинит капꙓѕ плуди ашинꙓји.
[troʒinʲez tʲinʲit kapʲeð pludʲi aʃinʲeji]
Transgender man had caught a sandy-coloured flatfish.

Шилу калѳину, брынус пꙓꙉꙓюс.
[ʃilu kalθʲinu | brɨnus pʲedʒejus]
Sky is dark blue, crows are dark gray.

[Qwynegold]

Thanks everyone who replied!

While people have been good at explaining what a (past) imperfective is, the specific term ‘imperfect’¹ is a lot more confusing. It was originally used for a specific Latin tense that happened to mostly match a past imperfective, and then got borrowed across Europe for various past tense/aspect combinations, including cognate ones where the meaning had diverged², and so it is a mess with no clear meaning. Because of this is has fallen out of use except as a name for specific verb forms in languages that used it, and the clearer (im)perfective terminology was introduced.⁴

Ah, so basically this is a term that conlangers don't really need to use for their grammars, because one can use other, better terms instead? (Unless you're doing some althistory conlanging where it makes sense to use the same terms as the conlang's parent/sisterlangs.) Hmm, I think I will use the term just this once though, with the following definition:

It's used for past events that are not yet completed (e.g. the worker was digging a ditch), or past events that were not completed at a given point in time (e.g. I was writing when the doorbell rang).

The future tense is not distinguished from the past tense. For a future meaning you have to either have some kind of time reference (e.g. I will go to the market tomorrow) or use some kind of conditional (e.g. if it rains, the picnic will be cancelled). The imperfect will be the default aspect for the future.

[Lērisama]

Thanks everyone who replied!

While people have been good at explaining what a (past) imperfective is, the specific term ‘imperfect’¹ is a lot more confusing. It was originally used for a specific Latin tense that happened to mostly match a past imperfective, and then got borrowed across Europe for various past tense/aspect combinations, including cognate ones where the meaning had diverged², and so it is a mess with no clear meaning. Because of this is has fallen out of use except as a name for specific verb forms in languages that used it, and the clearer (im)perfective terminology was introduced.⁴

Ah, so basically this is a term that conlangers don't really need to use for their grammars, because one can use other, better terms instead? (Unless you're doing some althistory conlanging where it makes sense to use the same terms as the conlang's parent/sisterlangs.)

In short, yes, although noöne will care what you call [verbform x], as long as the name doesn't actively create confusion.