Conlang Random Thread

[Vijay]

1st person dual inclusive, 1st person singular subject + 2nd person singular object, 1st person plural inclusive, 1st person subject + 2nd person object plural(?)

In other words, he's asking whether it's realistic for 'you and me' to change in meaning to 'I _____ you' and for 'you + me + zero or more other people' to change to 'I (we?) _____ you'.

In Indonesian, kita means 'you + me + zero or more people'. In Tagalog, however, kita means something else, e.g. mahal means 'love' and mahal kita means 'I love you'.

[bradrn]

1st person dual inclusive, 1st person singular subject + 2nd person singular object, 1st person plural inclusive, 1st person subject + 2nd person object plural(?)

In other words, he's asking whether it's realistic for 'you and me' to change in meaning to 'I _____ you' and for 'you + me + zero or more other people' to change to 'I (we?) _____ you'.

In Indonesian, kita means 'you + me + zero or more people'. In Tagalog, however, kita means something else, e.g. mahal means 'love' and mahal kita means 'I love you'.

Thanks Vijay!

[akam chinjir]

Could it be that in both cases you've got a merger of 1s and 2s pronouns? Offhand that seems more likely than either one turning into the other (but I don't know anything about the particular case).

[Xwtek]

In other words, he's asking whether it's realistic for 'you and me' to change in meaning to 'I _____ you' and for 'you + me + zero or more other people' to change to 'I (we?) _____ you'.

I actually mean I/we ____ you, with any possible plural marking except I ___ you(SG)

[Xwtek]

Is 1DL(U).INCL > 1SG.S.2SG.O and 1PL.INCL > 1.S.2.O.P(L (either/both subject and object are plural)) realistic, because I saw the Tagalog word for "I ... you" is "kita", which means 1PL.INCL in Indonesian.

What do these abbreviations mean?

Thanks, it turns out I misspelled some glossing abbreviation

[bradrn]

Thanks, it turns out I misspelled some glossing abbreviation

Not sure how useful you’ll find it, but I’ve always found the Leipzig Glossing Rules to be useful.

[Xwtek]

Is it realistic to have a suppletion for case. For example, the agentive case and the patientive case of word monster is ská̂t and ktããm, respectively.

Not every noun have suppletion.

[Vijay]

Yes. That happens in Archi and Lezgian.

[Kuchigakatai]

It may also interest you that because of a certain morphological oddity, Standard Arabic امرأة imra'a 'woman' usually undergoes suppletion in the construct state (i.e. when it's possessed in some sense), replaced by some other noun like زوجة zawja 'wife' (in the common context of "his woman"). Well, you can put the word in the construct state if you really want to, but this is normally avoided...

[Salmoneus]

Irish has nominative singular bean, 'woman', but genitive singular mná, 'of the woman'. [and nominative plural mná, and genitive plural ban, because... well...]

Diachronically, this isn't suppletion, because both 'bean' and 'mná' are simply inflected forms of the same root. However, due to PIE ablaut, and then obscuring soundchanges, it's effectively suppletive synchronically.

[Xwtek]

Is this realistic:
.
My language is pretty weird. The patientive case for animate noun is sometimes shorter than the agentive case.

Originally it's marked by suffix -i. It causes stress shift and umlaut, and most of the time it's deleted. (Except in some monosyllabic words, where it's root vowel that is deleted and since this language disallow vowelless words, the -i is preserved) Unstressed short vowel and stressed /i/ or /u/ is then deleted between two single consonants except word-finally before a consonant. This makes a word like:

khítes (SG.AGT) > kthéés (SG.PAT)

uncommon but not rare.

Regular words only mark patientive case by umlaut and floating high tone, though.

[bradrn]

Is this realistic:
.
My language is pretty weird. The objective case for animate noun is sometimes shorter than the agentive case.

Originally it's marked by suffix -i. It causes stress shift and umlaut, and most of the time it's deleted. (Except in some monosyllabic words, where it's root vowel that is deleted and since this language disallow vowelless words, the -i is preserved) Unstressed short vowel and stressed /i/ or /u/ is then deleted between two single consonants except word-finally before a consonant. This makes a word like:

khítes (SG.AGT) > kthéés (SG.PAT)

uncommon but not rare.

Regular words only mark patientive case by umlaut and floating high tone, though.

Sounds fine to me.

BTW, what’s an objective case? I’ve never heard of it.

[Xwtek]

Is this realistic:
.
My language is pretty weird. The objective case for animate noun is sometimes shorter than the agentive case.

Originally it's marked by suffix -i. It causes stress shift and umlaut, and most of the time it's deleted. (Except in some monosyllabic words, where it's root vowel that is deleted and since this language disallow vowelless words, the -i is preserved) Unstressed short vowel and stressed /i/ or /u/ is then deleted between two single consonants except word-finally before a consonant. This makes a word like:

khítes (SG.AGT) > kthéés (SG.PAT)

uncommon but not rare.

Regular words only mark patientive case by umlaut and floating high tone, though.

Sounds fine to me.

BTW, what’s an objective case? I’ve never heard of it.

Whoops, I mean Patientive case. Objective case is identical to Oblique case

[Travis B.]

BTW, what’s an objective case? I’ve never heard of it.

I think Akangka means patientive case by that.

[Kuchigakatai]

[...]

Modern Greek masculine nouns are longer in the nominative singular than the accusative singular. E.g. ψαράς psarás 'fisherman (nom.)' vs. ψαρά psará 'fisherman (acc.)'. (Most feminine nouns and all neuter nouns have the same length in both cases.)

This was very likely also the case in pre-Spanish (an early unattested form of Spanish), something observable through internal reconstruction and comparison to Latin, Old French, Old Occitan and Leonese. In a similar way to Greek, many pre-Spanish masculine nouns ended in -s in the nominative singular: *[ˈmaɾkos] 'Mark (nom.)' vs. *[ˈmaɾko] 'Mark (acc.)'.

BTW, what’s an objective case? I’ve never heard of it.

In English, the nominative and accusative cases of personal pronouns are very often called "subjective" and "objective" respectively. "Objective case" can refer to the (pro)nominal case that direct and indirect objects take.

[Xwtek]

Compound words are a bad idea. Exception: the terminology being coined are built from parts that have exactly one meaning and interpretation (chemical nomenclature). A better idea would be to categorize and sort semantic primitives into modules and create a short root for each one.

Found in a Reddit post. So apparently natlangs like English, German, and Mandarin are bad because they have compound words.

[bradrn]

Compound words are a bad idea. Exception: the terminology being coined are built from parts that have exactly one meaning and interpretation (chemical nomenclature). A better idea would be to categorize and sort semantic primitives into modules and create a short root for each one.

Found in a Reddit post. So apparently natlangs like English, German, and Mandarin are bad because they have compound words.

In general, I’m not sure I agree with your interpretation of that statement. Just because PeterPrincipleTwo thinks compound words are bad, that doesn’t necessarily mean he dislikes all natlangs which use them. I myself quite dislike noun classes and classifiers, but I still like languages such as Hebrew and Mandarin.

…but if I Google that post, I find it came from https://www.reddit.com/r/conlangs/comme ... i/eu9ojy3/, where it was cast as a blanket statement to guide an (apparently) new conlanger by saying that compound words should be avoided. And this really isn’t good advice: compounding is one of the most common methods of natlang word formation, and so should be used in conlangs as well. (I believe zompist’s Lexipedia has a good overview of this.) In that context, it’s at best unhelpful, and at worst it’s misleading. I see that at least you replied with a bit of a reality check, so thank you for that!

[Richard W]

Is this realistic:
.
My language is pretty weird. The patientive case for animate noun is sometimes shorter than the agentive case.

Sound changes can result in marked behaviour. For example, for Russian unpalatalised stems, the genitive plural of feminine and neuter nouns is one syllable shorter than the nominative singular.

In Icelandic, for strong masculine nouns, the nominative singular indefinite is usually one syllable longer than the accusative singular indefinite.

[jal]

Also, I don't see why inherently "accusative" nouns, i.e. nouns that'll often appear in the accusative (like manipulated objects) wouldn't be shorter than their nominative counterparts.


JAL

[bradrn]

Also, I don't see why inherently "accusative" nouns, i.e. nouns that'll often appear in the accusative (like manipulated objects) wouldn't be shorter than their nominative counterparts.


JAL

Because they’re usually more marked?