Conlang Random Thread

[Vijay]

The words for older siblings are typically used with anyone who's slightly older than you. They also have to be used in Malayalam with older people of a lower caste or social class. For example, I have to call all the people who helped take care of my grandmother 'older sister' and all her drivers 'older brother'. However, if they were of the same class as me or higher, I would instead have to call them 'auntie' and 'uncle', respectively (possibly even using the English terms auntie and uncle). The word for both 'auntie' and 'aunt' in Malayalam as far as I'm aware is കൊച്ചമ്മ [kɔˈt͡ʃəmma], literally 'small mother', except for some of my parents' brothers' (both of my parents' younger brothers'? My mom has a lot of siblings, so it's hard for me to keep track of who is older than who!) wives, who are അമ്മായി [əmˈmaːji]. The only uncles I have are my mom's brothers and sisters' husbands (maternal uncle = അമ്മാച്ചൻ [əmˈmaːt͡ʃɛn]), my dad's younger brother (ഉപ്പാപ്പൻ [uˈpaːpɛn]), and my dad's sisters' husbands (I have no idea what to call them in Malayalam).

[Knit Tie]

Would people say that having voiced consonants and nasals merge into just nasals before nasal vowels is a plausible thing? Especially combined with nasality spreading across liquids?

E.g. ɣɑ̃j̃ɑ̃ → ŋɑ̃j̃ɑ̃, the evolution of the English "lion."

[mae]

-

[masako]

Which sounds better:

kuhanketlo "one who does not cook"

kuhakonke "one who does not cook"

The verb, kuha "to prepare food" is really irrelevant to the question...which, of -nketlo or -konke (both meaning "one who does not VERB") sounds better? Now, there will be occasions that -nketlo needs to be used due to the preceding syllable containing /k/, but generally speaking, they're interchangeable.

[Vijay]

I like -nketlo more.

[Zaarin]

I also prefer -nketlo.

[bradrn]

Which sounds better:

kuhanketlo "one who does not cook"

kuhakonke "one who does not cook"

The verb, kuha "to prepare food" is really relevant to the question...which, of -nketlo or -konke (both meaning "one who does not VERB") sounds better? Now, there will be occasions that -nketlo needs to be used due to the preceding syllable containing /k/, but generally speaking, they're interchangeable.

I like -nketlo better as well. I think it’s because the CVCVnCVC sequence sounds more interesting than the CVCVCVn sequence, but I’m not entirely sure about this rationalisation. On the other hand, if you like -konke more, I would advise you to go with that.

[Kuchigakatai]

I'm not sure why aesthetically I also favour kuhanketlo over kuhakonke.

Funnily, if the last two vowels of the latter were switched around, kuhakenko, I'd find it much more pleasing...

[Nortaneous]

honk
bonk
conk

[zompist]

I might as well make it harder to decide by preferring kuhakonke.

-konke is simpler, especially for what's essentially just two morphemes (negative + agentive).

-nketlo is certainly interesting. I like suffixes beginning CC since they mess with syllabification. But two CC components makes it very heavy.

[masako]

I might as well make it harder to decide by preferring kuhakonke.

-konke is simpler, especially for what's essentially just two morphemes (negative + agentive).

-nketlo is certainly interesting. I like suffixes beginning CC since they mess with syllabification. But two CC components makes it very heavy.

Well, it's 4 to 1. But I take your point about two suffixes beginning CC.

The whole thing is a result of wanting to reduce sequential syllables from beginning with the same sound.

The verb nuku (to hate), without the optional -nke, would be nukuk when negated, and nukuko with the agentive. So, I use -nketlo to achieve the desired goal, so nukunketlo (one who does not hate) sounds better *to me* than nukukok.

[Qwynegold]

How realistic is it to have /t͡s d͡z/ but not /t͡ʃ d͡ʒ/ (or any other affricatives)?

I know this is old, but that about Greek?

[Qwynegold]

I like -nketlo more.

+5

[Qwynegold]

I've been thinking whether I should have participles or not in a conlang. What do other languages do if they lack participles?

[Xwtek]

I've been thinking whether I should have participles or not in a conlang. What do other languages do if they lack participles?

The finite form of the verb, together with relativization. Some participles are used as converb, so the translation is finite form of the verb with conjunction (null conjunction is possible). Example (with translation to Indonesian, that lacks participle):

orang yang berdiri di sana itu pamanku

person REL ber-stand LOC there that uncle-my

The man standing over there is my uncle

melihat rencananya, saya perlahan-lahan mengetahui letak kesalahannya

AV-see plan=DEF, I slowly AV-know-APL place NMZ-wrong-NMZ=DEF

Looking at the plans, I gradually came to see where the problem lay

dia menembak orang itu sampai mati

he AV-shoot person that until die

He shot the man, killing him.

secara garis besar, proyeknya berhasil

according.to line big, project=DEF BER-result

Broadly speaking, the project was successful.


(Participle is easy to delete. The gerund is much harder, but still possible)

On the other hand, I don't think you can form continuous by "to be +V-ing" anymore.

[Qwynegold]

Thanks, but what does AV and BER mean?

[Salmoneus]

Thanks, but what does AV and BER mean?

AV is presumably active voice, agent voice, or actor voice.

Ber- is an Indonesian prefix with many different meanings. At a guess, going by wikipedia, I'd say the first one forms a continuative (the person who is standing), while the last one is a derivative denominative with a sense of 'possessing [noun]' (so, 'the project had a result' or 'the project was effectual' or similar). But as I don't speak Indonesian, I await correction...

[bradrn]

How realistic is it to have /t͡s d͡z/ but not /t͡ʃ d͡ʒ/ (or any other affricatives)?

I know this is old, but that about Greek?

Thanks for the reply! And good point: Greek does seem to do this. But according to Wikipedia, there is debate over whether the affricatives are really phonemic.

I've been thinking whether I should have participles or not in a conlang. What do other languages do if they lack participles?

Tangential question: What exactly is a participle? And how common are they outside Indo-European? I’ve been trying for a while now to find an understandable definition of a participle, but I haven’t found anything useful so far…

[Salmoneus]

Tangential question: What exactly is a participle? And how common are they outside Indo-European? I’ve been trying for a while now to find an understandable definition of a participle, but I haven’t found anything useful so far…

As a layman, I would say a participle is an inflectional form of a verb, which patterns syntactically at least partially like an adjective. It's effectively a way to embed what would otherwise be a relative clause into the main clause directly. In European languages they're further distinguished by not taking person marking as other verb forms do, although I don't know what a linguist would do if they encountered something otherwise exactly like a participle that also happened to have some minimal person marking on it.

[Pabappa]

Maybe itd just be called a verb. Some Slavic past tense verbs evolved from participles. It may be that once a language evolves person-marked participles, they tend to integrate them into the normal verb system and may then lose some other category of verb that becomes redundant, but possibly there was a middle stage in which the inherited past-tense verbs and the new past tense verbs existed side by side, with each type being used in a specific context.