The 'Is this attested?' Thread

[dɮ the phoneme]

I often find myself wondering if some particluar small feature of a conlang is attested in a natural language, but don't quite think the question warrants a whole thread. I figure others may have been in the same situation, so perhaps it's a idea good to have a dedicated thread for such questions.

To begin with, my own question: I have a conlang where some of the personal agreement morphemes are quite long, owing to fusion with earlier number markers. Several are three syllables, which is longer than most roots. It seems like an unstable situation, and they'd be likely to quickly reduce, but are there any natlangs with an abundence of particularly long agreement affixes?

[Vijay]

I'd say the 2PL/2nd person formal and 3PL suffixes in Standard Tamil (Centhamizh) are about three syllables long:

/ʋaru-kir-iːr-kaɭ/
come-PRES.PROG-2PL-PL
'y'all are coming' or 'you (formal) are coming'

which AFAIK is pronounced [ʋaruhiˈriːrɯhəɭ] when read aloud.

In the variety of Tamil spoken in Madurai at least, AFAICT this is reduced to:

[ʋaˈriːŋgə].

('To come' is [ʋara], but 'come!' when used informally is simply [ʋaː]).

[Risla]

Ojibwe has an abundance of excessively long agreement affixes.

[nebula wind phone]

Cherokee has some three-syllable agreement markers, and plenty of one- and two-syllable verb roots.

[malloc]

Putting aside lexical accent, what kind of effects can affixation have on the position of accent? For instance, can a heavily agglutinative language treat inflectional suffixes as extrametrical?

[Zaarin]

Putting aside lexical accent, what kind of effects can affixation have on the position of accent? For instance, can a heavily agglutinative language treat inflectional suffixes as extrametrical?

At that point aren't they better considered clitics rather than affixes?

[akam chinjir]

Turkish has some fun patterns. Stress normally goes on a root's final syllable. (One common sort of exception: place names have a separate stress regimen all their own.)

Some suffixes are stressable; when a stressable syllable is added to a word with final stress, the stress will move onto the suffix. With some polysyllabic suffixes, though, stress moves onto the suffix's first syllable, so it is no longer final.

Some suffixes are unstressable, and stress will stay on the stem's final syllable, if it was there to begin with. However, with some of these, when they are added to a word without final stress, stress is attracted to the syllable preceding the suffix; and if two or more are added, stress is always attracted to syllable that precedes all of them.

Some of the details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_p ... kish_words.

[bbbosborne]

Ojibwe has an abundance of excessively long agreement affixes.

some of those are made from 2-3 other morphemes tho, such as theme or inverse-markings, and plus the endings are polypersonal.

[Xwtek]

Is it attested to use conjugated verb to express genitive relationship.

In my conlang Asent'o, alienable possession uses a transitive adjective that is conjugated for its possessor and possessee. For example. (Note that the word itself may change)

My book.
ngang-g-i kottuka.
3SG>1SG-POSS-PART book.

Akitj'atja's book.
Akitj'atja a-k-i kottuka.
Akitj'atja 3SG>3SG.DIR-POSS-PART.

But:

My father.
ng-aba.
1SG.POSS-father

Of course the adjective -k- is defective, as it cannot be used in terminal form (This is ungrammatical *akusa (He is owned by someone)) and cannot have inverse marking. But it can also have aspect marking.

[Xwtek]

Also is there any language that diphthongize vowel at closed syllable before finally losing it. For example:

*takʷt-a > *tau?t-a > *taut'-a

[Frislander]

Is it attested to use conjugated verb to express genitive relationship.

In my conlang Asent'o, alienable possession uses a transitive adjective that is conjugated for its possessor and possessee. For example. (Note that the word itself may change)

My book.
ngang-g-i kottuka.
3SG>1SG-POSS-PART book.

Akitj'atja's book.
Akitj'atja a-k-i kottuka.
Akitj'atja 3SG>3SG.DIR-POSS-PART.

But:

My father.
ng-aba.
1SG.POSS-father

Of course the adjective -k- is defective, as it cannot be used in terminal form (This is ungrammatical *akusa (He is owned by someone)) and cannot have inverse marking. But it can also have aspect marking.

Yes, this is definitely attested - it's how possession is marked in Iroquoian, though there the alienable/inalienable distinction is coded as agent or patient. (I'd also suspect that Caddoan behaves like this, but I haven't been able to find enough resources on the family to say).

Also is there any language that diphthongize vowel at closed syllable before finally losing it. For example:

*takʷt-a > *tau?t-a > *taut'-a

I mean this looks like a standard feeding relationship, so I reckon there should be examples of it but I can't think of any off the top of my head.

[Xwtek]

Is it attested to use conjugated verb to express genitive relationship.

In my conlang Asent'o, alienable possession uses a transitive adjective that is conjugated for its possessor and possessee. For example. (Note that the word itself may change)

My book.
ngang-g-i kottuka.
3SG>1SG-POSS-PART book.

Akitj'atja's book.
Akitj'atja a-k-i kottuka.
Akitj'atja 3SG>3SG.DIR-POSS-PART.

But:

My father.
ng-aba.
1SG.POSS-father

Of course the adjective -k- is defective, as it cannot be used in terminal form (This is ungrammatical *akusa (He is owned by someone)) and cannot have inverse marking. But it can also have aspect marking.

Yes, this is definitely attested - it's how possession is marked in Iroquoian, though there the alienable/inalienable distinction is coded as agent or patient. (I'd also suspect that Caddoan behaves like this, but I haven't been able to find enough resources on the family to say).

Interesting. Can you describe it further?

Also is there any language that diphthongize vowel at closed syllable before finally losing it. For example:

*takʷt-a > *tau?t-a > *taut'-a

I mean this looks like a standard feeding relationship, so I reckon there should be examples of it but I can't think of any off the top of my head.

The /kʷ/ is easy one. But it also happens in this case *pekto > *peaʔto > pjatʼo > tsat'o. And *totsɬo > *toittɬo > taittɬo > tettɬo

[Pabappa]

Finnish has it, I think .... check the diachronics of Finnish diphthongs if you can. But it wasn't unconditional, as Finnish has plenty of clusters even today.

[Tropylium]

Hausa is probably a better example, IIRC it turns all coda *p *k into /u/. (Finnish only does this for *p *k before /n r l/.)

[Yalensky]

What languages use a tripartite ditransitive alignment, i.e. an alignment in which direct objects of monotransitive verbs, recipients of ditransitives, and themes of ditransitives all are marked in separate ways? I remember reading somewhere that it's very rare--rarer, I'd imagine anyways, than tripartite monotransitive alignments.

[Zaarin]

What languages use a tripartite ditransitive alignment, i.e. an alignment in which direct objects of monotransitive verbs, recipients of ditransitives, and themes of ditransitives all are marked in separate ways? I remember reading somewhere that it's very rare--rarer, I'd imagine anyways, than tripartite monotransitive alignments.

Nez Perce is the only tripartite language I know off the top of my head. I would guess the same is true of its cousin Sahaptian, but being less familiar with Sahaptian I wouldn't venture to say.

[dɮ the phoneme]

In Hhotakotí I have an active-stative alignment for the case marking, where the active case is used for transitive agents as well as "agent-like" arguments of intransitives, and the inactive case is used for transitive patients and "patient-like" arguments of intransitives. However, in terms of verb agreement, the alignment is basically nom-acc: verbs agree in person/number with their subject, which is the active argument for transitives and the active or inactive argument for intransitives. Is this realistic?

[Vijay]

Unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean, it sounds realistic enough to me. Sounds like split-S or something.

[dɮ the phoneme]

Unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean, it sounds realistic enough to me. Sounds like split-S or something.

It's sort of split-split-S: split-S in the case marking, accusative in the verbal agreement.

[Xwtek]

Unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean, it sounds realistic enough to me. Sounds like split-S or something.

It's sort of split-split-S: split-S in the case marking, accusative in the verbal agreement.

That basically how Georgian works.