Conlang Random Thread

[bradrn]

The world is not earthlike. It's actually closer to Discworld, except smaller.

Sounds interesting! Do you have any longer description!

Indeed, this world is at early stage of agriculture. (That's why the culture is largely matriarchial).

What does matriarchy have to do with agriculture? In fact, I had the impression that agriculture was correlated with patriarchy, although I know almost nothing about the subject.

[Xwtek]

What does matriarchy have to do with agriculture? In fact, I had the impression that agriculture was correlated with patriarchy, although I know almost nothing about the subject.

I actually mean that the fact that the culture is matriarchial means that the farming is pretty recently discovered. (There is a gap between the adoption of agriculture and adoption of patriarchy. Old Chinese, for example, is matriarchial. It's not until Zhou(Late Shang?) dynasty that the society becomes patriarchial)

[masako]

You say /e/ is not written inside a word, so maybe it should be وبِنتَكلا.

But then wouldn't that be /ubintakla/ by the other rules? So it's an exception based on و, right?

Writing the second /a/ of aryemeshilan with an alif, اريمشِلان, seems strange and wrong, but maybe this involves a rule about subject agreement suffixes that you haven't written down.

Good catch. That's most definitely an error. It should be اريمشِلَن which means daqeshan should be دَقشَن.

Thank you. Sometimes having a second set of eyes can be invaluable.

[Kuchigakatai]

You say /e/ is not written inside a word, so maybe it should be وبِنتَكلا.

But then wouldn't that be /ubintakla/ by the other rules? So it's an exception based on و, right?

I don't know why you're asking me "..., right?", this is your conlang, it's all up to you.

I'm just saying you didn't write down this exception to the rule of not writing word-medial /e/. By the rules you wrote down, I would've expected ambiguity between webintakla and ubintakla in this case.

[masako]

I don't know why you're asking me "..., right?", this is your conlang, it's all up to you.

I'm passively seeking advice.

By the rules you wrote down, I would've expected ambiguity between webintakla and ubintakla in this case.

That's actually a good idea.

[Xwtek]

Any fusional conlang for reference? I failed to think of any other fusional conlang system. Sakha's morphology (the fusional part) is just a distance away from typical Indo-European verb conjugation (Person>Egophoricity(later, it also gets evidential), Number>Pluractional, with added layers of agglutinative affix).

[Arzena]

I'm happy with the demonstrative pronouns I've made in Kōro:

Zèmō pharimì Aikhuras-tós
/zɛ↘.mɔː pʰa.ɾi.mi↘ aj.kʰy.rɐs.tɔ↗s/
1sg.ACC able.to.see-3sg.IND Ardinorian-DEM
That Ardinorian can see me

Tiō errài āothoaizû
/tjɔː ɛɾ.ɾɐj↘ aːɔ̯̯.tʰɔ̯aj.zyː↘/
DEM.ACC PRT-direct-1sg
I directed those men

Ādezikholàs bēmō tu?
/aː.dɛ.zi.kʰɔlɐ↘s bɛː↗.mɔː ty/
PRT-against_say-2sg.IND women-DAT DEM.DAT
You contradicted these women?

Zēkhè-mu lōthu tuzi āzūkharionō?
/zɛː.kɛ↘.mu lɔː↗.tʰy ty.zi aː.zyː↗.kʰa.ɾjɔ.nɔː/
be-3sg NEG honor DEM.GEN secure
Is it not this one’s honor secured?

[Kuchigakatai]

Any fusional conlang for reference? I failed to think of any other fusional conlang system. Sakha's morphology (the fusional part) is just a distance away from typical Indo-European verb conjugation (Person>Egophoricity(later, it also gets evidential), Number>Pluractional, with added layers of agglutinative affix).

I don't know how much weirdness you're looking for here, the system of Sakha/Yakut seems very non-European just as you describe it. Egophoricity, evidentiality, pluractionality, what is all that to a European speaker?



I'm assuming you're asking about conjugation axes within a single TAM.

In various ancient Indo-European languages, voice was at least partially merged into the subject-agreement suffixes, e.g. Latin 2PL.ACTV -Vtis and 2PL.PASS -Vminī, Ancient Greek 3PL.ACTV -Vsin/Vsan/Vien and 3PL.PASS -Vntai/-Vnto.

Afro-Asiatic languages also include the gender of the subject, which in various sub-branches results in some pretty heavy fusion of person, number, gender and tense (contrast Standard Arabic -uu 'PAST.3PL.MASC', -na 'PAST.3PL.FEM' and -aa 'PAST.3DUAL.MASC').



In Inuktitut, subject agreement suffixes include interrogativity, i.e. whether the verb is in a statement (STMT) or a question (Q), including content questions.

Sinikpa?
sinik-p-a
sleep-Q-3SG
'Is s/he sleeping?'

Siniktuq.
sinik-t-uq
sleep-STMT-3SG
'S/he's sleeping.'

Nani nunaqaqpit?
nani nuna-qaq-p-it
where house-POSS-Q-2SG
'Where do you live?' ("Where do you have a house?")

Inuktitut verbs agree for both subject and object, and the agreement suffixes are pretty fused:

1SG intransitive, or with non-specific object, in a statement or question: -uŋa
1SG to specific 3SG in a statement: -ara
1SG to specific 3SG in a question: -igu
1SG intransitive, or with non-specific 3SG object, in a reason clause: -ama
1SG to specific 3SG in a reason clause: -akku

umik 'beard'
umilik 'bearded man' (morphologically umik-lik, /k/ drops before an l-initial suffix)

Umiliŋmik kapiyuŋa.
umilik-mik kapi-y-uŋa
bearded.man-ACC stabbed-STMT-1SG
'I stabbed a bearded man.'

Umiliŋmik kapivuŋa?
umilik-mik kapi-v-uŋa
bearded.man-ACC stabbed-Q-1SG
'Did I stab a bearded man?'

Linguoboy kapiyara.
linguoboy kapi-y-ara
Linguoboy stabbed-STMT-1SG>3SG
'I stabbed Linguoboy.'

Linguoboy kapivigu?
linguoboy kapi-v-igu
Linguoboy stabbed-Q-1SG>3SG
'Did I stab Linguoboy?'

Umiliŋmik kapigama...
umilik-mik kapi-g-ama
bearded.man-ACC stabbed-REASON-1SG
'Because I stabbed a bearded man, I...'

Linguoboy kapigakku...
linguoboy kapi-g-akku
Linguoboy stabbed-REASON-1SG>3SG
'Because I stabbed Linguoboy, I...'

[Xwtek]

Any fusional conlang for reference? I failed to think of any other fusional conlang system. Sakha's morphology (the fusional part) is just a distance away from typical Indo-European verb conjugation (Person>Egophoricity(later, it also gets evidential), Number>Pluractional, with added layers of agglutinative affix).

I don't know how much weirdness you're looking for here, the system of Sakha/Yakut seems very non-European just as you describe it. Egophoricity, evidentiality, pluractionality, what is all that to a European speaker?

Sakha my conlang, not Sakha the natlang.

[Ares Land]

Any fusional conlang for reference? I failed to think of any other fusional conlang system. Sakha's morphology (the fusional part) is just a distance away from typical Indo-European verb conjugation (Person>Egophoricity(later, it also gets evidential), Number>Pluractional, with added layers of agglutinative affix).

I can't think of such a conlang for the time being, but if you want an idea of how fusion could work outside IE, you can always have a look at Iroquoian languages. (It's been a while, but as I recall Seneca grammar reached an Old Irish level of painful)

[Kuchigakatai]

I don't know how much weirdness you're looking for here, the system of Sakha/Yakut seems very non-European just as you describe it. Egophoricity, evidentiality, pluractionality, what is all that to a European speaker?

Sakha my conlang, not Sakha the natlang.

I think it'd be a good idea to call your conlang something other than the name of a natlang that gets talked about a fair bit in linguistics. (Not that I know anything about Yakut anyway, as you can see.)

Okay, so you're looking for something pretty weird. One thing I just thought of is conjugating verbs for "appropriateness" (whether moral or logical: whether an action is stated in cold terms without judgement, or is altruistic and good, or selfish, or intentionally misleading, or intentionally criminal, or a logical consequence of what was said before, or random and unreasonable, or plainly stupid given the subject's known facts...).

Another would be to have extensive affixes that get used depending on societal role and rank, such as different affixes for the very religious depending on whether they're formal priests, informal healers or monks, different affixes for each rank in the military forces, etc.

And let's not forget the usual joke categories, such as different affixes depending on the time of the day (morning, afternoon, evening...), or the colour of your shirt, or what colour you have dyed your hair, or the 10 categories of people who understand binary numbers and those who don't...

[TurkeySloth]

I plan on posting my lang family's the full phonological but have a few questions relating to dialectical difference beforehand.

1. Is [ç~x] plausible when a dialect's parent language already has [ʝ, h]?
2. is [θ~ð] plausible when <th> was always [t.h] in a dialect's parent language? (nasals to voiced plosives between paleo/protolang and lang's most-recorded early ancestor)
3. Is [s.h~z.h → ʃ] plausible?

[Vijay]

I don't know how much weirdness you're looking for here, the system of Sakha/Yakut seems very non-European just as you describe it. Egophoricity, evidentiality, pluractionality, what is all that to a European speaker?

Sakha my conlang, not Sakha the natlang.

I think it'd be a good idea to call your conlang something other than the name of a natlang that gets talked about a fair bit in linguistics.

It does? I can't remember ever once seeing it mentioned in any linguistics work or conference talk.

[akam chinjir]

Sakha my conlang, not Sakha the natlang.

I think it'd be a good idea to call your conlang something other than the name of a natlang that gets talked about a fair bit in linguistics.

It does? I can't remember ever once seeing it mentioned in any linguistics work or conference talk.

Yeah, it's mentioned a fair bit (sometimes as Yakut).

[Salmoneus]

To be fair, Sakha made that mistake first, by clearly stealing its name from Saka, a language frequently discussed by linguists...

[Ælfwine]

I call one of my a-posteriori conlangs Crimean Gothic (not to be confused with the actual Crimean Gothic) because I have yet to settle on an endonym. Though I suppose there is less confusion for dead languages.

[masako]

[alynnidalar]

That's quite mesmerizing to watch! It's neat to see the common elements visually overlaid like that.

[Xwtek]

Animated png makes the picture harder to read

[jal]

Animated png makes the picture harder to read

There is no such thing as an an animated png.


JAL