Conlang Random Thread

[bradrn]

Is [Cʔ] → {C', Ƈ}, depending on the previous consonant's voicing, plausible, or would it go the other way? I couldn't find anything like it on Index Diachronica.

I don’t think so, on the basis that having both ejectives and implosives at the same time is quite rare (although I don’t know why). I imagine that only one of these sound changes would happen at once. But you would be better off asking in the Sound Change Quickie Thread.

[bradrn]

How common is it to have a separation between ‘who’ and ‘what’ in interrogative words? Is it restricted to English and a couple of other languages, or is it much more common than that?

Edit: Another question about interrogatives: when the verb agrees with the person of its arguments, and one argument is an interrogative word, what happens? I’m guessing it would end up with the third person singular marker, but I’m not sure.

Edit2: And while I’m at it, what are some common sources of interrogative words? I know Bororo gets them from (vaguely related word)+(Q particle), for instance, but I’m sure there must be other sources.

(Sorry for asking so many questions at once — I’m happy to split this off into a separate thread if necessary.)

[Nortaneous]

Is [Cʔ] → {C', Ƈ}, depending on the previous consonant's voicing, plausible, or would it go the other way? I couldn't find anything like it on Index Diachronica.

Cʔ > Cʼ is attested for certain C, but the form you have here isn't

[Moose-tache]

How common is it to have a separation between ‘who’ and ‘what’ in interrogative words? Is it restricted to English and a couple of other languages, or is it much more common than that?

I'm wracking my brain trying to think of a language that doesn't make this distinction.

Edit: Another question about interrogatives: when the verb agrees with the person of its arguments, and one argument is an interrogative word, what happens? I’m guessing it would end up with the third person singular marker, but I’m not sure.[/quote]
That's what happens in every language with which I am familiar (including English).

Edit2: And while I’m at it, what are some common sources of interrogative words? I know Bororo gets them from (vaguely related word)+(Q particle), for instance, but I’m sure there must be other sources.[/quote]
The three main strategies seem to be: unanalyzable roots (especially popular for "who," "what," and "why"), content words with interrogative deirvation, and question words with some kind of inflection. This last could range from case ending ("why" is a relic of the Germanic instrumental) to derivational morphology (Japanese "doko" or English "whence") to compounding (I think kto in Russian is k- plus a demonstrative, but that could be my imagination).

[Darren]

How common is it to have a separation between ‘who’ and ‘what’ in interrogative words? Is it restricted to English and a couple of other languages, or is it much more common than that?

This paper says that out of a source of 24 languages (admittedly a small number, although from a wide range of families), 22 do make the distinction (the exceptions being Latvian and Lithuanian). There's a list of 16 extra languages at the back, which all make the distinction. It seems to be the norm even in languages which don't make the distinction elsewhere.

[bradrn]

Thanks Moose-tache and Darren!

[akam chinjir]

Here's another paper on interrogative words, Cysouw, Interrogative words. It agrees about the who/what distinction, even in languages that don't otherwise have an animacy distinction in their pronouns.

It seems to be very rare to innovate new question words other than by adding something to an existing question word (like "what time" for when).

[bradrn]

It seems to be very rare to innovate new question words other than by adding something to an existing question word (like "what time" for when).

Could this be why many languages don’t have a question word for ‘what time’ (your example) or ‘how many’? And do you have any idea why this is?

[akam chinjir]

I'm not sure. Apparently it's pretty common to have where but not when (as morphologically simple forms), I definitely don't know why that is.

[bradrn]

I'm not sure. Apparently it's pretty common to have where but not when (as morphologically simple forms), I definitely don't know why that is.

I actually didn’t know that many languages lacked when! Maybe it’s because before ~1000 years ago there wasn’t as much need to refer to times, and languages very rarely innovate new question words?

(Also, rereading my earlier comment, I can’t believe I didn’t remember that English has a word meaning ‘what time’; namely, ‘when’. I’m a native English speaker after all — I should know this stuff!)

[bradrn]

Another question (not interrogatives this time!): Apparently the passive is very rare in ergative-absolutive languages, which prefer the antipassive instead. In ergative languages which have no passive, how can a passive sentence like ‘The object was stolen’ be represented? I believe one option is zero-derivation (which is how English gets an antipassive-like construction), but are there any others?

[akam chinjir]

Another question (not interrogatives this time!): Apparently the passive is very rare in ergative-absolutive languages, which prefer the antipassive instead. In ergative languages which have no passive, how can a passive sentence like ‘The object was stolen’ be represented? I believe one option is zero-derivation (which is how English gets an antipassive-like construction), but are there any others?

One way is "someone stole the object," possibly with topicalisation of the object.

[TurkeySloth]

Is [Cʔ] → {C', Ƈ}, depending on the previous consonant's voicing, plausible, or would it go the other way? I couldn't find anything like it on Index Diachronica.

I don’t think so, on the basis that having both ejectives and implosives at the same time is quite rare (although I don’t know why). I imagine that only one of these sound changes would happen at once. But you would be better off asking in the Sound Change Quickie Thread.

I've been spending most of my time on the CBB, which has a single conlang Q&A topic. But, thanks.

[Kuchigakatai]

Another question (not interrogatives this time!): Apparently the passive is very rare in ergative-absolutive languages, which prefer the antipassive instead. In ergative languages which have no passive, how can a passive sentence like ‘The object was stolen’ be represented? I believe one option is zero-derivation (which is how English gets an antipassive-like construction), but are there any others?

One way is "someone stole the object," possibly with topicalisation of the object.

I realized recently in the Linguistic Miscellany thread that I don't really understand ergativity, but wouldn't this typically just be the bare active-voice verb with an absolutive argument?

someone.ERG steal.PAST.ACTIVE object.ABS the
'Someone stole the object.'

object.ABS the steal.PAST.ACTIVE
'The object was stolen.'

[akam chinjir]

I realized recently in the Linguistic Miscellany thread that I don't really understand ergativity, but wouldn't this typically just be the bare active-voice verb with an absolutive argument?

someone.ERG steal.PAST.ACTIVE object.ABS the
'Someone stole the object.'

object.ABS the steal.PAST.ACTIVE
'The object was stolen.'

That's still a passive, just zero-derived, I think.

(My answer was supposed to be independent of ergativity. There's some kind of association between passives and accusative morphosyntax and between antipassives and ergative morphosyntax, but it's a pretty vague association.)

[KathTheDragon]

I realized recently in the Linguistic Miscellany thread that I don't really understand ergativity, but wouldn't this typically just be the bare active-voice verb with an absolutive argument?

someone.ERG steal.PAST.ACTIVE object.ABS the
'Someone stole the object.'

object.ABS the steal.PAST.ACTIVE
'The object was stolen.'

That's still a passive, just zero-derived, I think.

(My answer was supposed to be independent of ergativity. There's some kind of association between passives and accusative morphosyntax and between antipassives and ergative morphosyntax, but it's a pretty vague association.)

It's not really the same as a passive since the case of the retained argument isn't changed. Unless you want to say that (in English) "I ate" is the antipassive of "I ate the food"?

[akam chinjir]

It's not really the same as a passive since the case of the retained argument isn't changed. Unless you want to say that (in English) "I ate" is the antipassive of "I ate the food"?

I don't think I've seen passivisation defined in terms of case that way. You don't think it's possible to have a passive in a language with ergative case-marking? Or without case-marking?

I don't have anything against describing "I ate" that way.

[Kuchigakatai]

It's not really the same as a passive since the case of the retained argument isn't changed. Unless you want to say that (in English) "I ate" is the antipassive of "I ate the food"?

To be fair, the case (in the broader morphosyntactic sense of "case") is slightly changed: the phrase "object.ABS ART" is moved to the typical subject position (before the verb)...

I don't have anything against describing "I ate" that way.

That's definitely unorthodox, but maybe it's sensible...

[KathTheDragon]

It's not really the same as a passive since the case of the retained argument isn't changed. Unless you want to say that (in English) "I ate" is the antipassive of "I ate the food"?

To be fair, the case (in the broader morphosyntactic sense of "case") is slightly changed: the phrase "object.ABS ART" is moved to the typical subject position (before the verb)...

Wouldn't this word order movement technically make this toy language tripartite? It is morphosyntactic alignment, after all...

[Xwtek]

Is [Cʔ] → {C', Ƈ}, depending on the previous consonant's voicing, plausible, or would it go the other way? I couldn't find anything like it on Index Diachronica.

For ejective part, it's clearly attested in Index Diachronica. (from Cayuga to Lower Cayuga). It also appears in Zuni. The implosive part is not present in Index Diachronica, but Makassarese has /ɓ ɗ/ as allophone of /b d/ after glottal stop. However, it appears from Index Diachronica that implosives usually come from plain voiced stops instead.

I have a question related to that. Is [ʔC] → C' realistic? My conlang does have those sound change and if it's not realistic, it may have an effect to TurkeySloth's question. (if my sound change is not realistic, then he can't use [ʔC] either and [Cʔ] → Ƈ may be unrealistic despite [ʔC] → Ƈ is)