Conlang Random Thread

[zompist]

I know very little about Romance or Germanic (except to the extent that I am a native English speaker), but don’t they both have a perfective/imperfective distinction in addition to a perfect?

Romance does— e.g. French il lisait 'he was reading' vs. il a lu 'he read'. This goes back to Latin.

The English progressive seems to go back to OE (this is apparently disputed), but not Germanic.

[bradrn]

I know very little about Romance or Germanic (except to the extent that I am a native English speaker), but don’t they both have a perfective/imperfective distinction in addition to a perfect?

Romance does— e.g. French il lisait 'he was reading' vs. il a lu 'he read'. This goes back to Latin.

The English progressive seems to go back to OE (this is apparently disputed), but not Germanic.

So Romance does indeed have a perfective/imperfective distinction. You mentioned earlier that ‘at some point [Romance] expressed tense with inflections, and the perfect with auxiliaries’; does this neat distinction between tense and aspect also apply to the perfective/imperfective distinction?

[Kuchigakatai]

Your original question could be kind of answered by Germanic and Romance (I know they're not agglutinative but bear with me). At some point they expressed tense with inflections, and the perfect with auxiliaries. Except, quite a lot of the individual languages reinterpreted the perfect as a past tense; some of them then innovated a new perfect...

But what about other aspects? I know very little about Romance or Germanic (except to the extent that I am a native English speaker), but don’t they both have a perfective/imperfective distinction in addition to a perfect? (Although I don’t know whether that distinction is also made with auxilliaries or if it is with inflections.)

So Romance does indeed have a perfective/imperfective distinction. You mentioned earlier that ‘at some point [Romance] expressed tense with inflections, and the perfect with auxiliaries’; does this neat distinction between tense and aspect also apply to the perfective/imperfective distinction?

You're thinking of the well-enforced three-way unmarked distinction that used to be (probably) universal in older Romance between the past imperfective (Old French liseit), the past perfective (OF list) and the perfect (OF at leüt), but this particular thing of the past tense in Romance is exceptional. This kind of thing hasn't existed much in Germanic, aside from English with its very unmarked "I was doing", "I did" and "I have done".*

Zompist was not talking about perfective vs. imperfective, but about perfect vs. non-perfect in Romance and Germanic. Contrasts like Old French lirai 'I will read', which could be imperfective or perfective, versus the future perfect in relation to another semantically future verb, namely aurai leüt 'I will have read', which carried future tense and perfect aspect. Ditto this on the Romance non-perfect non-past subjunctive (OF liset) vs. the perfect non-past subjunctive (OF aiet leüt), the Romance non-perfect past subjunctive (OF lesist) vs. perfect past subjunctive (OF eüst leüt), and so on.


* Germanic has historically had two "forms": the simple preterite ("I did", also meaning "I was doing") and the have-perfect ("I have done"), which in some languages have lost the aspectual distinction, effectively ending up with one form. In modern Swedish, both the simple preterite and the have-perfect are unmarked and a distinction between the two forms continues to be enforced. In Dutch and German, the have-perfect has largely replaced the simple preterite in speech except in the most common and essential near-grammatical verbs ("to be" and such), which has confined the old simple preterite to higher registers as a fancy synonym of the have-perfect in some of its uses. Imperfective aspect has historically been specified with adverbs if necessary (often, it is simply not marked at all). Modern Germanic has been gaining constructions to specify the imperfective (German am + infinite-noun, or beim + infinitive-noun, Dutch aan + infinitive, Dutch zitten + te-infinitive, Swedish sitta + och + finite verb...), but these tend to be pragmatically marked and confined to colloquial registers.

[akam chinjir]

Continuing here a thread from the Conlang fluency thread.

I have no idea how the author of Kelen reacts to this kind of comment though, but it has been made for a long time... I imagine she reacts negatively to it, and insists her no-verb analysis is correct. I personally don't see what the problem is in calling it a conlang with a tiny closed verbal category, where light verb constructions are used in abundance.

This is what she says on the Kēlen home page:

So, what would a verb-less language look like? Possibly the language would have a small number of words that do the functions of verbs without any of the semantic content. In other words, words that would tell how many arguments to expect and what the relationship is between these various arguments. This is what I have done with Kēlen— given it a closed class of "relationals" that perform the syntactic function of verbs.

(Source: An introduction to Kēlen.)

Seems to me the light-verb analysis is almost just a restatement.

It's curious how often the idea of making a verb-free language comes up. (To be honest, it was the idea that provoked my return to conlanging a couple of years back, after more than fifteen years of doing other things.) It comes up on u/conlangs fairly regularly (I think twice in the last week, though that's unusual).

Whereas the idea of a language without nouns seems less interesting somehow? Even though you'd think there's more you can do that's interesting with only verbs---prima facie, a language where instead of nouns you've got free relatives with, potentially, full clausal structure seems like it should be more fun than a language where every sentence has the structure of a Davidsonian restatement (there was a buttering, and it was of toast, and it was by a burglar...)

[bradrn]

I’m confused now. I think at this point it’s worth going back to my original question: are there any languages which morphologically distinguish between tense and aspect without fusing the two categories? The only really useful response I’ve had so far is that Choctaw can be analysed this way; there was also some discussion about Romance and Germanic, but as I mentioned, I’m a bit confused about whether these languages fuse tense and aspect or not. Could someone clarify this last point please?

[Kuchigakatai]

The only really useful response I’ve had so far is that Choctaw can be analysed this way; there was also some discussion about Romance and Germanic, but as I mentioned, I’m a bit confused about whether these languages fuse tense and aspect or not. Could someone clarify this last point please?

Older Romance fuses tense and aspect in the indicative-mood past tense (Spanish past imperfective leía, past perfective leyó), but otherwise separates tense and aspect. Germanic separates tense and aspect. However the important aspect distinction in Romance and Germanic that we're talking about is not perfective vs. imperfective, but perfect vs. non-perfect, which is something else.

The perfective/imperfective distinction has to do with bounding events (finishing events) in a relevant way, or not.
- I did the dishes vs. I was doing the dishes but then she called me. (In the former, the washing event has a bound, a relevant end. In the latter, it doesn't, it's just background information.)

The perfect / non-perfect distinction has to do with the relative timing between an action and another action related to it. A verb with perfect aspect occurs before the other verb.
- That day, by the time you came home, I had already prepared all the food for the guests. ("Had prepared" carries past tense and perfect aspect. The food preparation occurred before the listener came home.)
- Spanish Cuando llegues, verás que ya nos habremos ido antes. 'Once you arrive, you will see that we will have left beforehand.' (Habremos ido 'we will have left' carries future tense and perfect aspect. The speakers will be gone before the listener arrives to the place.)
- Spanish El que yo te haya ayudado entonces no significa que ahora te vaya a ayudar otra vez. 'The fact that I helped you back then doesn't mean I am going to help you again now.' (Haya ayudado 'that I helped you' carries non-past tense and perfect aspect, in the subjunctive mood. The speaker helped the listener before the present moment, now that they're discussing the meaning of that help.)

If you find the terminology confusing because "perfect" sounds a lot like "perfective", you're absolutely not alone.

[Moose-tache]

Well, if we're looking for tense and aspects as separate morphology, we'll run into questions like this: what aspect is "ran?" Strictly speaking, the only overt morphology it carries indicates it as a simple past tense. But we also know it cannot be progressive or perfect, which locates it in a very specific aspectual space as well. This is the sort of problem I think you're going to keep running into trying to isolate these two variables morphologically.

[bradrn]

The only really useful response I’ve had so far is that Choctaw can be analysed this way; there was also some discussion about Romance and Germanic, but as I mentioned, I’m a bit confused about whether these languages fuse tense and aspect or not. Could someone clarify this last point please?

Older Romance fuses tense and aspect in the indicative-mood past tense (Spanish past imperfective leía, past perfective leyó), but otherwise separates tense and aspect. Germanic separates tense and aspect. However the important aspect distinction in Romance and Germanic that we're talking about is not perfective vs. imperfective, but perfect vs. non-perfect, which is something else.

I think this is where I was getting confused: I hadn’t realised that the major aspect distinction in these families was perfect/non-perfect. However, I believe Romance also distinguishes perfective/imperfective, and since that is not marked separately from tense (especially in the past tense), I do not understand how Older Romance could be a valid answer to my query about whether there are any language which mark tense and aspect separately.

[…]

If you find the terminology confusing because "perfect" sounds a lot like "perfective", you're absolutely not alone.

I do understand all this already. I am very confident in my understanding of both tense and aspect; my only confusion is in how they are marked.

Well, if we're looking for tense and aspects as separate morphology, we'll run into questions like this: what aspect is "ran?" Strictly speaking, the only overt morphology it carries indicates it as a simple past tense. But we also know it cannot be progressive or perfect, which locates it in a very specific aspectual space as well. This is the sort of problem I think you're going to keep running into trying to isolate these two variables morphologically.

I don’t understand the problem here. ‘Ran’ has past tense, and perfective aspect (you note correctly that its aspect is not progressive or perfect). The other aspects of the past tense of ‘run’ in English are of course:

I ran — past tense, perfective aspect
I was running — past tense, progressive aspect
I used to run — past tense, habitual aspect
I had ran — past tense, perfect+perfective aspect (i.e. pluperfect tense/aspect)
I had been running — past tense, perfect+progressive aspect
?I had used to run — past tense, perfect+habitual aspect

[Moose-tache]

I don’t understand the problem here. ‘Ran’ has past tense, and perfective aspect (you note correctly that its aspect is not progressive or perfect).

Ah, but that's the rub, isn't it? The morphology here is a tense marker, but it also carries aspectual information because of a lack of morphological aspect marking. In other words, there is no way in English to use a tense marker to indicate only tense. English clearly has morphology that is historically connected specifically to tense, but it has been integrated into a tense-aspect complex simply because these things do not exist independently. Let's ask ourselves, "what would an English tense suffix that has nothing to do with aspect even look like?" Say we made up a new suffix, "-egh," which indicates present tense and nothing else. Well, if this suffix cannot co-occur with "-ing," then it may be impossible to use "-egh" with the present progressive, and so our present tense suffix is now a present non-progressive suffix. It didn't need to do anything related to aspect to become an aspectual suffix. In order for our tense-only morphology to remain untouched by aspect, it would need to be identical in all situations, with no interaction with the morphology that's handling aspect. That's a lot to ask. We would find it similarly difficult to find robust tense morphology that carries no information, overt or otherwise, about realis vs. irrealis. The concepts themselves overlap too much.

But this is conlanging, and you're asking because you want to make verbal morphology that separates the two. Historically, there are plenty of examples of aspect and tense being handled by separate morphology; it's only rare to see them not intertwine in a related tense-aspect complex. Some languages may resist this better than others. Perhaps your tense morphology is a very recent set derived from what were evidentiality or realis markers. To bring up Choctaw again, the irrealis marker in that language functions as a future tense marker. If this is a new change in your language, the marker may work identically on all verbs regardless of what aspect morphology they also carry. Or maybe aspect suffixes have been whittled away until a brand new set of adverbs take over the load; they are optional, and can be added to any verb regardless of its tense prefix.

[Qwynegold]

One thing is that this is supposed to be a split ergative language. It has an ergative case and a nominative-absolutive case. What on Earth is a nominative-absolutive case? I must've gotten it from Wikipedia somewhere, but I can't find that anymore. I remember being told once on ZBB that in a normal ergative language the argument of an intransitive verb will typically be a patient, experiencer, undergoer or somesuch. Is this correct? And if the argument instead is usually an agent, then that would make it a split ergative language?

I have never heard of a nominative-absolutive case, but I can guess that it corresponds to the nominative in nominative-accusative contexts, and an absolutive in ergative-absolutive contexts.

Yeah. I think I'll switch to just calling it the absolutive, because it makes things easier that way.

This means that your ‘ergative’ case corresponds to both the accusative case and the ergative case. This sounds pretty normal for a split ergative language, as both the nominative and the absolutive are usually unmarked, and both the accusative and the ergative are usually marked.

I have another conlang, which people have told me is split ergative, being morphologically ergative but semantically nominative-accusative. I think this conlang does the same thing. That's what I meant by the S argument being an agent.

(You also seem a bit confused about what ergativity actually is. In a nutshell: intransitive verbs have one argument, the experiencer, usually denoted as S. Transitive verbs have two arguments, the agent and the patient, usually denoted A and P respectively. Nominative-accusative languages, like English, group S and A in the nominative case, and P is in a separate accusative case. Ergative languages group S and P in the absolutive case, and A is in a separate ergative case. So a nominative-accusative language has ‘I-NOM laugh’ and ‘I-NOM see you-ACC’, whereas an ergative-absolutive language has ‘I-ABS laugh’ and ‘I-ERG see you-ABS’. Split-ergative languages have nominative-accusative alignment in some contexts, and ergative-absolutive alignment in others.)

Hmm, just by going by that definition, I can't see this language being nominative-accusative in any way.

The other thing I don't understand is that this language has an active voice, a passive voice and an "unmarked voice". >_<

Simply put, the unmarked voice is used in transitive sentences and the active voice in intransitive[...]

In intransitive sentences, any voice except for the unmarked voice can be used.

So the active voice is the default voice used on intransitive verbs, and the unmarked is the default voice used on transitive verbs? What could the purpose of this be? It seems like the active voice just marks a verb as being intransitive. So the unmarked voice is not used on intransitives, but can the active voice be used on transitives? There doesn't seem to be any example sentences where that occurs. I don't know if that's because it is indeed disallowed, or because I just hadn't thought of making such examples.

Is anyone able to analyze this conlang better than me? If the way the voices work right now is dumb, is it possible to take this active-unmarked distinction and make something sensible out of it?

This doesn’t make sense. If anything, I would expect intransitive verbs to have unmarked voice, and transitive verbs to have active voice (since intransitive verbs often don’t have a passive). And generally, the active voice is unmarked.

This language is a bit odd with regard to zero-marking. Here both the ergative and nominative-absolutive case are explicitly marked. (The one unmarked case is the vocative.) All the voices are explicitly marked, except for the one that is for some reason used on intransitives. (Furthermore, the habitual, which patterns like a tense in this language, is zero-marked while all the other tenses are explicitly marked.) Anyhow, I was trying to see what exactly those things I had labeled as unmarked voice and active voice do, thinking I can just change their labels to something else. But it seems like as it is now, they are only used for marking a verb as either transitive or intransitive, right?

[Vijay]

Well, if we're looking for tense and aspects as separate morphology, we'll run into questions like this: what aspect is "ran?" Strictly speaking, the only overt morphology it carries indicates it as a simple past tense. But we also know it cannot be progressive or perfect

Why not?

1. The bulls ran through the town all day long.
2. The bulls were running through the town all day long.
3. I never ran so much in my life.
4. I have never run so much in my life.

Is/are sentence(s) 1 and/or 3 ungrammatical for you?

[bradrn]

This means that your ‘ergative’ case corresponds to both the accusative case and the ergative case. This sounds pretty normal for a split ergative language, as both the nominative and the absolutive are usually unmarked, and both the accusative and the ergative are usually marked.

I have another conlang, which people have told me is split ergative, being morphologically ergative but semantically nominative-accusative. I think this conlang does the same thing. That's what I meant by the S argument being an agent.

What do you mean by ‘semantically nominative-accusative’? I’ve never heard of such a thing.

(You also seem a bit confused about what ergativity actually is. In a nutshell: intransitive verbs have one argument, the experiencer, usually denoted as S. Transitive verbs have two arguments, the agent and the patient, usually denoted A and P respectively. Nominative-accusative languages, like English, group S and A in the nominative case, and P is in a separate accusative case. Ergative languages group S and P in the absolutive case, and A is in a separate ergative case. So a nominative-accusative language has ‘I-NOM laugh’ and ‘I-NOM see you-ACC’, whereas an ergative-absolutive language has ‘I-ABS laugh’ and ‘I-ERG see you-ABS’. Split-ergative languages have nominative-accusative alignment in some contexts, and ergative-absolutive alignment in others.)

Hmm, just by going by that definition, I can't see this language being nominative-accusative in any way.

Yes, I think you’re right. You do mention in the grammar that ‘transitive sentences are ergative while intransitive sentences are nominative’, but this is exactly the same as the language just being ergative.

The other thing I don't understand is that this language has an active voice, a passive voice and an "unmarked voice". >_<



So the active voice is the default voice used on intransitive verbs, and the unmarked is the default voice used on transitive verbs? What could the purpose of this be? It seems like the active voice just marks a verb as being intransitive. So the unmarked voice is not used on intransitives, but can the active voice be used on transitives? There doesn't seem to be any example sentences where that occurs. I don't know if that's because it is indeed disallowed, or because I just hadn't thought of making such examples.

Is anyone able to analyze this conlang better than me? If the way the voices work right now is dumb, is it possible to take this active-unmarked distinction and make something sensible out of it?

This doesn’t make sense. If anything, I would expect intransitive verbs to have unmarked voice, and transitive verbs to have active voice (since intransitive verbs often don’t have a passive). And generally, the active voice is unmarked.

This language is a bit odd with regard to zero-marking. Here both the ergative and nominative-absolutive case are explicitly marked. (The one unmarked case is the vocative.) All the voices are explicitly marked, except for the one that is for some reason used on intransitives. (Furthermore, the habitual, which patterns like a tense in this language, is zero-marked while all the other tenses are explicitly marked.) Anyhow, I was trying to see what exactly those things I had labeled as unmarked voice and active voice do, thinking I can just change their labels to something else. But it seems like as it is now, they are only used for marking a verb as either transitive or intransitive, right?

Yes, it does sound like they’re marking transitivity.

Well, if we're looking for tense and aspects as separate morphology, we'll run into questions like this: what aspect is "ran?" Strictly speaking, the only overt morphology it carries indicates it as a simple past tense. But we also know it cannot be progressive or perfect

Why not?

1. The bulls ran through the town all day long.
2. The bulls were running through the town all day long.
3. I never ran so much in my life.
4. I have never run so much in my life.

Is/are sentence(s) 1 and/or 3 ungrammatical for you?

Both 1 and 3 are both perfective, and not progressive or perfect. The fact that there’s an explicit time reference is irrelevant. Here’s Comrie (1976):

It is sometimes claimed that perfective forms indicate situations of short duration, while imperfective forms indicate situations of long duration. It is easy to find examples from individual languages that contradict this assertion, perhaps the clearest being where both perfective and imperfective forms can be used in referring to the same length of time, without any necessary implication of the duration being short or long. Thus in Russian, I stood there for an hour can be translated either in the Imperfective, ja stojal tarn cas, or in at least the following two perfective forms : ja postojal tarn cas, ja prostojal tam cas. To the extent that any of these give any indication of whether the period of standing was long or short, it is the first Perfective version (with postojal) that suggests a (subjectively) short period, and the second Perfective version (with prostojal) that suggests a (subjectively) long period, while the Imperfective (stojal) is quite neutral.

[…]

From the definition of perfectivity … it follows that perfectivity involves lack of explicit reference to the internal temporal constituency of a situation, rather than explicitly implying the lack of such internal temporal constituency. Thus it is quite possible for perfective forms to be used for situations that are internally complex, such as those that last for a considerable period of time, or include a number of distinct internal phases, provided only that the whole of the situation is subsumed as a single whole. Clearly the internal structure of such situations cannot be referred to directly by the choice of a perfective form, since this is precisely what perfective forms cannot indicate, but such reference can be made explicitly by other means … As already noted, perfectivity is by no means incompatible with overt expression of the duration of a situation.

(emphasis mine)

[Vijay]

But 2 doesn't mean the same as 1, and 4 doesn't mean the same as 3?

[bradrn]

But 2 doesn't mean the same as 1, and 4 doesn't mean the same as 3?

I’ll copy the questions here for reference:

1. The bulls ran through the town all day long.
2. The bulls were running through the town all day long.
3. I never ran so much in my life.
4. I have never run so much in my life.

For me, the difference between (1) and (2) is quite simply the difference between perfective and imperfective: (1) focuses on the event as a whole, whereas (2) considers the event as having internal structure. As for (3) and (4), I think the main difference is that (4) is a progressive perfect, whereas (3) is a perfective. That is why (4) sounds more natural to me: it describes a past action (i.e. ‘before now, I never ran to this extent’) with present relevance, which is appropriate in this situation.

[2+3 Clusivity]

Just found Paha. It has a pretty interesting kitchen sink-y phonology: interesting combo of secondary articulations and voicing contrasts with a bonus helping of non-sibilant coronal fricatives.

I am assuming the "voiced aspirates" are just breathy voiced.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paha_lang ... Luo_2006-7

[bradrn]

Just found Paha. It has a pretty interesting kitchen sink-y phonology: interesting combo of secondary articulations and voicing contrasts with a bonus helping of non-sibilant coronal fricatives.

I am assuming the "voiced aspirates" are just breathy voiced.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paha_lang ... Luo_2006-7

You should post this in the If natlangs were conlangs thread. Or in the Rare/unusual natlang features thread.

[bradrn]

I think I finally managed to find an answer to my question about aspect! According to this Gĩkũyũ grammar, Gĩkũyũ marks tense with prefixes, but aspect with suffixes — a pretty much perfect answer to my question! However, the tense affixes and the aspect affixes affect each other: some tense affixes change their meanings when used with certain aspects, and possibly vice versa (although the grammar is a little bit vague on this point).

So to summarise my findings on aspect:

• It is by no means implausible to have separate affixes for tense and aspect, but it also seems common to fuse these two categories, even in otherwise non-fusional agglutinative languages. (I suppose I can get this effect in a conlang by making separate affixes in the protolanguage and then fusing them together with sound changes.)
• Even when tense and aspect affixes are not fused, they will always affect each other in some way. For instance:
  • Tense and aspect affixes could change meanings slightly in certain combinations (e.g. in Gĩkũyũ, the tense prefix a- is ‘immediate’ when used with aspect -∅, but ‘remote past’ otherwise)
  • Certain tense markers could only be used in combination with certain aspects (e.g. Dahl (1985) distinguishes a PASTi tense — a past tense restricted to the imperfective)
  • Some specific tense-aspect combinations may shift to encompass a wider range of meanings than normal (e.g. I seem to remember reading that the pluperfect can develop into a remote past tense, although I can’t find the source)

A final point that I want to make: just about every resource I could find about aspect (including books, and reference grammars of specific languages) is vague, inaccurate or wrong on at least one point. Comrie (1976) suffers from being restricted to European languages, Dahl (1985) is horribly vague on how languages combine tense and aspect affixes, Wikpedia has far too little information on this topic, and good luck finding a good-quality reference grammar of an agglutinative language with a complex aspect system (or indeed any sort of interesting aspect system at all). (You may be able to tell just how frustrated I am about this.) I’m very glad I’ve finally figured out how this works so I don’t have to refer back to such sources anymore!

(Oh, and if anyone is wondering how ⟨Gĩkũyũ⟩ is pronounced, like I was, it’s apparently /ɣekojo/. There’s some strange orthographies out there, although I will admit this is far from the worst…)

[Xwtek]

How do you justify fighting shirtless without armor, but having a metal weapon? My justification for my culture is, well, it's too early. Sakha doesn't have any technology for making any metal objects, and it has to be imported. Only the best and richest people have any metal weapon (mostly lance, rarely axe). The rest of them still uses stone weaponry. Also, they mostly hunt magical creatures, not each other.

[Kuchigakatai]

How do you justify fighting shirtless without armor, but having a metal weapon? My justification for my culture is, well, it's too early. Sakha doesn't have any technology for making any metal objects, and it has to be imported. Only the best and richest people have any metal weapon (mostly lance, rarely axe). The rest of them still uses stone weaponry. Also, they mostly hunt magical creatures, not each other.

I'd say that explaining it as the weapons being mostly imported is probably fine. It definitely reminds me of island tribes in the Pacific Ocean that have been found to use metal arrowheads even though they don't have metal excavations. It turns out they got their metal by recycling it from old Japanese shipwrecks.

[Moose-tache]

How do you justify fighting shirtless without armor, but having a metal weapon?

You mean like this?