2+3 ... Speedlanging

[2+3 Clusivity]

Been trying to get out of a creative rut, so I am doing a bit of speed langing. All the following material(s) is/are deeply un-spell checked.

Phonemics.

/t, k/
/s, h/ (/s/ is [sʰ])
/n, ɪ, ɻ, ʊ/
/ʉ/
/a/

Stress is phonemic because I feel like it. It creates probl.... fun! See below.


Phonotactics!!

${h, s({{N, {t, k}}ɪ, ɻ, ʊ})}{V({n, ɪ, ɻ, ʊ}), (V){n, ɪ, ɻ, ʊ}}({t, k})({h, s})


Allophones?!

Onsets in /s(C), t, k/ following a stressed open syllable are (pre)aspirated. Post-stress vocalic nuclei are reduced to [ǝ] or simply to /n, ɪ, ɻ, ʊ/ depending on the coda

When not pre-aspirated, /$sC/ → [#sCʰ]; /$s{n, C}{ɪ, ɻ, ʊ}/ → [$s{n, C}{ɪ, ɻ, ʊ}{ʱ,ʰ}]
Pre-aspirated is hardened to [Vh.s] or a few other options depending if it is [Vh.sCʰ]. Perhaps … to ... [V:.sCʰ] via initial hardening to [VC.sCʰ]. I dunno, big cluster simplify, probably. Semi-vowel post initials in a similar situation probably triggering something like Sievers's law—i.e., [VC.sCʰjV] -> [VC.sCʰi.jV]--which preserves the original hardening because … why not.


Verbs:

Verbs are potentially … polysynthetic-ish but a lot of the variation is, hopefully, splitting up lexically on one hand and yet lumping items on the other where English might not.

Transitivity. Transitivity classes allowed are: 0 (certain weather verbs), 0E (Many other weather verbs, E standing for donkey/expletive/”areal” S or semantically bleached obliques), 1 (i.e., intransitives), 1E, 1RR (RR being semantically bleached reflexive or reciprocal object), 2. As noted below, transitivity class are narrow/fixed, so there are few if any ambi-transitives or dative shift type verbs.

In general, there are a large assortment of weather verbs (0 (“rained”), 0E (“it was cold”), and 1 but specifically of the cognate subject or atmospheric classifier sub-types (“the hail hailed, the sky rained, etc.”)) as well as posture and motion verbs.

Posture verbs occur in both anthro- and zoo-morphic variants that are lexically differentiated (i.e., a “dog sat” versus a “human sat” are different verbs). Basically, there is a distinction between bi- and quadrupedal creatures. At a broader level, humans, trees, vertical inanimates fit into the first while squat or flat objects, animals, etc. fit into the latter. Somewhere in the middle are birds, fish, and babies who are considered vertical/bi-pedal at rest but horizontal/quadra-pedal in motion.

Motion verbs are generally not verb- or satellite-framed. The first major system involves roots specifying figure's in motion (especially body-parts) together with path affixes, manner adverbs, Again, there is differentiation between anthro- and zoo-morphic figures. The other major system involves roots specifying the ground which occur, typically, with affixes specifying the path (c.f., disembark, deplane). Directional affixes are rich and include meanings such as up/down hill/stream and in/out of water/cover/shelter, etc.

Changing valency/transitivity. All verbs are lexically assigned to a transitivity frame. Variation from the frame requires either voice markers:
a syntactic de-transitivizer with subtypes (agent backgrounding (“passive) and object backgrounding (“anti-passive”);
a syntactic/semantic de-transitivizer with subtypes (agent eliminating (“anti-causative”), object eliminating (“anti-applicative”), reflexive (direct and indirect), reciprocal (direct and indirect), and a few tendrils that go into pluractionality. See below);
a direct causative; and
an indirect causative.

Otherwise, valency is adjusted by (or in combination) with another derivational modification (S/O incorporation which especially affects body-parts, clothing/equipment/adornments, and more broadly certain noun classifiers)

Generally, transitivity increasing operations may apply to all verbs and transitivity decreasing operations may only apply to S(a) or more agentive verbs unless couple with other morphosyntax.


TAM. Tense … past or non-past. Morphological aspect: perfective vs. imperfective. See pluractionality below. Mood/Mode: indicative, imperative-hortative (with sub-types), permissive-potential (possible with dynamic and non-dynamic flavors … basically “may” plus “physically able to”, “knows how to,” “socially unconstrained from,” etc.), …. rather than have a remaining grab-bag mode/mood, everything else is periphrastic. BOOM!

Verbal number. Verbs very productively mark for or are suppletive for the number of A/S/O. This number system works on a minimal-augmented basis (i.e., “I chopped a tree” is minimal but
“we chopped a tree & I chopped trees” are augmented).

Affective/listener-focused marking – separate from the verbal number system and pronominal cross-referencing, there is a system that marks the speakers attitude towards the listener, the statement, and towards the number (minimal-augmented) of the listener(s).

[2+3 Clusivity]

(Pro-)nominal marking and cross-referencing

pronominal number & clusivity

The language's pronouns have a few differentiating features. First, in terms of "person" the language relies on +2 and +3 features. The +2 feature (stemming from synthesis with a word formerly meaning "all non-speaker speech participants") now forms portmanteau/atomic forms 1+2 (i.e., "inclusive we") and 2+2 (i.e., "exclusive you" i.e., all non-speaker speech participants but excluding third persons) which are parallel in form to more traditional singular/minimal 1, 2, and 3 person markers. The five atomic forms in turn may be augmented associatively by the +3 feature (i.e., X "et al" or "and company"). 2+2+(3) and 2(+3) tend to overlap over time in most forms where a deixis distinction is not marked -- see below.

In terms of number, all pronominal persons up through common nouns may take a "minimal" number--i.e., the minimal logical number. From there, items may be modified by plurals in three flavors: +3 associate augmentation or additive augmentation. Conversely, certain logically dual items (dyadic kin terms and certain paired nouns) may be modified by an "anti-dual" form that focuses on a single member of a pair.

1+2(+3) ----- 2+2(+3) ----- 1(+3) ----- 2(+3) ----- 3(+3) ----- kin/Names ----- Dyadic Kin ----- Paired nouns ----- common nouns
<---------------------------------------------------------minimal-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->
<----2 Assoc Aug----->........................................................................................................................................................
<-------------------------------3 Associatively Augmented-------------------->.........................................................................................
............................................................................................<-----------------Additively Augmented------------------------------------->
<------Anti-Dual------>..................................................................................<------------Anti-Dual------------->...............................

Demonstratives

Similar to English, the language's demonstrative adjectives and pronouns are isomorphic. They occur fused or prefixed with a large variety of features (near speaker, near listener, distant from all speech participant, far from the same; up (hill/river), down (hill/river), level with; out to water from, similar, in shore from; in cover/shelter from; similar; out of cover/shelter from). The deictic prefixes also occur on certain verb classes.


noun classifiers // "Generics" // "repeaters"

Beyond the basic demonstratives, the language also allows a number of "generics" to occur in the same slot as demonstratives as well asaffixed to verbs were pronominal cross-referencing may occur. These may be formed with roots similar to or derived from free standing roots (mostly verbs but occasionally nouns). Most of these have a dimensional classifying function (vertical, compact/squat, flat; container; extended one dimensional linear; extended flat area; extended three dimensional area; etc.)

Such generics may occur "auto-classifying" objects to make them definite. In general, generics may occur on their own as a reference to a prior established object in a discourse or simply as an indefinite.

Adding this up, translating a sentence like "a the tall object/person is there // the tall one there" would occur as: "far.{tall, stand}.CL-nom.sg (far-)stands-3.{tall,stand}"

pronominal/noun classifier spatial deixis

1+2(+3) ----- 2+2(+3) ----- 1(+3) ----- 2(+3) ----- 3(+3) ----- kin/Names ----- Dyadic Kin ----- Paired nouns ----- common nouns
<------------------------------Plural Spatial Deixis ------------------------------>....................................................................................
....................................................................<Sg.DXS>...............................................................................................................

Basic (pro)nominal case marking is borrowed from some of my earlier projects (if I recall, this lines up a bit with one of WeepingElf's ~austro langs too):
“nominative”/unmarked accusative
“dative”/perceiver/recipient/marked accusative (human & definite),
“instrumental”/accidental agent/oblique agent of passive,
“locative”/theme/experiencer/inherent possessor



Other stuff ….

[demonstrative classifiers]
[locative classifiers]

[pragmatic structure – especially topic fronting]
[corellative consructions and the relalginment or pronominal verbal cross-referencing]
[ …. things …..]

[Kuchigakatai]

Phonetics.

[phonemic inventory]

Phonemics!!

${h, s({{N, {t, k}}ɪ, ɻ, ʊ})}{V({n, ɪ, ɻ, ʊ}), (V){n, ɪ, ɻ, ʊ}}({t, k})({h, s})

I think you meant 'Phonemics' and 'Phonotactics' for those two headings, rather?

1+2(+3) ----- 2+2(+3) ----- 1(+3) ----- 2(+3) ----- 3(+3) ----- kin/Names ----- Dyadic Kin ----- Paired nouns ----- common nouns

I now see why you do call yourself "2+3 Clusivity".

Basic (pro)nominal case marking is borrowed from some of my earlier projects (if I recall, this lines up a bit with one of WeepingElf's ~austro langs too):
“nominative”/unmarked accusative
“dative”/perceiver/recipient/marked accusative (human & definite),
“instrumental”/accidental agent/oblique agent of passive,
“locative”/theme/experiencer/inherent possessor

I love that inventory of cases. Admittedly, it's a lot like the systems I use myself... They always have 2-4 cases, and I try to avoid having a straightforward Latin/Greek/Arabic-like nominative vs. accusative distinction by merging them or using animacy or such. For example, the new conlang I've been working on since August 13th has the inventory:
- "direct": subjects, inanimate dir. obj., vocative, comitative (also often used where English would use 'and NP', even with inanimates, but not an instrumental 'with X')
- "accusative": animate dir. obj., illative ('into X')
- "prepositional": used with most prepositions, topical (marks topic NPs)

Another one, from 2018, had:
- "direct": subjects, dir. obj., used with most adpositions
- "dative": indirect obj., genitive
- "instrumental": instrumental ('with [inanimate]', used a lot to form adverbials: speed-INST 'quickly', anger-INST 'angrily'), comitative ('with [animate]'), translative ('(make something) a thing', e.g. name him a leader, consider her the leader, paint it green)
- "locative": locative ('in/on X'), illative, topical, comparative ('than X')

You can imagine how happy I was when I learned that Punjabi has the system:
- "direct": nominative-accusative, absolutive
- "oblique": ergative, postpositions
- "ablative": 'from X'
- "locative-instrumental": fossilized locative expressions ('these days'), fossilized instrumental expressions ('with one's hands') (much more productive in older Punjabi, when it also marked the ergative)
- "vocative": animate vocative

[2+3 Clusivity]

I think you meant 'Phonemics' and 'Phonotactics' for those two headings, rather?

Yes -- thanks! Good catch. Editing.

You can imagine how happy I was when I learned that Punjabi has the system:
- "direct": nominative-accusative, absolutive
- "oblique": ergative, postpositions
- "ablative": 'from X'
- "locative-instrumental": in fossilized expressions, locative ('these days'), instrumental ('with one's hands') (much more productive in older Punjabi, when it also marked the ergative)
- "vocative": animate vocative

It's funny that you mention Punjabi in particular. I actually built this four case system several iterations ago off of Hindustani. If you get a chance, check out Colin Masica's survey on the Indo-Aryan languages. He goes over a lot of the differential subject marking behaviors (experiencers, etc.) that layers on top of the perfective ergative system and differential object marking system interestingly. Also of interest are some of the western new Indo-Aryan languages (Rajasthani dialects and Gujarati dialects) which have a split between nominative/ergative alignment in nominal versus verbal agreement. Verbal cross referencing is notably ergative only in narrower situations than when nominal marking is ergative.