akamchinjir wrote: ↑Mon Oct 15, 2018 11:44 am
Is the idea that these are or derive from compounds?
Yes, they are compounds.
akamchinjir wrote: ↑Mon Oct 15, 2018 11:44 am
Can the two uses ever come apart? On the one hand, suppose you had a word for a male relative that didn't include the element ta.
No such word exists. The family lexemes are actually gender-neutral...they only denote a 'male' or 'female' relative with the inclusion of either "-ta" or "-na".
akamchinjir wrote: ↑Mon Oct 15, 2018 11:44 am
On the other hand, could you ever use that glyph to write the syllable ta, without regard to meaning?
No, there is a corresponding syllable glyph for "ta".
akamchinjir wrote: ↑Mon Oct 15, 2018 11:44 am
(Or, for a subtler case, what if you used the wrong ya---ntaya spouse rather than tlaya marry---to write ntaueya cousin-in-law?)
One problem with the heavily agglutinative and incorporating grammar of my conlang is adverbial scope. Putting it simply, the language allows multiple suffixes on verbal stems, each corresponding to an independent verb in other languages. Yet adverbs modify the verb or clause in its entirety rather than individual components of the verb, however verb-like their semantics. Thus a sentence with the form "germs they-cease-being-killed using-antibiotics" could only mean "the germs become unkillable by using antibiotics" rather than "it is no longer the case that the germs die from antibiotics".
Mureta ikan topaasenni. Koomát terratomít juneeratu!
Shame on America | He/him
Nampapep wappenumpefa maetiuba. germ die-CESS-3p soap-INSTR-3p
Germs stop dying to soap. Note to self: make some SUPPLETIVE CESSATIVES!
This sentence is ambiguous ... the word for soap is marked with a 3rd person, which in isolation suggests the germs are acting of their own accord, but in the proper context, it could also indicate an animate agent from a previous sentence. (This might be a good way to use my grammaticalized obedience idea, but I wont do it yet.)
Another possible wording is: Nampapep wappenumpefa maetiomba. ......................soap-LOC-3p
Germs stop dying because of soap.
This more strongly implies the second reading, but that's probably a semantic issue since the structure is otherwise identical.
Another way is to either make "soap" the subject even though it's inanimate, or use an ad-hoc noun meaning "the one with soap" to make it truly animate:
Maetomba nampapwep wappempefa.
The one soaping stops killing germs.
I would think these two sentences are clear, and can only imply the first interpretation. Since it is a cessative, it implies that the soap was the one killing the germs, and therefore it cannot mean "the soap stops other things from killing germs". To specify the second reading, where the germs are absorbing the soap and acquiring immortality, it would need to be reworded to something like
Maetomba, nampapwepa wabbabap, muva. soap-3p, germ-ACC-3p kill-TR-3p-ACC, stop-3p.
The soapers stop the ones killing the germs.
In other words, it's an entirely different semantic structure, because the cessative can only be used when the agent performing the action and the agent stopping the action are the same entity. If you need to have two different agents, you need to use an unrelated verb that means "stop, halt, cease" rather than inflect the main verb.
I lost all the material on Kannow, but it would have a similar problem; you would probably have to use a construction like "antibiotics killed germs but now do not".
What's a good environment to stop vowel loss, especially in a language that doesn't utilize stress or vowel length (currently)?
Would it be ok to just say vowel loss only occurs in words with 2 or more syllables?
There are words in the proto language that only have the vowels affected by the vowel loss, and I'd like to keep them from becoming only consonants.
Originally I meant Pseudo-Misihase to have a relatively modest lexicon, for con-sociolinguistic reasons. But I've come to realize I'm unwilling to dispense with so many fussy semantic distinctions. Like, "pale":
kaibama "pale, faded from exposure" (e.g. wood or fabric left outdoors)
vs. foŋkomo "pale, pallid from lack of exposure" (e.g. skin after a long winter)
And so on, and so on... so much for my nice simple mock-Tungusic bogolang!
Putting the problem another way, consider the hypothetical form she-him-work-CAUS today for "she made him work today". Does the temporal adverb "today" indicate when he worked or when she ordered him to work?
Mureta ikan topaasenni. Koomát terratomít juneeratu!
Shame on America | He/him
But in (my) English "she made him work today" is unambiguous: both the making and the working are today. Whereas "she ordered him to work today" could be ambiguous (though I'd say word order strongly favours an interpretation on which the work was today). The difference is because "make" causatives are direct but "order" causatives are not. And morphological causatives also tend to be direct, so I'd guess she-him-work-CAUS today wouldn't actually be ambiguous.
(There's an argument---Fodor?---that "kill" doesn't mean "cause to die" that turns on directly this issue: "cause" causatives are not direct, so "cause to die on Tuesday" is potentially ambiguous. But "make dead on Tuesday" is not ambiguous in that way, so this argument doesn't show that "kill" doesn't have an underlyingly causative semantic structure.)
ìtsanso, God In The Mountain, may our names inspire the deepest feelings of fear in urkos and all his ilk, for we have saved another man from his lies! I welcome back to the feast hall kal, who will never gamble again! May the eleven gods bless him! kårroť
I wonder, why there is a language that only marks its patient, instead of agent. (This is despite I speak Indonesian, that according to WALS, marks its patient). Although in Indonesian, it is actually a pronoun that gets reduced next to verb. (And actually Indonesian has a pronominal clitic that stands for subject)
I can't answer the why question, but as for the claim about Indonesian, you could follow up the citation and see what you think about what it says. That's tricky in this case because the citation is mistaken. In the edition I have of Sneddon's Indonesian: A Comprehensive Grammar, the relevant section is on pp. 165-167 (WALS has p. 72). It does look like it supports the claim about Indonesian, though. (Disclaimer: I don't know any Indonesian.)
I thought that before I moved on to carefully get right the transition from Old to Middle Wenthish, I'd get a few words of vocabulary sorted out, so that I can see how the words and paradigms develop. I did some nouns, but I've always had trouble with verbs in this situation because it's harder for me to, as it were, organise them by meaning (whereas I've done a set of nouns for geographical terms, a set for animals, etc).
Then I had the idea: I'd just take a couple of verbs for each inflectional paradigm. And where appropriate I'd also work out a verb from the same root (eg a causative), or a verb with a similar but different meaning.
...but this is a Germanic language, so 'couple of verbs for each paradigm' means that suddenly I've got a lexicon of nearly 250 verbs. Which, on the one hand, is good... but on the other hand, this is way more work than I ever intended to put into this transitional phase of the language...
Salmoneus wrote: ↑Fri Nov 02, 2018 7:55 pm
I thought that before I moved on to carefully get right the transition from Old to Middle Wenthish, I'd get a few words of vocabulary sorted out, so that I can see how the words and paradigms develop. I did some nouns, but I've always had trouble with verbs in this situation because it's harder for me to, as it were, organise them by meaning (whereas I've done a set of nouns for geographical terms, a set for animals, etc).
Then I had the idea: I'd just take a couple of verbs for each inflectional paradigm. And where appropriate I'd also work out a verb from the same root (eg a causative), or a verb with a similar but different meaning.
...but this is a Germanic language, so 'couple of verbs for each paradigm' means that suddenly I've got a lexicon of nearly 250 verbs. Which, on the one hand, is good... but on the other hand, this is way more work than I ever intended to put into this transitional phase of the language...
What does a couple mean? Unless you take 10 verbs of each paradigm, there is no way you will get even close 250 verbs. (This is assuming you have 25 verb paradigm)
malloc wrote: ↑Fri Oct 26, 2018 12:18 pm
Putting the problem another way, consider the hypothetical form she-him-work-CAUS today for "she made him work today". Does the temporal adverb "today" indicate when he worked or when she ordered him to work?
You seem to like to work in glosses... can you stick something on the word "today" to make it clear whether it's the man or the woman who's "todaying"? With my conlangs this would also be ambiguous, but I'm thinking of adopting grammaticalized obedience, which would solve the problem by marking the word for "today" with the obedient conjugation if it's the man doing it and the normal one if it's the woman. However, there would probably be a prosodic difference between the two sentences that might make it work even without a special verb conjugation. If I go with the obedience idea, I could write
Wappwafel šažiel. work-CAUS.3p-ACC-3p.PAST today-3p.PAST
Today she made him work.
Wappwafel, šažiafel. work-CAUS.3p-ACC-3p.PAST today-OBED-3p.PAST
She made him work; he did it today.
The obedience morpheme disambiguates between the woman giving the command and the man obeying it. However, it need not always be used in such a literal fashion ... i think it would serve well as a means to disambiguate between any two such subjects, similar to the proximate/obviative distinction used in some languages.
There was once a king named UN-Payam who sat at the right hand of YISUN’s throne and ruled a palace of burnished gold and fire and dispensed justice in all things.
There was once a king named UN-Payam who sat at the right hand of YISUN’s throne and ruled a palace of burnished gold and fire and dispensed justice in all things.
If you ask me, your conlang needs improvement. Your writing system looks beautiful but impractical. I can't tell much by reading only gloss, but your grammar looks like every European language ever (Especially Sanskrit). (Or is it just me that like head-marking more than dependent-marking). I suggest you to write the pronunciation in IPA. (Please not X-SAMPA). Also please explain how your grammar works. Maybe you have a cliche morphology, but if your syntax is innovative, I may like it.
