What have you accomplished today?

[Qwynegold]

I'm still in bed, so I haven't accomplished anything yet. But the past few days I have finally decided how to express "because" and "therefore/so" in Omni-kan. I have also created a verb "lead" with 8 different senses listed; my personal record.

[Hollow1134]

Made some basic example sentences and I think I like where I'm at -- I finally have a lot of the basic structure, and infrastructure to make making words not take three months (along with a healthy dosage of chanting to myself "Don't let perfect be the enemy of good"). So here are those ...

koi ja anka-el ao keini
/kɔɪ ʒa aŋ'keˑl ao geɪ'ni/
1s NOM ink-INST 3s to.write
"I write with ink (habitually) / I'll write this with ink"

koi ja ne-l botxa nenli maru
/kɔɪ ʒa neˑl bo'tʃa ma'ru 'nen.li/
1s NOM 2s-DAT water drink-ø to.give
"I give you water to drink / I'll give you water to drink"

koi ja anka na botxa itaijou
/kɔɪ ʒa 'aŋ.ka na bo'txa i.taɪ'ʒoː/
1s NOM ink and water mix-PFV
"I mixed ink and water"

Still not entirely sure on the ordering of serial verbs -- or whether its normal outside of SAE for infinitives to stack up in causal chains (something to research before I keep going, though I think I'd like to allow it anyway) -- but for now I'm going with 'purpose + action + auxilliary' because that makes sense to me rn. Also I made three new words for these. Progress!

[bradrn]

koi ja anka-el ao keini
/kɔɪ ʒa aŋ'keˑl ao geɪ'ni/
1s NOM ink-INST 3s to.write
"I write with ink (habitually) / I'll write this with ink"

koi ja ne-l botxa nenli maru
/kɔɪ ʒa neˑl bo'tʃa ma'ru 'nen.li/
1s NOM 2s-DAT water drink-ø to.give
"I give you water to drink / I'll give you water to drink"

koi ja anka na botxa itaijou
/kɔɪ ʒa 'aŋ.ka na bo'txa i.taɪ'ʒoː/
1s NOM ink and water mix-PFV
"I mixed ink and water"

Looks good! One question: why does it look like the main verb in the first two sentences is in an infinitive form? (Also, you seem to have switched the last two words of the IPA transcription in the second sentence, though I assume that’s just a typo.)

Still not entirely sure on the ordering of serial verbs

I can’t see any serial verbs in your texts. Am I correct here, or are you using the term in a different way?

or whether its normal outside of SAE for infinitives to stack up in causal chains

I’m not sure what you mean by this. Could you elaborate please?

[Hollow1134]

(Also, you seem to have switched the last two words of the IPA transcription in the second sentence, though I assume that’s just a typo.)

Ah, yeah that was just a typo. The IPA was right though lol.

Still not entirely sure on the ordering of serial verbs

I can’t see any serial verbs in your texts. Am I correct here, or are you using the term in a different way?

or whether its normal outside of SAE for infinitives to stack up in causal chains

I’m not sure what you mean by this. Could you elaborate please?

I think I'm using the wrong terminology, all around. I need to actually figure out what I'm talking about here myself -- though I'm pretty sure I just ended up mentally extending some specific constructions in English to a broader thing without actually thinking about it. But I like the idea I had at the very least, as kind of a 'more context verb' ig? Like my 'maru nenli' lit. drink to give "to give (in order to) drink" -- but just by using word order and the root.

I like the idea I had though, at the very least -- I still need to do research.

One question: why does it look like the main verb in the first two sentences is in an infinitive form?

I want my verb forms to be pretty simple, so I decided to use an unmarked form for a broadly IMPV meaning -- here it's a habitual, or near future. Infinitives aren't terribly intuitive for me, I'm not super sure about their purpose is tbh (the never ending list of research).

My accomplishment for the day: reading another few sections of "Describing Morphosyntax" (this book is so dry that this genuinely feels like an accomplishment to me, no matter how interesting the material is).

[bradrn]

Still not entirely sure on the ordering of serial verbs

I can’t see any serial verbs in your texts. Am I correct here, or are you using the term in a different way?

or whether its normal outside of SAE for infinitives to stack up in causal chains

I’m not sure what you mean by this. Could you elaborate please?

I think I'm using the wrong terminology, all around. I need to actually figure out what I'm talking about here myself -- though I'm pretty sure I just ended up mentally extending some specific constructions in English to a broader thing without actually thinking about it. But I like the idea I had at the very least, as kind of a 'more context verb' ig? Like my 'maru nenli' lit. drink to give "to give (in order to) drink" -- but just by using word order and the root.

Formally speaking, an SVC is a construction in which two verbs are used in the same clause without any overt marker of dependency or coordination. (Though, as is usual for linguists, it’s rare to find two people who define it the same way.) For instance:

(Aikhenvald 2006)

n=babas

3SG=bite

welik

pig

n=mot

3=SF=die

do

REAL

It bit the pig dead (Taba)

fu

he

fase

letter

naebe

NEG

fi

sit

isoe

write

He did not sit and write a letter (Barai)

abó

gf.

lori

take

tudik

knife

ko’a

cut

paun

bread

Grandfather cut the bread with a knife (Tetun Dili)

Functionally speaking, what you need is a pretty standard purposive. The question is then: can purposive semantics be expressed using an SVC? In most languages, the use of an SVC implies that the sentence is considered to be in some way one event — e.g. Tetun Dili (above) has a minimal pair between the SVC ‘cut the bread with a knife’ and the biclausal ‘take a knife and cut the bread’. By that standard, it seems unlikely. Then again, SVCs very often have resultative semantics (e.g. the Taba example), so it’s not impossible.

Then there’s the question of whether your construction can be considered an SVC at all. Unfortunately, this isn’t something I can decide right now; I’d have to know more about your syntax to be sure.

Infinitives aren't terribly intuitive for me, I'm not super sure about their purpose is tbh (the never ending list of research).

Completely agreed! The term was originally used for a specific verbal form in Latin, and was then ridiculously overextended to vaguely similar constructions in other IE languages and even some non-IE languages too. For this reason, I prefer to avoid the term whenever possible. It’s just that you glossed some of your verbs as English infinitives (‘to.give’, ‘to.write’), so I assumed there were some parallels somewhere. If they aren’t similar to infinitives, you probably shouldn’t gloss them that way.

My accomplishment for the day: reading another few sections of "Describing Morphosyntax" (this book is so dry that this genuinely feels like an accomplishment to me, no matter how interesting the material is).

Describing Morphosyntax is an excellent book, but I could never read it cover-to-cover! I prefer to use it as a reference. (It has a good section on SVCs IIRC.)

[Ahzoh]

I have come up with a bunch of morphemes to derive words from nouns.

Noun-to-Noun:
The suffix -ān- is used to derive agent nouns froms other nouns:
erim "spear, nose" > erānum/errānum "spearman, scorpion, infantryman"
ḫuzum "horse" > ḫuzānum/ḫuzzānum "horseman, cavalryman" (note that ḫazāzum, also meaning horseman, is more commonly used instead)
zāzim "sword" > zāzānum "a warrior specifically trained in sword combat; swordsman"
waddim "shield" > waddānum "warden, guardian, protector"

The suffix -īn- is used to derive abstract nouns from other nouns with the rough meaning of "state of being X" or "quality of being X":
darim "father" > dirīnim/darrīnim "fatherhood, paternity"
naḫûm "holy one" > niḫînim/nāḫīnim "holiness"
rēbim "man, husband" > rēbīnim "manliness, testicles (euphemistic)"
lumbum "woman, wife" > lumbīnim "womanliness, womb (euphemistic)"

Noun-to-Adjective:
The suffix -ūy- is used to derive adjectives from nouns, with the rough meaning of "made from X" or "pertaining to X":
zibum "tree" > zubūy-/zibbūy- "wooden, made from tree, pertaining to trees"
erim "nose" > urūy-/errūy- "nasal, made from nose, pertaining to the nose"
ḳūtum "ewe" > ḳūtūy- "woolen, made from sheep, pertaining to sheep"
śādum "mouth" > śādūy- "oral, made from mouth" > napraḫum śādūyum "word of mouth"
nēpim "night, nighttime" > nēpūy- "nocturnal"
ḫarmum "bone" > ḫarmūy- "boney, made from bone, pertaining to bones"
ilgum "fish" > ilgūy- "fishy, made from fish, pertaining to fish"
mazûm "sea" > muzûy-/māzūy- "made from sea, pertaining to the sea" > zibum muzûyum "kelp"
ezîm "boar" > uzûy-/ēzūy- "made from boar, pertaining to boars"
daṣṣum "ox" > daṣṣûy- "made from ox, pertaining to oxen"

Noun-to-Verb:
The pattern C₁aC₂C₂aC₃ is used to derive verbs from nouns with a causative-like meaning roughly equivalent to "make into X" or "cause to be X":
zibum "tree" > zabbab- "raise [livestock], grow [plants]"
alādum "warrior" > allad- "conscript"
Relationship with the adjective deverbal pattern C₁aC₂C₂aC₃- is uncertain. For example, the adjective allad- can mean both "belligerent" (from alad- "fight") or "conscripted" (from allad- "conscript").

[Hollow1134]

Functionally speaking, what you need is a pretty standard purposive. The question is then: can purposive semantics be expressed using an SVC? In most languages, the use of an SVC implies that the sentence is considered to be in some way one event — e.g. Tetun Dili (above) has a minimal pair between the SVC ‘cut the bread with a knife’ and the biclausal ‘take a knife and cut the bread’. By that standard, it seems unlikely. Then again, SVCs very often have resultative semantics (e.g. the Taba example), so it’s not impossible.

After reading through the secion on it that you pointed me to, and your post, I don't really think what I'm doing there is an SVC -- though I do like the idea of playing with them, since I'm not planning on using a lot of morphology. And honestly not impossible is generally good enough for me at this point, though I'm definitely going to take a much closer look at it when I start digging into syntax proper (and I'm about ready to be done with verbal morphology, probably by the end of this week or the next).

If they aren’t similar to infinitives, you probably shouldn’t gloss them that way.

Honestly I'm just glad to hear that they aren't actually any sort of universal thing -- mostly my impulse to gloss them that way, I think I can attribute to bad habits learned from five ish years of classroom spanish translations.

Describing Morphosyntax is an excellent book, but I could never read it cover-to-cover! I prefer to use it as a reference.

It really is great, I'm jumping around a bit as things catch my eye and or I need to reference them, and it's been an easier experience. Definitely better as a reference text, as it was intended to be.

On that note, is this an acceptable place for these conversations or should I have opened a thread for my stuff (or be responding elsewhere)?

My accomplishment for the day: Testing out how some particles and inflections sound, and generally liking them (yay for working phonotactics (out loud at work (and I've been doing a lot of thinking about my verbal morphology this week, and trying to keep it as minimal as possible while still letting them do interesting things on their own (as defined by my idea of what is interesting for verbs to do without help (as influenced by my recent study of basque and japanese)))))

[bradrn]

After reading through the secion on it that you pointed me to, and your post, I don't really think what I'm doing there is an SVC -- though I do like the idea of playing with them, since I'm not planning on using a lot of morphology. And honestly not impossible is generally good enough for me at this point, though I'm definitely going to take a much closer look at it when I start digging into syntax proper (and I'm about ready to be done with verbal morphology, probably by the end of this week or the next).

If you’re interested in SVCs (and it sounds like you are from this post), then here are some resources I’ve found useful:

• Lovestrand 2021 is an excellent introductory guide to the area
• Ross et al. 2015 is also good as a guide, with a more opinionated definition and a greater focus on spatial distribution
• Senft 2008 is focussed on Austronesian and Papuan languages, but still covers a wide range of constructions
• Unterladstetter 2020, while not focussed on ‘SVCs’ in the narrowest sense, is still useful if you’re willing to read through the whole thing, and contains an immensely detailed analysis on which constructions are attested in a specific linguistic area (eastern Indonesia)
• If you can find a copy, Aikhenvald 2018 is generally considered one of the best resources available on the topic

On that note, is this an acceptable place for these conversations or should I have opened a thread for my stuff (or be responding elsewhere)?

Oh, I’m sure it’s fine here. That being said, it can be nice to have a single place for your own stuff if you plan to write about it a lot. Your call.

[keenir]

finally scanned in my Greenpen and Redpen numbers (presently unattached to any conlangs; it was more an exercise to see if i could tackle a number system at all....a week ago)

...also scanned in my notes and first practice lines of a conlang I think I'll use to experiment with TVO (topic-verb-object)...yes, the phonology is incomplete and it has no words for numbers other than "half" = "1/2".

[bradrn]

...also scanned in my notes and first practice lines of a conlang I think I'll use to experiment with TVO (topic-verb-object)...yes, the phonology is incomplete and it has no words for numbers other than "half" = "1/2".

‘Topic-verb-object word order’ is an oxymoron — what happens when the object is the topic? I suspect you meant ‘topic-verb-comment’ word order.

[keenir]

...also scanned in my notes and first practice lines of a conlang I think I'll use to experiment with TVO (topic-verb-object)...yes, the phonology is incomplete and it has no words for numbers other than "half" = "1/2".

‘Topic-verb-object word order’ is an oxymoron

I'm quoting the ASL book in my library's collection; that doesn't stop it from potentially being an oxymoron, i admit.

— what happens when the object is the topic?

thats why i want to play with it...see what i can and can't do.

seriously, I think thats what was on the page after TVO...SVPro-Copy (subject-verb-pronoun-copy...in which the last part refers back to the subject)

such as...man quit pro-copy = the man quit.

.....which was in turn followed by a page on VPro-Copy Verb-Pronoun-Copy...such as, girl cry why. fall pro-copy. = why is the girl crying? the girl fell.

[bradrn]

I’m sick of not doing anything with Hlʉ̂ for months on end, so why don’t I force myself to sit down and write out something about the verbal complex, shall I? Let’s make some auxiliary verbs:

Auxiliary	Etymology	Semantics	Required verb form
dá	‘do’	perfect (relevance, experiential etc.)	nominalisation
ni	‘is’	imperfective	bare verb
tân	‘come’	venitive; initiation; malefactive	sequential converb / bare verb
sí	‘go’	andative; future; finishing	sequential converb / bare verb
bohp	‘know’	possibility (epistemic & deontic)	nominalisation

(I will surely add more in the future.)

These are syntactically the sentence head, taking the plural inflection and pronominal clitics, and going after the lexical verb:

bap gla á nɵ We do it
bap dá klan â nɵ We’ll start doing it

Morphologically, verbs can take on several forms both in association with auxiliaries and otherwise. Mostly we just see the bare stem without extraneous affixes (except the plural infix) — I referred to these above as the ‘bare stem’. Nominalised verbs are formed by incopyfixation of the first CV substring, without tone: tân ‘come’ vs tátan ‘coming’. The converbal clitics are more interesting. They occur in the same slot as the person clitics, exclude the sentence-final particle, and are used to mark both (co)subordinate clauses and some auxiliaries:

	Same-subject	Different-subject
Simultaneous	=nu̇	=dȧ
Sequential	=tɵ̇	=nė

(This is far too neat and tidy even for a draft, and I’ll have to make it more realistic if I ever figure out what a realistic converb system actually is. Also converbal clitics are to my knowledge unattested, which raises the possibility that these and hence the person clitics are actually suffixes. But then that would make the negative particle an auxiliary verb. And in that case why is hiatus allowed before the person clitics? Possibly the law against hiatus only applies within stems. Yes, that seems like a good solution, actually. It also makes the diachronics interesting, since having a negative auxiliary is weird.)

So now we can finally make proper Hlʉ̂ sentences, e.g.:

Hâ tán tɵ, daklánda mat bid hlʉ á dá. We’ll need to clean up the jacaranda flowers.
flower come=SEQ.SS, ‘jacaranda’ CL clean ⟨PL⟩AUX=1/2 INF

Any thoughts?

[Vardelm]

incopyfixation

Could we please get some references on that terminology?

I like the auxiliaries & their uses. Nothing more useful to add from me.

[Hallow XIII]

incopyfixation

Could we please get some references on that terminology?

The famous paper is this one. See page 28 for "incopyfixation"

[Ahzoh]

...pronoun-copy...in which the last part refers back to the subject)

I believe the proper term is "anaphor(ic reference)"

[Vardelm]

The famous paper is this one. See page 28 for "incopyfixation"

.......

Should have known with Bradrn using that term that there would actually be a reference to be found. Curse you, Red Baron!

[bradrn]

I’d be particularly interested in criticism of my auxiliary verb system, especially its grammaticalisation pathways. (Or should I cross-post to the grammaticalisation thread?)

incopyfixation

Could we please get some references on that terminology?

The famous paper is this one. See page 28 for "incopyfixation"

Oh, I didn’t know about that paper. Thanks for mentioning it!

[Ahzoh]

My conlang sure likes defying crosslinguistic grammatical tendencies.

[KathTheDragon]

What tendencies are being defied here?

[Ahzoh]

What tendencies are being defied here?

Just this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_hierarchy