Conlang Random Thread

[foxcatdog]

With certain verbs you could create sentences which technically don't have a verb but would require a verb in the english translation.

1.sg game do
"I'm playing the in progress game"

game do 1.sg
"the in progress game i'm playing"

Why don’t these have a verb? ‘do’ looks very verb-like, at least in the first example.

Well it's also not going in the final draft of the language since Sanskrit doesn't allow standard subject+object sentences without a verb. The implied verb in a standard verbless sentence is "asti" the copula which doesn't work since the language doesn't have a copula (through some languages have a zero copula as their default way of expressing copulative sentences). Also after making weird english sentences in my head for a while stuff like "I, the in progress game" seems ungrammatical but "I play the in progress game" sounds grammatical (contrast this with something like "running girl"). However after reading another article on verbless sentences i came across this sentence.

"A chair, a table, a lamp. …
A window, two white curtains …
A bed. …"

Which could be considered a sentence which omits a verb ("exist"). But parses in my mind as a sentence omitting a conjugation ("and").
"A chair and a table and a lamp and
A window and two white curtains and
A bed. …"

or more in line with standard english use of the conjugation "and"
"A chair, a table, a lamp. …
A window, two white curtains …
And a bed. …"

So
1.sg game.obl breath/run (probably better than do for expressing the notion of "in progress")
"Me and the in progress game"

1.sg game.obl do (the oblique is used because "she and her" not "she and she" and i need stuff for it to do distinct from the accusative)
"Me and the doable game"
"Me and the game that can be played"

This construct technically has all the elements of a full SOV sentence but is best treated as an SO phrase because verbs never appear after the object (at least not without an intervening noun). It is implied but not completely stated the subject is playing the game since it is less animate then them. You can add a dummy verb and you would need to do that to express stuff like Intent (which is marked on verbs in the language) see...

1.sg dummy-INT.compgame.obl do
"Me and the game that can be played which i intend to see completed"
"Me and the game which i plan to finish"

Btw game probably appears in the Oblique because it is less animate.
(edit) fixed it to be SVO like a regular sentence

Also note Sanskrit allows for Genitive constructions which when applied to the head marking language gives us stuff like.

1.sg game-obl-POS.1.sg breath
"My in progress game"

she.wolf game-obl-POS.3.sg.f breath
"The she wolf's in progress game"

This is technically just a noun phrase.

while since an adjective is part of a noun phrase you can create sorta OVS constructions with it.

I’m not sure I understand where this comes from — could you elaborate?

Simply the natural conclusion of Object fronting + Adjectival sentences. It's simply an OS sentence with all the elements of a OVS sentence or alternatively and OVS sentence treated as an OS sentence. Technically your just expressing "X and X" in a different way but you can add a dummy verb as usual (through i may imagine certain daughters will forbid this particular construct).

game-obl breath 1.sg
"The in progress game and I"

game.obl breath 1.sg do
"The in progress game, I am playing it"

Also note since Genitives always come before the nouns they possess you couldn't say....

game-obl-POS.1.sg breath 1.sg
"The in progress game, my"

But you could possibly say.....

game-obl breath 1.sg it-acc-POS.1.sg
"The in progress game, i own it"

...with a dummy object.

Also with "Binding Verbs" you couldn't do the regular OSV or VSO constructions but you could possible do OVS constructions to front both which is normally not allowed.

What do you mean by a ‘binding verb’?

A verb which requires an Object (or Patients i haven't yet decided if i want them to be all completely Transitive or not) to come directly after it. This means you couldn't perform standard Object fronting or Verb fronting syntactic transformations with them but they do allow you to front both which is not allowed with all other verbs.

Also the language usually puts Datives and Causatives (a.k.a Animate indirect objects) at the start of the sentence in standard SVO sentences

What happens to inanimate indirect objects?

To imply an inanimate Causee you can use the Applicative.....

asinaci ja·bu nababy·dan
rock-OBL + 1.sg fell-APP.1
“Because of the rock i fell over”

Compare this too...
ja·bu nababi asina
1.sg + fell + rock
“I fell over the rock”

The object fronting especially emphasises this. There's probably other ways to do this. Also not Inanimates lack the Accusative case.

Not sure about the Dative construct it's just the language prizes Animacy.

Also Sources
https://learnsanskrit.org/guide/sentenc ... %20More%20
https://www.dailywritingtips.com/verbless-sentences/

[Ahzoh]

I am thinking of having the construct state cause the a-mutation of short vowels of certain words, though I only want to limit the scope to #CVC- stems. Though it has annoying consequences on words like mazûm (sea, saltwater) and ezîm (boar) which are supposed to be mazi-∅ and ezu-∅ in construct state but the a-mutation might result in maza and eza, which are very undesirable results. There is also great indecision within the language over whether *CvCy/w- type stems turn into CvCi/u type stems (maz-ûm < mazi-um < mazy-um, ezîm < ezu-im < ḥazw-im) or CvvC type stems (like mannāḫ-um "temple" < mannaḫy-um).

It's so hard to make new affixes or apophanies because often the results only look good for some words but absolutely fugly for others.

These are fine:
ḳiśum "head, top" > ḳaś
ḫuzum "horse" > ḫaz
ğimum "name" > ğam
ḫusum "skin, hide" > ḫas

These, not so much:
ummurim "hungering, famine" > ummar (unless can do ummurim > ammar instead)
ḫunzurim "lying" > ḫunzar
ḳumsurim "sleeping" > ḳumsar
muḫḫurim "uniting, gathering" > muḫḫar
rūburim "planting, placing" > rūbar

On the other hand, there's few words like all these to really justify this mutation since most stems are either CvCC- type or CvvC- (most of which ultimately come from the CvCC- type).

[bradrn]

Well it's also not going in the final draft of the language since Sanskrit doesn't allow standard subject+object sentences without a verb.

Why is Sanskrit relevant here?

after reading another article on verbless sentences i came across this sentence.

"A chair, a table, a lamp. …
A window, two white curtains …
A bed. …"

Which could be considered a sentence which omits a verb ("exist"). But parses in my mind as a sentence omitting a conjugation ("and").
"A chair and a table and a lamp and
A window and two white curtains and
A bed. …"

As a native English speaker I disagree with this. The terms are of course ambiguous, but I disagree that this constitutes any kind of ‘sentence’ or ‘clause’. — it’s just a list of nouns. To me that listing is practically ungrammatical, or at least incoherent without context. It certainly doesn’t sound like natural English speech to me.

So
1.sg game.obl breath/run (probably better than do for expressing the notion of "in progress")
"Me and the in progress game"

1.sg game.obl do (the oblique is used because "she and her" not "she and she" and i need stuff for it to do distinct from the accusative)
"Me and the doable game"
"Me and the game that can be played"

This construct technically has all the elements of a full SOV sentence but is best treated as an SO phrase because verbs never appear after the object (at least not without an intervening noun). It is implied but not completely stated the subject is playing the game since it is less animate then them. You can add a dummy verb and you would need to do that to express stuff like Intent (which is marked on verbs in the language) see...

1.sg game.obl do dummy-INT.comp
"Me and the game that can be played which i intend to see completed"
"Me and the game which i plan to finish"

I really don’t understand why these shouldn’t just be analysed as normal SOV sentences. Or, to put it another way, which phenomena about this language can be explained more easily with the ‘verbless’ analysis than with the SOV analysis?

(I don’t really think I can understand the rest of the article without properly understanding this.)

[foxcatdog]

Sanskrits relevant because it's a real language. It has a seperate class of adjectives like english so it's not the best example to be going by but it's the first thing to appear when you search verbless sentences and i'm already set on this feature.

Anyways your probably right it's just the difference between a real SVO sentence a SOV chimera sentence is the difference between an actual sentence with action in english and a copulative sentence in english (through in english "the cat and the dog are red" implies both are red whereas this sentence only implies the object is red). It's also the exact same as saying something like "the cat and the red dog". You don't use Copulative sentences as the bulk of normal human language use unless your writing poetry or other flavourful text. You should note that at the time of the break up of the proto language the people are a Bronze age (1 step above the fictional metal "Aspher" in this world) culture who already have a word for writing (*ni·kuka) referring to their logographic writing system (with seperate particles to mark inflection). Later writing probably originates from the west.

Also since the default word order is SVO and adjectives still come Subjects you would need a way to distinguish between them at least in the unmarked Animate on Inanimate sentence type.. Strategies for this are diverse by daughter language and usually also apply to simply affixed verbs. The assumed strategy in the proto language was that you would be required to add the default (assumed) conjugation in these positions. So for example “and” (my) for nominative + accusative or “in/into” (ada) for nominative + lative.

telà kukú·laliso telà mi·gu
duck-NOM blacken-A.A duck-ACC white
“The duck blackens the white duck”
(edit) really need to stop confusing the 2 different types of morphological alteration in my language.

telà kukú·la my telà mi·gu
duck-NOM black and duck-ACC white
“The black duck and the white duck”

Also in the listed changes from Proto Elenyiwa to my daughter shift from primarily SVO word order to VSO (at least in speech secondary word orders are a bit more common in writing) with now marked SVO word order also being required to be marked by particles between the Subject and Verb. Probably also see a shift within historical times from OSV to OVS as the default method of Object fronting.

Also the languages 3 types of basic NV (Noun + Verb) sentences are as follows.

kukú·la telà
blacken duck-ACC
“Something blackens the duck”
“He blackens the duck”

telà kukú·la
duck-NOM blacken
“The duck blackens something”
“The duck blackens him”

telà·ba kukú·la
duck-ERG black
“The black duck”
“The duck is black”

[bradrn]

Sanskrits relevant because it's a real language.

So is Ngkolmpu, but I’m not going to have four types of verbs just because Ngkolmpu does that. ‘X language does Y so I have to do Y whether I want to or not’ is pretty much the worst way of choosing features for a conlang. (Unless I misread you and you’re saying something different?)

Anyways your probably right it's just the difference between a real SVO sentence a SOV chimera sentence is the difference between an actual sentence with action in english and a copulative sentence in english (through in english "the cat and the dog are red" implies both are red whereas this sentence only implies the object is red). It's also the exact same as saying something like "the cat and the red dog". You don't use Copulative sentences as the bulk of normal human language use unless your writing poetry or other flavourful text.

You haven’t answered my question. Beyond ‘because you say so’, what language-internal reason is there to analyse a sentence like ‘1.sg game.obl do’ as being non-verbal?

[foxcatdog]

Sanskrits relevant because it's a real language.

So is Ngkolmpu, but I’m not going to have four types of verbs just because Ngkolmpu does that. ‘X language does Y so I have to do Y whether I want to or not’ is pretty much the worst way of choosing features for a conlang. (Unless I misread you and you’re saying something different?)

The language does not have 4 types of verbs or even a distinction between verbs and adjectives.

Anyways your probably right it's just the difference between a real SVO sentence a SOV chimera sentence is the difference between an actual sentence with action in english and a copulative sentence in english (through in english "the cat and the dog are red" implies both are red whereas this sentence only implies the object is red). It's also the exact same as saying something like "the cat and the red dog". You don't use Copulative sentences as the bulk of normal human language use unless your writing poetry or other flavourful text.

You haven’t answered my question. Beyond ‘because you say so’, what language-internal reason is there to analyse a sentence like ‘1.sg game.obl do’ as being non-verbal?

I admitted your analysis was right. Through there's also an element of perception here speakers of this language would probably view the sentence as being more attributive then a statement of action.

[jal]

Though there's also an element of perception here speakers of this language would probably view the sentence as being more attributive then a statement of action.

Verbs needn't denote actions. There's whole hosts of languages that split verbs in "active" ("actions") and "stative" ("states") ones. Seems like you have a stative construction there.


JAL

[Ahzoh]

Though there's also an element of perception here speakers of this language would probably view the sentence as being more attributive then a statement of action.

Attributive verbs exist (man red = "the man is red" or "the red man"). Some languages have lots of them. Some languages make no distinction between adjectives and verbs. The only way the "do" word would be nonverbal would be if it behaved like an adjective or noun, which given by your glossing would require the word to be marked with the kinds of affixes adjectives or nouns would require. If adjectives don't have markings of any sort than it would be similarly indistinguishable from a verb. Most humans of the world are going to default to a noun-verb distinction over noun-adjective (but no verb) distinction and special effort has to be made for a language to be truely verbless.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Is it really possible for a language to communicate things without nouns and verbs?

[foxcatdog]

Verbs needn't denote actions. There's whole hosts of languages that split verbs in "active" ("actions") and "stative" ("states") ones. Seems like you have a stative construction there.


JAL

Attributive verbs exist (man red = "the man is red" or "the red man"). Some languages have lots of them. Some languages make no distinction between adjectives and verbs. The only way the "do" word would be nonverbal would be if it behaved like an adjective or noun, which given by your glossing would require the word to be marked with the kinds of affixes adjectives or nouns would require. If adjectives don't have markings of any sort than it would be similarly indistinguishable from a verb. Most humans of the world are going to default to a noun-verb distinction over noun-adjective (but no verb) distinction and special effort has to be made for a language to be truely verbless.

This would have went much better if i just said the language distinguishes between intransitive and stative verbs purely based on their position in a word.

[Pabappa]

i dont have as much free time as i used to, and what time i have i put more into writing stories than into conlangs lately, so i apologize i dont have a good example to show. i couldnt even find the post you were replying to, so this might not be helpful.

but if youre saying you have a language in which nouns and verbs are the same part of speech, i can say that it is possible because i have done that with Poswa and others have done it with their own languages. i use the terms noun and verb as terms of convenience for speech roles, much as we distinguish between subject/object as parts of grammar and agent.parient as speech roles.
'

in poswa, every fully inflected verb is grammatically equivalent to a clause, and every clause is grammatically equivalent to a single verb.


popem pypopebi "eat-Ø apple-ACC-TR-1P.PAST" is the marked construction, and is rquivlent to the much more common

pypopi pobebi "apple-ACC-Ø-1P.PAST eat-TR-1P.PAST".

popem ~ pob- "to eat"
pyp "apple" (accusative pypop)
-ebi 1st person transitive past

there are no parts of speech in Poswa .... but each root has 4 stems, which serve different roles in the grammar. i order them from most nounlike to most verblike ... but A-stems can fill the role of verbs, as evidenced above, and D-stems can fill the role of nouns, inasmuch as an english expression like :"the swimmer" can stand in for a participial noun "one who is swimming". /popem/ is the A-stem of "to eat" and /pob-/ is the C- and D-stem.

[Ahzoh]

Is it really possible for a language to communicate things without nouns and verbs?

Without both? No, but some languages turn everything into verbs, even things that would be nouns in most other languages.

[bradrn]

Is it really possible for a language to communicate things without nouns and verbs?

Without both? No, but some languages turn everything into verbs, even things that would be nouns in most other languages.

What, human languages? Not a chance. However, there are some languages which turn nearly everything into nouns.

[jal]

This would have went much better if i just said the language distinguishes between intransitive and stative verbs purely based on their position in a word.

No, that wouldn't be better, as it doesn't make sense. You write "intransitive and stative verbs" as if that's the same kind of distinction or they're opposites or something, but they obviously aren't (it's transitive vs. intransitive verbs and stative vs. active verbs, and though stative verbs may tend to be intransitive more than active verbs, transitivity and stativity are two different things). Also, "position in a word" - do you mean in a sentence?


JAL

[Pabappa]

i realize my post above may not have been that helpful .... and i didnt even realize for some reason that i was referring back to my own post on this board from last year ..... the link is http://verduria.org/viewtopic.php?p=25796#p25796 .

but just to be clear .... it seems like we're arguing over terminology here. i'd say that if a language has nouns but no verbs, for all practical purposes, it doesnt have nouns either, it has a unified part of speech that covers both. so "can a language communicate concepts without nouns or verbs?" yes, it definitely can, and polysnthetic languages prove it. in the wild there are always impurities like loanwords, even in polysynthetic languages, but these are not necessary parts of the language and could always be replaced by native constructions if one wanted to create "High Inuktitut" etc.

in Poswa "i have more soap" and "my extra soap" are the same sentence, so that is one means of how a language can get by without verbs. basically it works like English but without the relational morphemes like "that", "which", etc. and since the phrase is a single unitary word, there is no "head" and "dependent" morpheme to point out.

again i apologize but i cant word what im saying clearly enough to make a case for what im saying .... i just know that not only is it possible for a language to get by without verbs, but it's possible in more than one way, as evident from my conlang, some other conlangs, and hypothetical purified forms of natlangs that are verbless (which is equivalent to being nounless) except for proper nouns, loans, etc.

[Pabappa]

I've heard of bound pronouns (like french je and tu) and bound morphemes (like in inuit languages which can't appear without a free morpheme) but how about bound verbs? As in verbs which can't appear outside of a noun phrase?

Could you for example have something like...

1.sg do+game-ACC
"I played the game"

which could optionally transform into...

1.sg game-ACC+do
"I game played"

but couldn't undergo normal syntactic transformations since it was treated as part of the objects phrase. The class would obviously consist of a small number of basic verbs.

it honeslty bothers me that i cant explain it but i can assure you that, yes, this does work.

poswa has e.g.

vempa "house", vempo "my house", turning into vempampo "house i bought"

brabi "pine tree", brabo "my pine tree", turning to brabuvo "pine tree i see". ( there is also wi brabuvo "pine tree i see through a window" where /wi/ is also a bound morpehem and does not by itself mean "window")

so the part that behavbes likes a verb is a bound morpheme and does not turn the noun into a verb; indeed it behaves as a 1st person noun, since animacy dominates what we would otherwise define with the head/dependent person hierarchy.

[foxcatdog]

This would have went much better if i just said the language distinguishes between intransitive and stative verbs purely based on their position in a word.

No, that wouldn't be better, as it doesn't make sense. You write "intransitive and stative verbs" as if that's the same kind of distinction or they're opposites or something, but they obviously aren't (it's transitive vs. intransitive verbs and stative vs. active verbs, and though stative verbs may tend to be intransitive more than active verbs, transitivity and stativity are two different things). Also, "position in a word" - do you mean in a sentence?


JAL

Never heard of term active verb before.
Also i do in fact mean position in a sentence.

[jal]

Never heard of term active verb before.

Then perhaps you should research basic linguistics a bit more before making statements about the nature of your conlangs. Of course Zompist's website and books are a good start, but Wikipedia is also helpful (if not always accurate and/or complete).

Also i do in fact mean position in a sentence.

It's not at all unusual for languages to indicate meaning through syntax, but again, "transitivity" and "stativity" are not the same category.


JAL

[Zju]

I've heard of bound pronouns (like french je and tu) and bound morphemes (like in inuit languages which can't appear without a free morpheme) but how about bound verbs? As in verbs which can't appear outside of a noun phrase?

So for example say your language had the following sentence transformations.

SVO
1.sg play game-ACC
"I played the game"

OSV
game-ACC 1.sg play
"As for the game, i played it"

VSO
play 1.sg game-ACC
"played the game have i"

Could you for example have something like...

1.sg do+game-ACC
"I played the game"

which could optionally transform into...

1.sg game-ACC+do
"I game played"

but couldn't undergo normal syntactic transformations since it was treated as part of the objects phrase. The class would obviously consist of a small number of basic verbs.

It may be paucity of information, but isn't that basically the same as the "pro-verbs" of Basque and various languages of Papua New Guinea?

[Creyeditor]

Also bound verb (root)s is a term sometimes used for verb roots that cannot occur without affixes.