Conlang Random Thread

[Zju]

… what the right term is for a particle that attaches phonologically to its head, but not like a clitic to an entire phrase, I don't know.

Those are clitics too. At the most fundamental level, a clitic is something which grammatically behaves like a separate word, but is phonologically dependent. [...] can the ‘clitics’ be used in all the same places as any other grammatical word? Or are they more restricted in their host and/or positioning? If the former, they’re clitics; if the latter, I’d call them affixes.

I thought that syntactic dependency was hallmark of clitics? A clitic can't just appear in any position in a clause, unlike other words. Pretty sure not all clitics are phonologically dependent. How do you differentiate between clitics and 'grammatical words' if not by syntax?

[Ahzoh]

Clitics are phrase-level (rather than word-level) affixes. That means a postclitic is a phrase's suffix, a proclitic is a phrase's prefix, etc.

[the firstborn son of the uncle of the queen of england]'s poodle
[the lord of the house many years ago]'s fishcakes
[the many attorneys general]'s fears
etc.

[bradrn]

… what the right term is for a particle that attaches phonologically to its head, but not like a clitic to an entire phrase, I don't know.

Those are clitics too. At the most fundamental level, a clitic is something which grammatically behaves like a separate word, but is phonologically dependent. [...] can the ‘clitics’ be used in all the same places as any other grammatical word? Or are they more restricted in their host and/or positioning? If the former, they’re clitics; if the latter, I’d call them affixes.

I thought that syntactic dependency was hallmark of clitics? A clitic can't just appear in any position in a clause, unlike other words. Pretty sure not all clitics are phonologically dependent. How do you differentiate between clitics and 'grammatical words' if not by syntax?

Syntactic dependency is a hallmark of affixes, not clitics — clitics are grammatical words. Speaking loosely (as I have been doing this entire conversation, because clitics are hard to define rigorously), there are two types of wordhood:

• Grammatical words are defined according to purely syntactic considerations: cannot be split, have freedom of position, are governed by syntactic rules
• Phonological words are defined according to purely phonological considerations: have their own prosodic domain, are phonologically independent

Mostly these coincide, but often they don’t, and clitics are often taken to be those grammatical words which are not phonological words. Thus for instance the English reduced object pronoun /-əm/ ⟨him⟩ behaves as a grammatical word, yet does not have a phonologically independent existence. Thus /-əm/ is a clitic, as are other pronominal clitics from languages across the world.

Clitics are phrase-level (rather than word-level) affixes. That means a postclitic is a phrase's suffix, a proclitic is a phrase's prefix, etc.

[the firstborn son of the uncle of the queen of england]'s poodle
[the lord of the house many years ago]'s fishcakes
[the many attorneys general]'s fears
etc.

Not necessarily. It is true that phrase-level ‘affixes’ must be clitics, because acting on the phrase level is a property of syntactic words. ⟨’s⟩ is certainly a clitic. But there are very many clitics which don’t act on the phrase level: for instance, pronominal clitics (as mentioned above).

[Ahzoh]

But there are very many clitics which don’t act on the phrase level: for instance, pronominal clitics (as mentioned above).

Meh, most examples I've seen are either actual clitics modifying the whole verb phrase or actually true affixes that were mislabelled as clitics.

[jal]

Meh, most examples I've seen are either actual clitics modifying the whole verb phrase or actually true affixes that were mislabelled as clitics.

So would you consider dependent pronomials affixes then, instead of clitics? Because that's not what they are generally called (look e.g. at Spanish grammar).


JAL

[bradrn]

Meh, most examples I've seen are either actual clitics modifying the whole verb phrase or actually true affixes that were mislabelled as clitics.

So would you consider dependent pronomials affixes then, instead of clitics? Because that's not what they are generally called (look e.g. at Spanish grammar).

The Romance ‘pronominal clitics’ are an odd case. After some searching, I’ve yet to find firm evidence that they aren’t affixes. That being said, pronominal clitics from other languages are more obviously non-affixal.

[Torco]

I always have the feeling that the ways used to describe grammar are strongly influenced by history and by the geopolitical role of the states that promote this or that language, especially with european languages: if linguists found spanish now, spoken by mountain people somewhere (perhaps especially my variety), I feel like they'd just say it has optional person marking in the verb, and people would find it very exotic how "omg they put so much information in their verbs, check this out, 'melocomi' means i already ate it in the past and i finished doing so, it's positively polysynthetic!".

that being said, if "lo" in "me lo comí" is an affix of the verb (i.e. me-lo-com-í) then it is at least also other things. I've visited plenty of places called Lo Gallardo or Lo Espejo (the latter could be argued to mean the mirror place, but it's just a name), and we say things like "sácale lo blanco" (remove from it that which is white).

then again, it's not weird for such morphemes to pull double duty as different kinds of things, no?

[jal]

(perhaps especially my variety)

Langfocus had a recent video on Chillean Spanish, and it's indeed a weird variety :D.


JAL

[bradrn]

I always have the feeling that the ways used to describe grammar are strongly influenced by history and by the geopolitical role of the states that promote this or that language, especially with european languages: if linguists found spanish now, spoken by mountain people somewhere (perhaps especially my variety), I feel like they'd just say it has optional person marking in the verb …

This is of course completely true. Different areas have different traditions of grammatical description, which is why we have alternations such as ‘subjunctive’/‘irrealis’, ‘converb’/‘medial verb’, ‘auxiliary’/‘light verb’, ‘infinitive’/‘deranked’, ‘SVC’/‘SVC’, and so on and so forth. Sometimes these genuinely do represent different constructions, but often they’re just different names for the same thing.

… and people would find it very exotic how "omg they put so much information in their verbs, check this out, 'melocomi' means i already ate it in the past and i finished doing so, it's positively polysynthetic!".

This, on the other hand, I don’t believe. ‘me-lo-comi’ is about average for most non-Eurasian languages in general and most South American languages in particular.

[Torco]

(perhaps especially my variety)

Langfocus had a recent video on Chillean Spanish, and it's indeed a weird variety .

true! I watched it and it's a cool review of our dialect. i like it tho, and not just for being my own dialect: it has a fluidity to it, an economy of movement in the mouth, kind of like arabic or french.

This, on the other hand, I don’t believe. ‘me-lo-comi’ is about average for most non-Eurasian languages in general and most South American languages in particular.

yeah, I got a bit carried away there with polysynthesis

[aliensdrinktea]

The Romance ‘pronominal clitics’ are an odd case. After some searching, I’ve yet to find firm evidence that they aren’t affixes.

What about compound tenses? E.g., "s/he left" is se fue, but "s/he has left" is se ha ido, not *ha se ido. Similarly, certain tenses allow clitic pronouns before or after the verb phrase, but never immediately before the main verb when it's preceded by a modal: te voy a llamar and voy a llamarte are both valid ways of saying "I'm going to call you", but *voy a te llamar is not.

[Man in Space]

Wǫkratąk is being rebooted as "Robotic". (Yes, really.) The term comes from Archaic Robotic *robot 'pastoralist' from root *√rbt 'plant, twig, stick, foliage'.

I was working toward Lexember and listening to Styx' "Mr. Roboto", so I decided to throw in a root *√rbt for kicks. I didn't have in mind that one of my derivations from the root was the *korot form, an agent nominalizer, initially, but when I realized that I tried to look for some way to make the word *robot meaningful in an Easter-egg sort of fashion. Now it's the word for what they call themselves—*robot, plural *robbot—since the ^Xwǫkratąk form isn't a Thing anymore.

[bradrn]

Wǫkratąk is being rebooted as "Robotic". (Yes, really.)

Huh, what a coincidence — I saw this just after reading some stories by Stanisław Lem. Meanwhile, your root *robot ‘pastoralist’ is interestingly similar in meaning to the original Czech word robot ‘compulsary labour of serfs’.

[FlamyobatRudki]

But where is the problem here? Just don't allow sentences like that - your conlang doesn't have to perfectly calque English. The same meaning can be perfectly well expressed with a univalent verb and an oblique. Or by a bivalent intransitive. Or, indeed, without any verb at all. There's no reason you can't just say "photon into electron like ink" or "photon now under electron's stomach".

The fact that English forces this event into the framework of an agent (that isn't an agent) performing a transitive action (that isn't even an action, let alone a transitive one) is just a fact about English and its syntactic obsessions. It's useful to take a step back and think about the situations you're describing, and how another language might describe them, rather than trying to translate English sentences literally.

Perhaps, but it feels intuitively weird to treat "the man pushes the broom" and the "water erodes the riverbed" as fundamentally different constructions. They are both actions in which one entity acts on another and changes or moves it somehow. The ease with which English expresses notions like "the electron absorbed the photon" makes it well-suited to scientific writing. Without that ease of use, I feel like writing about physics or any field where inanimate objects regularly interact would become rather onerous.

let me introduce you zu Deutsch.

[Elancholia]

This, on the other hand, I don’t believe. ‘me-lo-comi’ is about average for most non-Eurasian languages in general and most South American languages in particular.

Aren't many of those languages (especially in South America) considered polysynthetic? I wouldn't go so far as to say that Spanish is polysynthetic, but the example is a pretty "verb-y" construction, even if "lo" sort of requires an anaphoric complement to be "complete" and there aren't as many affixal or compositional "extras" as you would expect of a polysynthetic language.

[bradrn]

The Romance ‘pronominal clitics’ are an odd case. After some searching, I’ve yet to find firm evidence that they aren’t affixes.

What about compound tenses? E.g., "s/he left" is se fue, but "s/he has left" is se ha ido, not *ha se ido. Similarly, certain tenses allow clitic pronouns before or after the verb phrase, but never immediately before the main verb when it's preceded by a modal: te voy a llamar and voy a llamarte are both valid ways of saying "I'm going to call you", but *voy a te llamar is not.

OK, this is convincing evidence of clitichood. (It’s worth noting that I know very little about Romance languages.)

This, on the other hand, I don’t believe. ‘me-lo-comi’ is about average for most non-Eurasian languages in general and most South American languages in particular.

Aren't many of those languages (especially in South America) considered polysynthetic?

Most Amazonian languages are polysynthetic (except for Macro-Jê). I’m not sure about Andean languages. But an agglutinative language with ~3 morphemes/verb seems more similar to the surrounding languages than the typical SAE language would be.

[Elancholia]

Most Amazonian languages are polysynthetic (except for Macro-Jê). I’m not sure about Andean languages. But an agglutinative language with ~3 morphemes/verb seems more similar to the surrounding languages than the typical SAE language would be.

Yeah, exactly -- I read your original post as contesting the idea that they'd be considered polysynthetic or borderline-polysynthetic elsewhere by saying they were normal for non-Eurasia. I must have misunderstood.

[malloc]

let me introduce you zu Deutsch.

How so? German doesn't distinguish animacy or forbid inanimates from appearing in agent roles as far as I know.

[FlamyobatRudki]

let me introduce you zu Deutsch.

How so? German doesn't distinguish animacy or forbid inanimates from appearing in agent roles as far as I know.

that wasn't my point, my point was rather that german would seam to fit the type of criteria you want consistently better manner[all be it not in a manner that is consistent].

[Ahzoh]

But where is the problem here? Just don't allow sentences like that - your conlang doesn't have to perfectly calque English. The same meaning can be perfectly well expressed with a univalent verb and an oblique. Or by a bivalent intransitive. Or, indeed, without any verb at all. There's no reason you can't just say "photon into electron like ink" or "photon now under electron's stomach".

The fact that English forces this event into the framework of an agent (that isn't an agent) performing a transitive action (that isn't even an action, let alone a transitive one) is just a fact about English and its syntactic obsessions. It's useful to take a step back and think about the situations you're describing, and how another language might describe them, rather than trying to translate English sentences literally.

bivalent intransitive verb?