What have you accomplished today?

[2+3 Clusivity]

Recently took A LOT of time to finally sit down, straighten out valency, valency adjusting methods including voice, and to some degree semantic roles.

Spent a bit of time reading about egophoricty and egophoric marking which is worth looking up if you haven't read about it.

Finally, read a bit about allocutive verb marking which, while not named as such, is given a passing reference in Describing Morphosyntax. It's basically marking number, gender, and/or T/V status of a non-argument speech act participant.

[bradrn]

Recently took A LOT of time to finally sit down, straighten out valency, valency adjusting methods including voice, and to some degree semantic roles.

Spent a bit of time reading about egophoricty and egophoric marking which is worth looking up if you haven't read about it.

Finally, read a bit about allocutive verb marking which, while not named as such, is given a passing reference in Describing Morphosyntax. It's basically marking number, gender, and/or T/V status of a non-argument speech act participant.

Interesting topics! Do you have some references I can read through?

[2+3 Clusivity]

Interesting topics! Do you have some references I can read through?

Sure.

Recently took [A LOT] of time to [attempt to] straighten out valency, valency adjusting methods including voice

Well, a lot of ink and pixels have been spilled/typed on this subject, and I cannot really hope to do better than those others. Suffice to say for myself, I came to the -- MASSIVELY SIMPLIFIED -- realization that verbs frames have essentially +/-[agent], +/- [patient]-gradient like features (leaving aside experiencer-like which may or may not be seperate). These equate to transatives, various types of intransitives, and 0-place~weather verbs. On top of that oversimplified framework, valency modifying operations such as voices, ambitransitives and other omission/promotion strategies, serial verb constructions, nominalization, verb incorporation, etc. operate. Basically, everything boils down to having a basic framework which is then modified syntactically ... I guess that makes sense in my mind. Not sure if that's really profound or helpful outside of it. Haha.

I guess the biggest realization out of it all was that things like the "middle" voice aren't really that special or mysterious. Various parts of that second layer basically blend, merge, and glacially slide overtime. For example, suppose you start by demoting objects by replacing them with a reduced/donkey object or reflexive pronoun (e..g., I saw myself -> I saw-self; I saw the group -> I saw-m). Subsequently, those are re-analyzed as mid-gradient on the [object] feature via the derived layer--at this point basically a reflexive voice (c.f. Gk. elusa'men). Subsequently, especially if there are other reflexive strategies, this use can be chain pushed to -[object] and, once in the middle, such demoting could also be generalized to -[agent]. Consider that many people's confusion with middle voice or voices is that they are precisely at this stage ... one where their ability to demote has generalized and is working ideosyncratically at both a -[agent] and/or -[object] basis, so its hard to predict meaning from one frame to the next. Over time, such marking could conceivably rationalize in meaning and fully be pushed to a passive voice.

Spent a bit of time reading about egophoricty and egophoric marking which is worth looking up if you haven't read about it.

Theres's been a descent amount written on this in the South American, Sub-Saharan African, and Trans-Himalayan regions. A quick Google will get you some good stuff including surveys. Here's a good start:
http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/di ... TEXT01.pdf

Finally, read a bit about allocutive verb marking which, while not named as such, is given a passing reference in Describing Morphosyntax. It's basically marking number, gender, and/or T/V status of a non-argument speech act participant.

Not seeing too much written on this. See 9.5 of Describing Morphosyntax for an example, also https://www.academia.edu/1817520/Verbal ... erspective
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allocutive_agreement

[bradrn]

Well, a lot of ink and pixels have been spilled/typed on this subject, and I cannot really hope to do better than those others. Suffice to say for myself, I came to the -- MASSIVELY SIMPLIFIED -- realization that verbs frames have essentially +/-[agent], +/- [patient]-gradient like features (leaving aside experiencer-like which may or may not be seperate). These equate to transatives, various types of intransitives, and 0-place~weather verbs. On top of that oversimplified framework, valency modifying operations such as voices, ambitransitives and other omission/promotion strategies, serial verb constructions, nominalization, verb incorporation, etc. operate. Basically, everything boils down to having a basic framework which is then modified syntactically ... I guess that makes sense in my mind. Not sure if that's really profound or helpful outside of it. Haha.

Yeah, this is pretty much my understanding as well. Some comments:

• As I see it, ‘experiencers’ are simply things which are [-agent-patient] — i.e. things which are involved in the event, but are not controlling it or affected by it.
• SVCs aren’t really used all that much for valency modification; when they are, they’re almost always applicatives of some sort.

I guess the biggest realization out of it all was that things like the "middle" voice aren't really that special or mysterious. Various parts of that second layer basically blend, merge, and glacially slide overtime. For example, suppose you start by demoting objects by replacing them with a reduced/donkey object or reflexive pronoun (e..g., I saw myself -> I saw-self; I saw the group -> I saw-m). Subsequently, those are re-analyzed as mid-gradient on the [object] feature via the derived layer--at this point basically a reflexive voice (c.f. Gk. elusa'men). Subsequently, especially if there are other reflexive strategies, this use can be chain pushed to -[object] and, once in the middle, such demoting could also be generalized to -[agent]. Consider that many people's confusion with middle voice or voices is that they are precisely at this stage ... one where their ability to demote has generalized and is working ideosyncratically at both a -[agent] and/or -[object] basis, so its hard to predict meaning from one frame to the next. Over time, such marking could conceivably rationalize in meaning and fully be pushed to a passive voice.

I’m not entirely following your reasoning here, but I agree with your assessment of the semantics of the middle voice.

Spent a bit of time reading about egophoricty and egophoric marking which is worth looking up if you haven't read about it.

Theres's been a descent amount written on this in the South American, Sub-Saharan African, and Trans-Himalayan regions. A quick Google will get you some good stuff including surveys. Here's a good start:
http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/di ... TEXT01.pdf

Finally, read a bit about allocutive verb marking which, while not named as such, is given a passing reference in Describing Morphosyntax. It's basically marking number, gender, and/or T/V status of a non-argument speech act participant.

Not seeing too much written on this. See 9.5 of Describing Morphosyntax for an example, also https://www.academia.edu/1817520/Verbal ... erspective
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allocutive_agreement

Interesting; I’ll have to read through these!

[keenir]

Did some thinking about the claim that "Roman numbers failed because they lacked place notation" (Sumerian says hi)...and I thought to myself "I don't need to look or coin a zero, because I'll just use the 10 for that."

[Emily]

got started on fixing an SCA screwup of one (1) character that had absurdly far-reaching consequences. i'm still in the process of evaluating the damage lol, then it'll be time to figure out whether and how to redo everything

[bradrn]

got started on fixing an SCA screwup of one (1) character that had absurdly far-reaching consequences. i'm still in the process of evaluating the damage lol, then it'll be time to figure out whether and how to redo everything

Out of curiosity, what was the problem?

[Emily]

Out of curiosity, what was the problem?

at one point (a little more than midway through the sound changes), unstressed oral vowels reduce to /ɨ ə ɵ/. these later fortify to /ɪ ɛ ʊ/, except i accidentally had /ɵ/ fortify to /ɔ/ instead of /ʊ/. i'm working right now to see if it affects any of the developments in noun or adjective declensions, but even if it doesn't it will definitely affect the spelling

[CreativityTheEmotion]

Finally started on a phonological evolution. It always weirded me out that zompist and others could just come up with a bunch of evolutionary rules, on the spot, but I guess that today, I started thinking like them and immediately notice what could potentially be modified by a large number of speakers.

It was the one big hurdle I wanted to come over if I wanted to be any sort of naturalistic conlanger, but finally, I have jumped over it.

Expect a lot more progress from me soon (or, at least, until I'm released from the hospital).

[bradrn]

Finally started on a phonological evolution. It always weirded me out that zompist and others could just come up with a bunch of evolutionary rules, on the spot, but I guess that today, I started thinking like them and immediately notice what could potentially be modified by a large number of speakers.

I’d be curious to know what finally made it ‘click’ for you. What helped me was participating in the phrase evolution game, but I’m still not all that great at this.

Expect a lot more progress from me soon (or, at least, until I'm released from the hospital).

Hope you feel better soon!

[Emily]

so blindingly obvious that i'm almost embarrassed to admit it took me this long to figure out but i finally realized i could make the modern gothic 3rd person dual pronouns by adding inflected forms of the word for "two" to the various respective 3pl forms, rather than building a new pronoun not on natural historical processes but on just creating something that resembles the existing dual pronouns with a couple of different consonants

[Emily]

spent the past couple of days working on the personal pronouns and finally got them pretty much figured out (at least the morphology—still need to figure out the details of how they'll be used). also worked out at least the rudimentary basics for the orthographies of the earlier stages of the language

[Emily]

verbs.png (155.04 KiB) Viewed 8197 times

[Raphael]

Good luck!

[Man in Space]

This is actually from the other day, but I only shared it over at the Other Place: Created some chemistry terminology for CT.

móm ĝ kélen hydrogen (lit. 'mother of water')
móm ikłe hága deuterium (lit. 'a mother twice over')
móm ikłe isë tritium (lit. 'a mother thrice over')
móm ĝ ḫuú oxygen (lit. 'mother of breath')

ëslug 'tungsten' (lit. 'hardy', adjective used substantively)
lugna sígna 'uranium' (lit. 'yellow metal'; often understood to be U-238 in opposition to U-235, below)
móm n raáḫ 'U-235' (lit. 'mother of division')
naglugna 'depleted uranium' (lit. 'stonemetal')

kélen hún standard water (lit. 'dark water')
kélen suú heavy water (lit. 'true water')

[Moose-tache]

I designed a flag to represent the continent of Europe. It has no set aspect ratio, but the circle in the center has a circumference equal to the diagonal of the flag. This way you have to know the Pythagorean theorum and a rough approximation of pi to draw it properly (or I guess use a ruler and string if you hate fun). This embeds one of the few things it's still OK for Europeans to feel proud of (their history of science and learning) into the design of the flag itself. Here it is at six of the most common aspect ratios for modern flags:

[Kuchigakatai]

Finally, read a bit about allocutive verb marking which, while not named as such, is given a passing reference in Describing Morphosyntax. It's basically marking number, gender, and/or T/V status of a non-argument speech act participant.

Not seeing too much written on this. See 9.5 of Describing Morphosyntax for an example, also https://www.academia.edu/1817520/Verbal ... erspective
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allocutive_agreement

You'll probably enjoy this:
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01216653/document

It doesn't use the keyword allocutive agreement, but it sure is an interesting discussion of the topic. Make sure to check out examples 9-12 in particular, showing fusion of addressee gender + imperfective/perfective aspect.

[Raphael]

I designed a flag to represent the continent of Europe. It has no set aspect ratio, but the circle in the center has a circumference equal to the diagonal of the flag. This way you have to know the Pythagorean theorum and a rough approximation of pi to draw it properly (or I guess use a ruler and string if you hate fun). This embeds one of the few things it's still OK for Europeans to feel proud of (their history of science and learning) into the design of the flag itself. Here it is at six of the most common aspect ratios for modern flags:

Neat.

[Znex]

I designed a flag to represent the continent of Europe. It has no set aspect ratio, but the circle in the center has a circumference equal to the diagonal of the flag. This way you have to know the Pythagorean theorum and a rough approximation of pi to draw it properly (or I guess use a ruler and string if you hate fun). This embeds one of the few things it's still OK for Europeans to feel proud of (their history of science and learning) into the design of the flag itself. Here it is at six of the most common aspect ratios for modern flags:

Wait, so the size of the circle in each aspect ratio depends directly on the diagonal? That sounds needlessly complicated but also completely European, so well done!

[Ares Land]

I reworked the Simbri noun classes, and I finally ended up with a satisfying system:

classes.png (72.81 KiB) Viewed 7578 times