Balog: a strictly monovalent conlang

[bradrn]

So yeah, it annoys me when people mix up these two categories of things and mix and match words from each: ... but it's a very well trodden path, and I do it myself because (a) I'm a hypocrite and (b) when using preexisting words, it's hard not to have the way you use them shaped by the way they are used.

Well, I can’t argue with that! I find it much clearer to keep those two categories of words entirely separate, though.

It's much clearer if I say clauses consist of "predicate then subject" rather than "verb then subject" and if I don't refer to the subject phrase in any way that indicates it's a noun, but essentially what I've been doing is using the existing words verb and noun to create an interpretation of the grammar. There are two obvious interpretations … Both arrive at exactly the same result. Neither is perfect, but I know of no diagnostic test that rules either out because the definitions of "verb" and "noun" are defined within each language and cross-linguistically have very fuzzy, generalised definitions.

This sort of gets to the core of my terminological argument, though. If ‘verb’ and ‘noun’ are defined within each language (which they are), but your language has no diagnostic test which can distinguish the two categories… then what grounds do you have to use those words?

The words we use are just a framework to describe the phenomenon. Descriptions can differ enormously, but still accurately describe the same thing.

Of course, but we can still think of one description as being better or clearer than another.

You could just as well call them ‘articles’ and on that basis call the content words ‘nouns’, which can be used alone in a monovalent ‘copular construction’.

Yeah, I said exactly that a couple of posts ago.

For example, I'm calling the content words verbs because they are unmarked in predicates and marked by a nominaliser in subjects, but another way to look at it would be to call them nouns. When appearing in a subject, they are preceded by an article. The lack of an article indicates the predicate and one could posit an underlying, unexpressed copula. The end result is exactly the same structure though, and it's simply easier to call them verbs (for me anyway), although there are follow-on effects. Once I call them verbs, then things like VERB CN1 VERB become descriptions of converbs, whereas if I were calling these nouns, they would just be compounds or analagous structures.

Ah, sorry, forgot about that.

The problem is, that the two interpretations I mentioned above provide a framework to name other structures, and once I start using the word vun rather than verb, then the whole thing we've been talking about with converbs with ai/-e- and o/-o- needs a new name and something else needs a new name, and I'll either have to end up talking about gismu rafsiing the fu'ivla brivlaically (and lose everyone reading and be accused of thinking my language is a special snowflake that can't be constrained to English words) or I'll have to create additional English-based terminology or use horrendously clunky phrases like "content word" (and lose everyone reading and be accused of thinking my language is a special snowflake that can't be constrained to existing English words).

But have you considered that this language really is a special snowflake? After all, the whole point was to experiment with monovalency, which is something that never happens naturally. Sure, in most cases the usual terminology is more suitable, but this is a situation where I think it’s justified to talk about things a bit differently.

(Oh, and if the mere mention of a ‘content word’ is enough to lose people, I think it’s fair to say that they really have no business critiquing this stuff. Same goes for people who attempt to criticise an experimental language for being ‘iMpOsSiBlE‘.)

Sticking to one of the interpretations I outlined above, it's much easier to make it clear that there are no abrupt, irregular changes of meaning of some lexemes depending on their position in the sentence. Either describing the CWs as verbs that are relativised to be used in the subject, or as nouns with an underlying, unexpressed copula in the predicate, makes it clear what the meaning of any CW will be in the other sentence position and eliminates the room for assumptions about verby words taking on a gerund meaning etc. To me, a description of a language that succinctly makes it clear how it's used is superior to one that doesn't make it as clear or requires more extensive explanations to make it clear.

This kind of problem is why I invariably start off my grammars with a section on ‘Word Classes’, so that it’s completely clear how I’m using the terms ‘noun’ and ‘verb’, and what their properties are in this particular language. I don’t think anyone could fault you if you go through this discussion and set out precisely what ‘content word’ (or ‘veb’) means, how it relates to the usual category ‘noun’ and ‘verb’, and why the latter two aren’t entirely appropriate for Balog.

[Imralu]

It's much clearer if I say clauses consist of "predicate then subject" rather than "verb then subject" and if I don't refer to the subject phrase in any way that indicates it's a noun, but essentially what I've been doing is using the existing words verb and noun to create an interpretation of the grammar. There are two obvious interpretations … Both arrive at exactly the same result. Neither is perfect, but I know of no diagnostic test that rules either out because the definitions of "verb" and "noun" are defined within each language and cross-linguistically have very fuzzy, generalised definitions.

This sort of gets to the core of my terminological argument, though. If ‘verb’ and ‘noun’ are defined within each language (which they are), but your language has no diagnostic test which can distinguish the two categories… then what grounds do you have to use those words?

Well, using the verbal terminology, there is a very clear distinction between verbs (open class, all content words) and nouns (closed class, essentially pronouns, indicating rank, definiteness and specificity, propositional and non-specific/non-ranked nonspecific animate and inanimate.)

Code: Select all

All nouns:
                     DEF    SPEC   NSPEC
              Rank: 
                 A:  uu     uquu   uhuu
                 B:  aa     aqaa   ahaa
                 C:  oo     oqoo   ohoo
                 D:  ee     eqee   ehee
                 E:  ii     iqii   ihii

     PROPOSITIONAL:  ää     äqäa   ähää

  RANKLESS ANIMATE:  -      -      euu/äuu
RANKLESS INANIMATE:  -      -      eii/äii

I'm going back to the totally default example sentence but marking the nouns and verbs:

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Magaz ii.
magaz      ii
fall.over  DEF(e)
VERB-----  NOUN--
[PRED___]  [SUBJ]
"It falls over."

Magaz iddauz.
magaz      ii=    dauz
fall.over  DEF(e) be.tree
VERB-----  NOUN-- VERB---
[PRED___]  [SUBJ________]
"It falls over."

*Magaz dauz.

*Magaz ii ii.

*Ii magaz.

*Immagaz iddauz.

*Immagaz dauz

There is a very clear diagnostic distinction between these two classes of words and they correspond pretty well to the categories of verb and (pro)noun in other languages.

Verbs are words which can (1) head the predicate and (2) can act as modifiers within the predicate. They cannot (3) head the subject.

Nouns are words which can (4) constitute the entire subject or (5) head the subject. They cannot (6) appear at all within the predicate.

You could just as well call them ‘articles’ and on that basis call the content words ‘nouns’, which can be used alone in a monovalent ‘copular construction’.

Yeah, I said exactly that a couple of posts ago.

For example, I'm calling the content words verbs because they are unmarked in predicates and marked by a nominaliser in subjects, but another way to look at it would be to call them nouns. When appearing in a subject, they are preceded by an article. The lack of an article indicates the predicate and one could posit an underlying, unexpressed copula. The end result is exactly the same structure though, and it's simply easier to call them verbs (for me anyway), although there are follow-on effects. Once I call them verbs, then things like VERB CN1 VERB become descriptions of converbs, whereas if I were calling these nouns, they would just be compounds or analagous structures.

Ah, sorry, forgot about that.

If we regard the content words as nouns, though, there is no noun-verb dichotomy in the language at all because the only thing that could be called a verb is the unexpressed copula posited for predicates.

But have you considered that this language really is a special snowflake? After all, the whole point was to experiment with monovalency, which is something that never happens naturally. Sure, in most cases the usual terminology is more suitable, but this is a situation where I think it’s justified to talk about things a bit differently.

Well yes, of course, but that phrase is now loaded I also don't think it's so out there that entirely new terminology is necessary. As I showed above, there is a noun-verb distinction - it's just that (pro)nouns are a tiny, closed class.

(Oh, and if the mere mention of a ‘content word’ is enough to lose people, I think it’s fair to say that they really have no business critiquing this stuff. Same goes for people who attempt to criticise an experimental language for being ‘iMpOsSiBlE‘.)

At one point, though, that seemed to be the majority of this board. For quite a while, I didn't mention anything of the grammar of my languages because threads about it just got so fucking tedious because I was basically forced to explain the lack of a LEXICAL distinction between verbs and nouns to people who couldn't grasp that I wasn't talking about syntactic structures like predicate and subject. Again, the terminology of SVO/SOV etc. still really annoys me because it mixes syntax with lexical classes and encourages this nonsense.

This kind of problem is why I invariably start off my grammars with a section on ‘Word Classes’, so that it’s completely clear how I’m using the terms ‘noun’ and ‘verb’, and what their properties are in this particular language. I don’t think anyone could fault you if you go through this discussion and set out precisely what ‘content word’ (or ‘veb’) means, how it relates to the usual category ‘noun’ and ‘verb’, and why the latter two aren’t entirely appropriate for Balog.

It's still not clear to me why you're saying that calling the content words verbs isn't entirely appropriate. The only issue I can see is that it's counterintuitive to have semantically nouny concepts handled by a class called verbs and that it may create some unintended expectations in readers, but using neutral non-noun, non-verb terminology such as "content word" or vun does not prevent incorrect expectations about how the words are used, and I'd also say it's worse because it doesn't provide a simple framework to understand it and how it's applied across the lexicon regardless of semantics. Regarding subjects (beyond the simple pronominal ones) as containing relative clauses is one way to rid all expectation of zero-derivation-type random shifts in semantics (like expectations that semantically verby words become gerunds in the subject). Alternatively, regarding predicates as containing an underlying copula would stop expectations of the kind of derivational processes that we have in English between comb (n) and comb (v) or fish (n) and fish (v).

What I have done in some past descriptions of languages is to use the terminology nominals and verbals to act as a bit of a speed bump to signal "close to what you understand of verb and noun, but watch out!". I might resurrect that as I prefer it immensely to "content word" or in-language words. I really don't know why I didn't think of it until now (at least not in this discussion, but it was definitely in my mind, just compartmentalised off). If you see my description of Iliaqu (in my signature), that's exactly the terminology I've used.

[bradrn]

Last night I came across Elliott’s (2021) reference grammar of Enxet Sur… which is densely written, but appears to assert that Enxet is entirely monovalent, with all apparent ‘arguments’ being either the sole complement of a verb, or the nominal predicates of an independent clause. It may be worth a read if you want some ideas around this. It does seem to have a firm noun/verb distinction, though.

(Also, apologies for not responding to your last post… this thread got lost amongst my hundreds of tabs, and now I’ve largely forgotten what we were arguing about!)

[vegfarandi]

The closest to strictly monovalent I've seen in a natural language is Coptic, the latest and final stage of Egyptian. Every object requires a preposition, the ones that are called direct objects get /ən/ or [insert other preposition I have to check on when I get home]; both of which can be dropped in certain syntactic environments, whereas other prepositions cannot. But people have called it one of the haziest transitivity situations on the record.

[bradrn]

The closest to strictly monovalent I've seen in a natural language is Coptic, the latest and final stage of Egyptian. Every object requires a preposition, the ones that are called direct objects get /ən/ or [insert other preposition I have to check on when I get home]; both of which can be dropped in certain syntactic environments, whereas other prepositions cannot. But people have called it one of the haziest transitivity situations on the record.

Apparently it can be n-/m- before nouns or mmo- before suffix pronouns, according to Haspelmath’s chapter in Egyptian-Coptic Linguistics in Typological Perspective (ed. Grossman, Haspelmath & Richter 2015). Coptic just seems a bit crazy in general, though. Mind you, I’m not sure it’s any more strange than Enxet Sur in this regard.

[vegfarandi]

The closest to strictly monovalent I've seen in a natural language is Coptic, the latest and final stage of Egyptian. Every object requires a preposition, the ones that are called direct objects get /ən/ or [insert other preposition I have to check on when I get home]; both of which can be dropped in certain syntactic environments, whereas other prepositions cannot. But people have called it one of the haziest transitivity situations on the record.

Apparently it can be n-/m- before nouns or mmo- before suffix pronouns, according to Haspelmath’s chapter in Egyptian-Coptic Linguistics in Typological Perspective (ed. Grossman, Haspelmath & Richter 2015). Coptic just seems a bit crazy in general, though. Mind you, I’m not sure it’s any more strange than Enxet Sur in this regard.

Yes /əmmo/ is the pre-pronominal state of the preposition /ən/ but there is another lexeme altogether that has the same properties (i.e. being removed in certain positions) which I'll have to look up later. Coptic is indeed very crazy.

[Imralu]

The closest to strictly monovalent I've seen in a natural language is Coptic, the latest and final stage of Egyptian. Every object requires a preposition, the ones that are called direct objects get /ən/ or [insert other preposition I have to check on when I get home]; both of which can be dropped in certain syntactic environments, whereas other prepositions cannot. But people have called it one of the haziest transitivity situations on the record.

How does that differ from Japanese, where even core cases (subject, object) have to be marked by a postposition and it can only be dropped if it is instead marked as the topic? I guess what I mean is: how is /ən/ anything other than an accusative marker?

[Imralu]

I'm back with two topics.

Demonstratives:
This is a continuation of something I've had in quite a lot of my conlangs. I've generally liked going with a pretty standard three-way distinction, associating each with one of the grammatical persons. In every natlang I know that has a three way distinction into proximate/1 ↔ medial/2 ↔ distal/3, referents that are equally near the speaker and the listener tend to default to the proximate/1 form. For example, to say "this house", when both the speaker and addressee are inside the house and thus both equally close, in Māori, it's tēnei whare, essentially "this house, by me" rather than tēnā whare "that house, by you".

A long time ago, in one of my conlangs, I decided that cases like this where the referent is equally close to speaker and listener, using the medial/2 form is more polite, as it is essentially using the 2nd person as the reference point rather than the 1st person.

In Balog, the terrible shenanigans with rank rear their heads among the demonstratives too.

The demonstratives are built on a stem including the vowels /i/, /a/ and /u/ for proximate, medial and distal respectively. The choice of vowel uses only the first person as a reference point. The final consonant comes from the proforms: ž for 1st person (exclusive), ŋ for 1st+2nd person, l for 2nd person. In polite speech, where rank is not being highlighted (at least by demonstratives) something equally near the speaker and the listener is referred to with diŋ, with the proximal vowel /i/ and the 1+2 proform /ŋ/. This is customary when speakers are ranked not too far apart from each other. With large rank differences, speakers are more likely to use one of the unequal forms for equally close referents: diž, using oneself as the sole reference point (as in the natlangs I know), indicates dominance. The demonstrative dil, using the 2nd person consonant /l/ along with the proximate-to-first-person vowel /i/, indicates subordination while mentioning something close to both speaker and addressee.

Code: Select all

     Location:→ | Near 1st      | Equally Near  | Near 2nd      | Away from     |
      Speaker:↓ | Person only   | 1st&2nd P.    | Person only   | 1st&2nd       |
                |———————————————|———————————————|———————————————|———————————————|
      Dominant: |      diž      |      diž      |      dal      |      duŋ      |
                |---------------|———————————————|---------------|---------------|
        Polite: |      diž      |      diŋ      |      dal      |      duŋ      |
                |---------------|———————————————|---------------|---------------|
    Submissive: |      diž      |      dil      |      dal      |      duŋ      |
                |———————————————|———————————————|———————————————|———————————————|

Parts of speech:

Re. the terminology for the parts of speech, I've decided to drop all mention of nouns, verbs, nominal, verbal etc. and use only neutral terminology in my new dictionary that I'm creating. I've come up with some native terminology for the classes, which lump the subject clitics and the "connectors" together.

Code: Select all

|———————————————|———————————————|———————————————|———————————————|———————————————|————————|————————| 
| Native        | Direct        | New           | Abbreviation: | Subcategories:| Begins | Ends   |
| Terminology:  | Translation:  | Terminology:  |               |               | with:  | with:  |
|———————————————|———————————————|———————————————|———————————————|———————————————|————————|————————|   
| xam           | meat          | contentives   | CTV           |→ Open         |   C    |   C    |
|               |               |               |               |  Contentives  |        |        |
|               |               |               |               |→ Pro-         |        |        |
|               |               |               |               |  contentives  |        |        |
|———————————————|———————————————|———————————————|———————————————|———————————————|————————|————————|   
| mološ         | sauce         | linkers       | LNK           |→ subject      | (w)V   |   V    |
|               |               |               |               |  clitics (SC) |        |        |
|               |               |               |               |→ "connectors" |        |        |
|———————————————|———————————————|———————————————|———————————————|———————————————|————————|————————|   
| tlaz          | spice         | modifiers     | MOD           |→ TAM          |   C    |   V    |
|               |               |               |               |→ case         |        |        |
|               |               |               |               |→ discourse m. |        |        |
|               |               |               |               |→ polarity     |        |        |
|               |               |               |               |→ degree       |        |        |
|               |               |               |               |→ voice        |        |        |
|               |               |               |               |→ abstraction  |        |        |
|               |               |               |               |→ etc.         |        |        |
|———————————————|———————————————|———————————————|———————————————|———————————————|————————|————————|

"Meat words" are those that are essential for the meaning in the sentence. Clauses are built out of meat word bound together with sauce words. Spice words are regarded by some as optional and there are styles of language use which use very few of them (c.f. parataxis), but it's not as "rich" as amply spiced speech and more used for pithy aphorisms and laconic phrases.

Although I call them modifiers, syntactically, it's easiest to regard the left-most spice word or meat word as the head of the phrase — but I call them modifiers because, semantically, they generally make quite small adjustments to the meaning of the phrases they are in, with the meat word providing the bulk of the semantic information (c.f. determiners heading nouns, prepositions heading determiner phrases, TAM being regarded, at least in X-Bar theory, as the head of the predicate etc). "Modifier" is perhaps not the best term for this reason, but I can't think of a better one right now.

The fact that each type of morpheme can be identified by its first and last phoneme is decidedly unnaturalistic, however, combined with the structure of clauses (CTVs are always separated by LNKs; MODs may precede CTVs or other MODs, as long as a CTV is behind them or the last one is contentivised by the contentivising suffix -q) it has the consequence that a clause never contains a consonant cluster (aside from where semivowels appear next to another consonant). Consonant clusters are only found at the margins of clauses. With a few handwavium flakes sprinkled on, we could imagine that the phonotactics of clauses contribute to the reliability of the phonotactics of each class, and, in one sense, we could regard each clause as a CV(CV(CV(CV(...))))(C) word with recursive embedding slots.

CONTENTIVE PHRASE (CTVP) STRUCTURE:

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(MOD (MOD (MOD (...))) CTV (LNK CTVP (LNK CTVP (...)))
 C→V  C→V  C→V         C→C  V→V C→C   V→V C→C

CLAUSE STRUCTURE:

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CTVP SC  (CTVP) 
C→C  V→V  C→C

SENTENCE STRUCTURE:

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CLAUSE (CLAUSE) (CLAUSE) (CLAUSE) (...)
C→C/V   C→C/V    C→C/V    C→C/V

(The arrow just means "and the final phoneme is". There could be any number of syllables in between, or, in the case of some CTVs and LNKs, nothing in between if they consist of a single phoneme.)

[bradrn]

Parts of speech:

This seems better to me! And much more interesting than the ‘noun’/‘verb’ distinction, too.

[Imralu]

Parts of speech:

This seems better to me! And much more interesting than the ‘noun’/‘verb’ distinction, too.

Thanks! What do you make of the term "modifiers" though?

[bradrn]

Parts of speech:

This seems better to me! And much more interesting than the ‘noun’/‘verb’ distinction, too.

Thanks! What do you make of the term "modifiers" though?

A bit vague, but seems reasonable enough to me, especially given that you define the term before using it.

[Imralu]

So, I'm back with a topic that I'm usually not interested in, numbers, and a challenge to work out how the number system works.

I don't really like maths, so my number systems in conlangs are usually the simplest thing I can come up with that won't require me to do any calculations, so I've always used base ten and very often just had long numbers simply be pronounced as a string of digits, which results in some silly things like, in one of my languages, 100,000 being pronounced as nwazeze-zezeze and 1,000,000 being nwa-zezeze-zezeze, which is, quite frankly, terrible (but kind of hilariously terrible), and the topic of numbers just bores me so much that I can never be bothered to spend much time on it — even though otherwise I'm often looking for the most unnatural ways to do things.

In the last couple of days, I've just decided to overhaul the number system completely and come up a system that is just bonkers enough for me to enjoy it enough to put myself through the pain of figuring it out. I won't give away too much in the justification of it and what else it integrates well with just yet, but this system has ended up providing words for an entirely different domain as well and that's really exciting.

So, here are the numbers up to 70. My challenge for you is to work out how it works and extend the system further (either from 71 onwards or just some random numbers wherever you can predict them). ALSO, please let me know if you spot any errors anywhere the numbers I've written down. The system is consistent, but I am scatterbrained and covered in ink from trying to work this out. I haven't found any of my own mistakes yet, but the odds that I've worked out seventy numbers in this system without misplacing a letter are pretty low ... like maybe na in žedzatlu.)

Click "show" to see the numbers.

More: show

1 na
2 ge
3 nega
4 žu
5 nuža
6 guže
7 nugeža
8 ti
9 nita
10 gite
11 nigeta
12 žitu
13 nižuta
14 gižute
15 nigužeta
16 wo
17 nowa
18 gowe
19 nogewa
20 žowu
21 nožuwa
22 gožuwe
23 nogužewa
24 towi
25 notiwa
26 gotiwe
27 nogitewa
28 žotiwu
29 nožituwa
30 gožituwe
31 nogižutewa
32 dza
33 nadza
34 gadze
35 nagedza
36 žadzu
37 nažudza
38 gažudze
39 nagužedza
40 tadzi
41 natidza
42 gatidze
43 nagitedza
44 žatidzu
45 nažitudza
46 gažitudze
47 nagižutedza
48 wadzo
49 nawodza
50 gawodze
51 nagowedza
52 žawodzu
53 nažowudza
54 gažowudze
55 nagožuwedza
56 tawodzi
57 natowidza
58 gatowidze
59 nagotiwedza
60 žatowidzu
61 nažotiwudza
62 gažotiwudze
63 nagožituwedza
64 tle
65 netla
66 getle
67 negetla
68 žetlu
69 nežutla
70 gežutle

[xxx]

71 negužetla
72 tetli
73 netitla
...
and shouldn't we have :
65 netla

[Imralu]

71 negužetla
72 tetli
73 netitla

Yes! You've got it!

and shouldn't we have :
65 netla

Yes! Thank you! I'll edit it now.

[Imralu]

OK, here is the explanation post about the number system.

I have changed the letter g in the sound system to h since I last posted about it. I'm about to let Janko know too.

Balog and the sign language that most Balog speakers are fluent in both use a binary number system that supplanted a much earlier natural system that had a higher base number. Finger binary is used as the counting system in the sign language and also by non-signers for counting on the fingers. The lowest value on each hand is always the thumb, as it's easier to move the thumb back and forth quickly than the pinky. Each finger and thus each power of two is represented by a monosyllabic morpheme.

1 = na (thumb)
2 = he (index finger)
4 = žu (middle finger)
8 = ti (ring finger)
16 = wo (little finger)
32 = dza (thumb of second hand)
64 = tle (index of second hand)
128 = kqu (middle of second hand)
256 = si (ring of second hand)
512 = ro (pinky of second hand)

A number such as 58 (111010 in binary) can be represented by the thumb extended on the non-dominant hand and the pinky, ring finger and index finger extended on the dominant hand (32 + 16 + 8 + 2 = 58), and the spoken number consists of the corresponding morphemes: dza, wo, ti and he, however they do simply line up as dzawotihe. This is understood, but is regarded as something children and backwater, uneducated folks do, something like just reading out the digits in a long number in English. The prescriptive, standard way to do this is to give the consonants from the smallest value to the largest and the vowels from the largest to the smallest.

32 + 16 + 8 + 2 = 58

dzawotihe → hatowidze

Children learn to say the numbers partially by rote, but for bigger numbers, they can count across their extended fingers from thumb to pinky, dominant hand first, for the consonants and from pinky to thumb, non-dominant hand first, for the vowels.

The reason for this is that, out-of-world, I wanted it to be weird and difficult, but also found the endless repetition of the same syllables again and again really monotonous and it also adds redundancy, or, rather, spreads out the redundancy. For example, the consonants and the vowel of each morpheme out of order gives a chance to understand the number even if a whole syllable is missing. (Unless it's the middle syllable of a number consisting of an odd number of syllables/fingers.) For example, every odd number begins with n and ends with a. The first syllable nu- tells you, for example, that it's an odd number between 4 and 8 (in which case, the word will end with -ža) or between 128 and 256, in which case it will end with -kqa.

Using both hands, one can get numbers as large as 1,023 (all fingers extended on both hands, ten bits all filled by ones): nohižutewadzotlikquseva.

For higher numbers, additional "sets of hands" are imagined in order to represent more bits. These are indicated, both in the signed and the spoken language, with a prefix that indicates which "set" of hands it is, starting with the highest number. Consonants and vowels are only exchanged within a set of hands, not between sets.

(nabwa-) = first set of hands (only used when preceded by another set of hands, or for emphasis)
hebwa- = second set of hands
nehabwa- = third set of hands
žubwa- = fourth set of hands, etc

For example, 1024 (1 followed by ten zeros in binary) is hebwana. 1025 (10000000001 in binary) is hebwananabwana, with hebwana representing the dominant thumb extended on second set of hands ( = 1024), then nabwana dominant thumb extended on first set of hands). 137,438,953,472 (1 followed by 37 zeros in binary) is žubwakqu, the non-dominant middle finger on the fourth set of hands.

For ridiculously large numbers, new words don't really need to be coined. The trisyllabic robwaro means 2⁵¹¹⁹, which AI tells me is a number with 1541 digits, assuming it and I have done everything correctly. If you want to go higher than 2¹⁰²²⁹, then I suppose you could double up the -bwa- prefixing, but my head is starting to hurt.

These are only the counting numbers. For use in a sentence, they must be contentivised by the addition of a suffix. Different suffixes perform different things. The plain contentiviser -q just makes the name of the number. E.g. if I say thirty-seven is my favourite number, I'd use the form nažudzaq. To form a numbered group, which is probably the most common use, the suffix -ŋ (dissimilating to -n after velar consonants) is added. "There are 37 dogs" begins with nažudzaŋ. I haven't yet decided what the ordinal number is going to be suffixed with.

A weirder derivation is with -b. The contentive b on its own means "to use one's hand(s)" and added to the end of the number, it indicates the exact formation of one's hands. For example, to give someone the finger with the dominant hand is žub, with the non-dominant hand is kqub and with both hands is žukqub (although in Balog culture it doesn't at all have the meaning it does in Western Terran culture but is instead a somewhat discreet suggestion to have sex). To do this handshape:is nohewab, etc. This is used for describing many specific gestures and widely known signs, as well as for actions involving specific handshapes. "To point" with an index finger is most often heb "do the two-hand". At the risk of getting a bit crude, hožuweb could also be used with a very specific meaning.

It's time for me to sleep. I'm sure errors abound in this post.

[TomHChappell]

I like this!

[äreo]

Yeah man, this is really cool, brain-stretching stuff. Both very "human" and arguably very computer-adaptable.

[Imralu]

I like this!

Thanks!

Yeah man, this is really cool, brain-stretching stuff. Both very "human" and arguably very computer-adaptable.

Thanks! I guess it could be, but the link between clauses is often very contextual. For example: mul oož žiyel aa, literally "I use my mouth | he begins to know" would generally mean "I told/informed him", but what I actually do with my mouth is left up to context. The word mul is also used for "eating", so it could mean that he learns of my eating.

Wež oož kaž aa, literally "I use my eyes | he dies in an accident caused by another" probably means "I saw him die in an accident", but could also mean "I accidentally killed him with my eyes". The latter interpretation is less likely just because what eyes do is generally expected to be more perceptive and less causational. In most contexts, it's difficult to kill someone with your eyes. Wež oož žiyel aa, literally "I use my eyes | he begins to know" could mean that "I saw his learning", but most likely means "I indicated something to him with my eyes" because that is an act of causation by the eyes that seems more likely in this case than perception, because the actual learning process is not visible (although it often causes visible changes to facial expression etc.). b]B'oož kaž aa[/b], literally "I use my hand(s) | he dies in an accident caused by another" almost certainly means "I accidentally killed him", but it could mean that I felt him die.

All of this ambiguity could be resolved by adding additional clauses (e.g. wež oož m'oo žiyel aa "I use my eyes | I perceive | he begins to know" vs wež oož g'oo žiyel aa "I use my eyes | I cause | he begins to know" vs wež oož šuwev oo žiyel aa "I use my eyes | I show/point out | he begins to know") or changing lexemes. E.g. instead of mul "use one's mouth", you could use either ŋuweb "cause something to be uttered" (i.e. "utter something") or tuwem "cause something to be consumed" (i.e. "eat/drink something"), but all that really does is shorten the gaps that need to be jumped to understand something.

I can see how some aspects of it might lend itself to unambiguous communication with computers, but I think some aspects are likely to be even less compatible with computers. For computer translation, for example, "show" can be represented in a huge number of ways that probably indicate exactly how something is shown and different lexemes will be used depending on which arguments of "show" are expressed:

• šuwev [X] "X shows something to someone"
• ? [X] šuhev [Y] "X shows something to Y"
• ? [X] m [Y] šev [Z] "X shows Z to Y"
  
  ("?" could be b if it's pointing with the hand, wež if it's pointing with the eyes, hif if pointing with the nose, dwar if pointing with the top of the head, tlag if the show-er physically leads the seer to the seen, etc.)

And a general problem of translating into Balog, regardless of whether it's machine translation or human translation, is that one generally doesn't know the ranks that the speaker would assign to each referent. E.g. if given a sentence like "I saw my neighbour", the ranks assigned to "I" and to "neighbour" depend on who could beat who in a fight and also, in general, how "badass" they are relative to the rest of whatever segment of society is contextually construed as the setting (e.g. if I'm a brown belt in Jiu Jitsu and my neighbour is a black belt, I'd be 2 and he'd be 1, but I might bump us down if we're also likely to talk about a billionaire or some politically powerful person in a context in which they have power over us — if we're ancient old men and he is in a wheelchair and on dialysis and I merely require a Zimmer frame to walk around, I'd be rank 4 and he'd be rank 5, unless we're also going to talk about my pet Madagascar hissing cockroach, in which case, I'd bump the two of us humans up one rank higher). When writing in the conlang fluency thread, I've been quite arrogantly giving myself rank 2 and ranking other referents lower just because, statistically, it's likely that I'm taller than whoever I'm talking to (although I think I remember that Jal is taller, so I've been ranking him higher), but it's not as if I have any real fighting skills, but it's not as if anyone can challenge me to physical combat to get me to rank them higher, or anyone is even very aware of or paying attention to an obscure grammatical category that I use in my language. Honestly, I think this language is mostly just a nightmare to use , but it's a nightmare that can be kind of fun. I definitely hate the grammatical category rank and that makes it more fun in a way. The grammatical category accessibility that I have in another one of my languages is something I like a lot more and would find very useful in daily life (basically consent to physical touch is encoded in the pronouns), but that makes it less fun in a way because it's more fun to think of creative dystopias ... dystopiae ... than just make one's own personal utopia.

[Man in Space]

Wež oož kaž aa, literally "I use my eyes | he dies in an accident caused by another" probably means "I saw him die in an accident", but could also mean "I accidentally killed him with my eyes".

How do you get that second meaning? Or does “he dies in an accident caused by another” imply it’s a cause external to the victim rather than the speaker?

[Imralu]

Wež oož kaž aa, literally "I use my eyes | he dies in an accident caused by another" probably means "I saw him die in an accident", but could also mean "I accidentally killed him with my eyes".

How do you get that second meaning? Or does “he dies in an accident caused by another” imply it’s a cause external to the victim rather than the speaker?

Yeah, kaž contrasts with zeuh, "accidentally kill oneself", "die in an accident caused by oneself". It doesn't reference the speaker at all, only the subject or non-subject cause of the accident resulting in death. It's essentially the same distinction as "be murdered" vs "commit suicide" except with express non-intentionality.

I'm a bit mystified that you read "another" as "someone other than the speaker" though. Is that a common distinction in languages? I know of some languages having a different lexical word for "my mother" and "my father" as opposed to anyone else's mother or father (from memory, Zulu and/or Xhosa), English had that weird "will/shall" alteration for 1st person (which feels like prescriptivist bullshit to me, but I can also accept that it may have been based on a natural distinction) and there is suppletion in a lot of cases, like the present tense of the verb andare in Italian or be in many languages, where different verbs were used for different persons and over time it's been taken to be the conjugation of one verb, but is there any language where a different lexical verb is used for "I kill" than "you kill" or "it is killed by me" or "it is killed by someone other than me"? I guess there doesn't need to be any natlang precedent for something for it to appear in my conlangs because I'm usually more concerned about what might work and be fun than what already exists, so maybe you just expected my language to be even weirder than it is? Or is there some nuance in the word "another" that I've temporarily forgotten? Would it have been clearer if I had said "non-self-caused accident"? (Wait ... that sounds like the accident was not caused by itself!) I don't know. I just basically don't quite understand your thought process there and I'm curious about it.

On that topic though, there are very few cases in Balog where the first person is treated differently from other persons: the only one off the top of my head is the jussive/subjunctive/(co)hortative/weak imperative/desiderative/"shouldative" mood marker he, which expresses the speaker's opinion of what should happen, not anyone else's opinion (unless using something like direct or reported speech of course where it is made clear whose opinion it is), but in the contentives, other than the proforms themselves and things derived from them such as demonstratives, locatives and directionals, I can't think of any special treatment or referencing of specifically the first person independent of the person of the subject.