Conlang Random Thread

[Moose-tache]

What is a consonantal root system but ablaut on steroids?

[bradrn]

What is a consonantal root system but ablaut on steroids?

Yeah, I guess that’s fair. (And on reflection, I suspect I was confusing ‘ablaut’ with ‘umlaut’.)

[Travis B.]

Another objection is that "chon" or "ton" doesn't seem to mean anything, while "day" does. That also makes it difficult to parse. I'd stick to more familiar language. E.g. "tenfold", or "halfscore", or "tennight".

Agreed. I would go with "tenday" myself.

[linguistcat]

Another objection is that "chon" or "ton" doesn't seem to mean anything, while "day" does. That also makes it difficult to parse. I'd stick to more familiar language. E.g. "tenfold", or "halfscore", or "tennight".

Agreed. I would go with "tenday" myself.

I don't really want it to be that transparent though. I looked up where <week> came from and it meant week for a pretty long stretch of its existence, but originally came from Proto-Germanic *wikǭ meaning “turn, succession, change, week” (according to wiktionary at least). Or *weyg- *weyk- (“to bend, wind, turn, yield”) in PIE if we want it having no meaning having to do with time directly. In either case I wouldn't have known week came from those meanings if I hadn't looked it up. I also don't want to name the ten day period a week, but I might be calling a rabbit a smearp with that one.

[Ahzoh]

Another objection is that "chon" or "ton" doesn't seem to mean anything, while "day" does. That also makes it difficult to parse. I'd stick to more familiar language. E.g. "tenfold", or "halfscore", or "tennight".

Agreed. I would go with "tenday" myself.

I don't really want it to be that transparent though. I looked up where <week> came from and it meant week for a pretty long stretch of its existence, but originally came from Proto-Germanic *wikǭ meaning “turn, succession, change, week” (according to wiktionary at least). Or *weyg- *weyk- (“to bend, wind, turn, yield”) in PIE if we want it having no meaning having to do with time directly. In either case I wouldn't have known week came from those meanings if I hadn't looked it up. I also don't want to name the ten day period a week, but I might be calling a rabbit a smearp with that one.

I wonder if Old English or West Germanic were to have a word like tīendæġ or tehundag if it would end up looking like tenday by the time it went through all the sound changes or end up less transparent. Also a decade can apparently also refer to a period of 10 days, though people would easily confuse it with a decade of years.

[jal]

I don't really want it to be that transparent though.

Your prerogative of course, but in that case anything goes.


JAL

[Ahzoh]

When I decide to incorporate syncretism that isn't motivated by sound change, how do I decide what direction the merge occurs? Nominative-Accusative syncretism in animates is rather straightforward; the nominative takes the form of the accusative because inanimates are not commonly agents or thinking experiencers of actions so the form is less common.

But if I want to merge the ablative with the instrumental, or the accusative and the instrumental, which takes what form? Does the ablative take the instrumental form or does the instrumental take the ablative form? Likewise for the accusative and instrumental. Is it completely arbitrary? And is grammatical number factor? Or is that also arbitrary?

[jal]

When I decide to incorporate syncretism that isn't motivated by sound change, how do I decide what direction the merge occurs?

Without any knowledge about natlangs that did things like this, I'd say it heavily depends on the frequency of use of these cases, and the grammar rules for using them. Hell, if your conculture is mad about sports, and the object of "throw" gets the ablative, their frequency of use may be so high in everyday speech, that these objects (ball, spear, whatever) may also get the ablative in other uses, replacing, for those nouns, the accusative and/or instrumental. This may bring about a change in other objects too, until all objects get these cases, always.

Less far-fetched, if the instrumental is used with certain prepositions, but then the most usewd prepositions erode are fall out of use because the instrumental already indicates whatever the preposition did ("with", "using" etc.), the instrumental may be reanalyzed as an accusative.

So, before asking the question "how do I merge", take a good look at the grammatical constructions, the use of the cases, the possible semantic changes that could make, etc.


JAL

[Ahzoh]

I think I might play around with Vrkhazhian having an extremely simple split-ergative system where pronouns are accusative and noun are ergative. like so:

Pronouns
-m (nominative)
-s (accusative)

Full Nouns
-s (absolutive)
-n (animate ergative-instrumental)
-n/-r (inanimate instrumental)

ān-am (1cs-NOM)
nāy-as (1cs-ACC)
rābi-s (man-ABS.SG)
rābi-n (man-ERG.SG)

It would at least solve the issue of how one of the gods' names is Mamu and would be rendered in morphology as Mamû-m (Mamu-NOM), which in my abjad would be rendered MM(W)M which looks very stupid. And I also get to keep the first-person pronouns ānam and ādam morphologically consistent.

And if the ergative is merged with the instrumental, then I can do fun things like I-NOM Nardi-ABS cow-ERG/INS sacrifice-DAT.APPL "I sacrificed a cow to Nardi" and Nardi-ERG/INS wheat-ERG/ABS fields-INS grow-INS.APPL "Nardi made the fields grow wheat"

[WeepingElf]

That makes sense to me, and it is interestingly different from the Early PIE/Hittite-like system you have pondered before.

[Ahzoh]

That makes sense to me, and it is interestingly different from the Early PIE/Hittite-like system you have pondered before.

I had before postulated that an ancestor language had a tripartite alignment, involving the suffixes -m, -s, and -n, which would in Vrkhazhian manifest in animates having nominative -s and accusative -n while inanimates would have direct (both nom and acc) -m. But then opted for nominative -m, accusative -s, and instrumental -n.

Though now I can still say the ancestor was tripartite that evolved into a split-erg system; intransitive subject -m becomes nominative -m, transitive agent -n becomes ergative -n, and object-patient -s becomes either accusative -s or absolutive -s.

Unrelatedly, I'm not sure if vocative plural should be syncretic with ergative plural or with absolutive plural

[Ahzoh]

Does the thing shown in the image below make sense? Or would it make more sense for stative/dynamic transitive verbs to have nominative marking, stative intransitive verbs to have accusative/absolutive marking, and dynamic intransitive verbs to have ergative marking?

[WeepingElf]

This indeed makes sense to me. No, it is, as bradrn has said, the wrong way round (I didn't notice that, sorry).

[jal]

The only remark I have is that I haven't yet heard of "stative transitive" verbs, as states typically don't involve direct objects. What kind of verbs are these that they warrant a special category?


JAL

[Ahzoh]

The only remark I have is that I haven't yet heard of "stative transitive" verbs, as states typically don't involve direct objects. What kind of verbs are these that they warrant a special category?


JAL

Verbs that involve causing objects directly or indirectly to be placed in states; e.g. become, teach, name, causatives of stative intransitive verbs, have, etc.

[hwhatting]

The only remark I have is that I haven't yet heard of "stative transitive" verbs, as states typically don't involve direct objects. What kind of verbs are these that they warrant a special category?

One example from English would be "love", which is normally counted as stative verb in the versions of English grammar that use the concept and transitive at the same time.
@Ahzoh: that's not how "stative" is normally used...

[Ahzoh]

@Ahzoh: that's not how "stative" is normally used...

I dunno how they're normally used, I'm pretty sure they're just verbs that involve states, conditions or mental stuff, like red, cold, happy, sick, know, believe, understand, etc.

[hwhatting]

@Ahzoh: that's not how "stative" is normally used...

I dunno how they're normally used, I'm pretty sure they're just verbs that involve states, conditions or mental stuff, like red, cold, happy, sick, know, believe, understand, etc.

In principle, yes, but "stative" is normally used for verbs / verb categories that express a state as existing, while changing states is dynamic. So e.g., "know" -> stative, "teach / learn / inform" -> dynamic.

[Ahzoh]

@Ahzoh: that's not how "stative" is normally used...

I dunno how they're normally used, I'm pretty sure they're just verbs that involve states, conditions or mental stuff, like red, cold, happy, sick, know, believe, understand, etc.

In principle, yes, but "stative" is normally used for verbs / verb categories that express a state as existing, while changing states is dynamic. So e.g., "know" -> stative, "teach / learn / inform" -> dynamic.

Hmm, so causatives are always dynamic...

[bradrn]

Does the thing shown in the image below make sense? Or would it make more sense for stative/dynamic transitive verbs to have nominative marking, stative intransitive verbs to have accusative/absolutive marking, and dynamic intransitive verbs to have ergative marking?

The terminology here is really weird. An ergative case is defined as one which marks A but not S, so it makes no sense to have an ergative case which is consistently used for both S and A. Sure, many natlangs have a so-called ‘ergative’ which is also used for some S arguments, but generally it’s grammatical only for a limited subset of them.

Besides, even ignoring that, this feels the wrong way round to me. Active/dynamic verbs generally group S with the more agentive argument, which is A, giving nominative–accusative alignment. Similarly stative verbs naturally group S with the less agentive argument, namely O, giving ergative–absolutive alignment.