Conlang Random Thread

[masako]

Hangul for Klingon...because I'm weird and I got bored.

[conlangernoob]

Hi all,

I'm new here but I'm interested in getting to interact this community more. I have an open question about conlangs but romanization in particular. Can less practical approaches to romanization such as <gn> instead of <ñ> or <ɲ> be justified if they contribute to phonaesthetics?

Thx,

conlangernoob

[Darren]

I'm new here but I'm interested in getting to interact this community more. I have an open question about conlangs but romanization in particular. Can less practical approaches to romanization such as <gn> instead of <ñ> or <ɲ> be justified if they contribute to phonaesthetics?

Absolutely. You can romanise anything however you want. People will probably shout at you if you use something completely unprecedented but you can ignore them (after all, half the time "precedent" is just what some linguist made the fuck up sixty years ago when trying to write Qiangic on a typewriter)

[Ahzoh]

Hi all,

I'm new here but I'm interested in getting to interact this community more. I have an open question about conlangs but romanization in particular. Can less practical approaches to romanization such as <gn> instead of <ñ> or <ɲ> be justified if they contribute to phonaesthetics?

Thx,

conlangernoob

There's usually a diachronic or historical reason for a certain way of spelling. <ñ> exists to represent /ɲ/ because it used to be two <n> together which ended up being pronounced /ɲ(:)/, i.e. Latin /an.num/ "year" > Spanish /a.ɲo/, but Latin /a.nus/ "anus" > Spanish /a.no/. Same thing with <gn>, but it went something like Latin /mag.nus/ "great" > /maŋ.nus/ (assimilation of nasality) > French /ma.ɲə/ or Italian /maɲ.ɲo/.

Of course if you're a language whose writing system was thought up by missionaries/governments (or adopted by people unfamiliar with the writing system), then the rules/logic tend to be more lax.

Absolutely. You can romanise anything however you want. People will probably shout at you if you use something completely unprecedented but you can ignore them (after all, half the time "precedent" is just what some linguist made the fuck up sixty years ago when trying to write Qiangic on a typewriter)

Yea, I came up with the letter <n̮> (n with breve below) to represent /ŋ/ by analogy of <ḫ> /x/, and <n̮> is an unprecedented grapheme.

[bradrn]

I'm new here but I'm interested in getting to interact this community more. I have an open question about conlangs but romanization in particular. Can less practical approaches to romanization such as <gn> instead of <ñ> or <ɲ> be justified if they contribute to phonaesthetics?

Following up on Darren and Ahzoh’s (correct) comments, I’d encourage you to skim through the Romanization Challenge Thread a bit, to see the huge diversity of approaches which people take to romanisation. There’s really no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answers here.

[conlangernoob]

Read this about inflectional categories and thought it was interesting. The authors seem to think it is exhaustive list.

(https://wals.info/chapter/22)
“The prime candidates for this are categories like agreement, tense/aspect/mood, evidentials/miratives, status (realis, irrealis, etc.), polarity (negation), illocution (interrogative, declarative, imperative), and voice (including Austronesian-style verb orientation).”

“Apart from the better-known and common inflectional categories, the following categories proved to have verbal inflectional reflexes in at least one language: nominalizers, connectives or switch-reference markers (as in Belhare, Kiowa, Fijian, Daga, Maricopa), inverse marking (as in Cree, Mapudungun or Chukchi) or Kartvelian-style “version”, honorificity (as in Japanese or Korean), pluractionals and other quantificational categories (multiple argument or multiple action, as in Wichita and Koasati, or repetition marking, as in Karok), verb focus or emphasis (as in Maricopa, Pirahã or Imonda), transitivity markers (as in Fijian, Cree, Krongo, or Hakha Lai), reciprocal affixes (triggered by agreement with free reciprocal pronouns, as in Chamorro), construct marking (indicating the presence of a dependent NP, as in Hausa, Lango, and Supyire), object classifiers (inflectional if interacting with agreement, as in Imonda), nonspecific reference-marking (in Koasati), scope (delimiting the scope of other categories, as in Mezquital Otomí), deixis (judged inflectional in, e.g., Lango because it interacts with agreement paradigm rules) and motion (judged inflectional in Yagua and Imbabura Quechua).

In addition, causatives were judged inflectional in some languages, where these categories are regular responses to specific contexts (e.g. a response to specific types of switch-reference patterns as in Ingush) or where they are worked into the same paradigms as regular voice values (e.g. in Chamorro, Fijian or Malagasy).”

[Travis B.]

Read this about inflectional categories and thought it was interesting. The authors seem to think it is exhaustive list.

(https://wals.info/chapter/22)
“The prime candidates for this are categories like agreement, tense/aspect/mood, evidentials/miratives, status (realis, irrealis, etc.), polarity (negation), illocution (interrogative, declarative, imperative), and voice (including Austronesian-style verb orientation).”

“Apart from the better-known and common inflectional categories, the following categories proved to have verbal inflectional reflexes in at least one language: nominalizers, connectives or switch-reference markers (as in Belhare, Kiowa, Fijian, Daga, Maricopa), inverse marking (as in Cree, Mapudungun or Chukchi) or Kartvelian-style “version”, honorificity (as in Japanese or Korean), pluractionals and other quantificational categories (multiple argument or multiple action, as in Wichita and Koasati, or repetition marking, as in Karok), verb focus or emphasis (as in Maricopa, Pirahã or Imonda), transitivity markers (as in Fijian, Cree, Krongo, or Hakha Lai), reciprocal affixes (triggered by agreement with free reciprocal pronouns, as in Chamorro), construct marking (indicating the presence of a dependent NP, as in Hausa, Lango, and Supyire), object classifiers (inflectional if interacting with agreement, as in Imonda), nonspecific reference-marking (in Koasati), scope (delimiting the scope of other categories, as in Mezquital Otomí), deixis (judged inflectional in, e.g., Lango because it interacts with agreement paradigm rules) and motion (judged inflectional in Yagua and Imbabura Quechua).

In addition, causatives were judged inflectional in some languages, where these categories are regular responses to specific contexts (e.g. a response to specific types of switch-reference patterns as in Ingush) or where they are worked into the same paradigms as regular voice values (e.g. in Chamorro, Fijian or Malagasy).”

One thing to remember is that it is very hard to posit firm universals when it comes to languages, because it seems that as soon as you posit one you will come across a counterexample.

[bradrn]

Read this about inflectional categories and thought it was interesting. The authors seem to think it is exhaustive list.

In addition to what Travis said, another thing to remember is that in general there’s very little difference between ‘inflection’ and ‘derivation’. There’s some papers on polysynthetic languages which carefully try to tease them apart, but that just reveals how baseless the whole distinction is. When I see someone saying ‘these specific categories are inflectional’, I get nervous.

But, luckily, WALS defines precisely what they mean: ‘By inflectional category we understand any grammatical category whose presence or shape is (at least in part) a regular response to the grammatical environment’. It’s worded a bit ambiguously, but this seems to be a rather wide definition, which would include basically anything marked on the verb. So, as usual with WALS, be careful not to interpret this too definitively.

In any case, to me that list does not read as exhaustive by any means: ‘the following categories proved to have verbal inflectional reflexes in at least one language’. That is, in the WALS sample, these are just the categories which happened to be marked on the verb in some capacity. They make no claim that others cannot.

[Ahzoh]

Read this about inflectional categories and thought it was interesting. The authors seem to think it is exhaustive list.

In addition to what Travis said, another thing to remember is that in general there’s very little difference between ‘inflection’ and ‘derivation’. There’s some papers on polysynthetic languages which carefully try to tease them apart, but that just reveals how baseless the whole distinction is. When I see someone saying ‘these specific categories are inflectional’, I get nervous.

But, luckily, WALS defines precisely what they mean: ‘By inflectional category we understand any grammatical category whose presence or shape is (at least in part) a regular response to the grammatical environment’. It’s worded a bit ambiguously, but this seems to be a rather wide definition, which would include basically anything marked on the verb. So, as usual with WALS, be careful not to interpret this too definitively.

In any case, to me that list does not read as exhaustive by any means: ‘the following categories proved to have verbal inflectional reflexes in at least one language’. That is, in the WALS sample, these are just the categories which happened to be marked on the verb in some capacity. They make no claim that others cannot.

Take for example how Semitic languages deal with grammatical voice on verbs and how they act more like derived-but-independent stems in their own right rather than inflectional categories.

[Ahzoh]

Since Vrkhazhian now has four genders, I am struggling immensely to come up with subject-verb agreement suffixes for all the genders. Alternatively, the problem is solved by not distinguishing gender on the verb, but then there is pretty much no concord-based justification for the existence of the noun class system since the only things that would agree with noun in gender would be demonstratives and only demonstratives. Which is boring.

Compounding the problem is choosing between having the verb-subject markers be prefixal or suffixal. Prefixal is common and would help solve the issue, but given that my language also employs a triconsonantal root system, the verbs end up resembling Semitic verbs. Besides, my language is supposed to be strongly head-initial and that also includes order of affixes (thus being predominately suffixal)

Anyways, here is an ancient pre-Vrkhazhian pronoun system as well as the old noun class system:

Code: Select all

      NOM / OBL / long OBL
1SGE: ni  / ni  / ni-ɣV
1SGI: ti  / ti  / ti-ɣV
2SG:  ma  / mi  / mi-ɣV
3SG:  ča  / ki  / ki-ɣV

1PLE: nin / nin / ni-ɣV-n
1PLI: tin / tin / ti-ɣV-n
2PL:  man / min / mi-ɣV-n
3PL:  čan / kin / ki-ɣV-n 

I = Inclusive = includes the adressee(s)
E = Exclusive = excludes the adressee(s)

Code: Select all

       SG /  PL
FEM:  -u  / -un
MASC: -i  / -in
NEUT: -ar / -an
INAN: -aš / -an

So somehow I have to come up with a way to combine these with the above pronouns, both in independent pronouns and in pronominal suffixes.

[Travis B.]

Since Vrkhazhian now has four genders, I am struggling immensely to come up with subject-verb agreement suffixes for all the genders. Alternatively, the problem is solved by not distinguishing gender on the verb, but then there is pretty much no concord-based justification for the existence of the noun class system since the only things that would agree with noun in gender would be demonstratives and only demonstratives. Which is boring.

Compounding the problem is choosing between having the verb-subject markers be prefixal or suffixal. Prefixal is common and would help solve the issue, but given that my language also employs a triconsonantal root system, the verbs end up resembling Semitic verbs. Besides, my language is supposed to be strongly head-initial and that also includes order of affixes (thus being predominately suffixal)

Anyways, here is an ancient pre-Vrkhazhian pronoun system as well as the old noun class system:

Code: Select all

      NOM / OBL / long OBL
1SGE: ni  / ni  / ni-ɣV
1SGI: ti  / ti  / ti-ɣV
2SG:  ma  / mi  / mi-ɣV
3SG:  ča  / ki  / ki-ɣV

1PLE: nin / nin / ni-ɣV-n
1PLI: tin / tin / ti-ɣV-n
2PL:  man / min / mi-ɣV-n
3PL:  čan / kin / ki-ɣV-n 

I = Inclusive = includes the adressee(s)
E = Exclusive = excludes the adressee(s)

Code: Select all

       SG /  PL
FEM:  -u  / -un
MASC: -i  / -in
NEUT: -ar / -an
INAN: -aš / -an

So somehow I have to come up with a way to combine these with the above pronouns, both in independent pronouns and in pronominal suffixes.

So don't distinguish all genders directly on the verb with agreement markers, but rather distinguish animate from inanimate with alignment via split-ergativity or direct-inverse marking then!

[Ahzoh]

So don't distinguish all genders directly on the verb with agreement markers, but rather distinguish animate from inanimate with alignment via split-ergativity or direct-inverse marking then!

I already have split-erg in case-marking, but that doesn't justify having neuter animate versus masculine (animate) and feminine (animate), only justifies having animate/inanimate.

The masculine and feminine exist because of explicitly marking nouns as such, so if they felt it was important to do it on nouns, they should feel that it's important that agreement follows suit. I wish it was as easy as doing consonant plus gender vowel, but then it leads to a lot of crowding such that you end up with a lot of -Cu/-Ci/-Ca trinaries, which doesn't feel right in this particular case.

[Travis B.]

So don't distinguish all genders directly on the verb with agreement markers, but rather distinguish animate from inanimate with alignment via split-ergativity or direct-inverse marking then!

I already have split-erg in case-marking, but that doesn't justify having neuter animate versus masculine (animate) and feminine (animate), only justifies having animate/inanimate.

You could do something like distinguish masculine versus feminine versus a merged neuter/inanimate on the verb, and distinguish masculine/feminine/neuter from inanimate via split-ergativity. And there is no reason to not have an animate neuter; take German Mädchen for instance.

[Travis B.]

The masculine and feminine exist because of explicitly marking nouns as such, so if they felt it was important to do it on nouns, they should feel that it's important that agreement follows suit. I wish it was as easy as doing consonant plus gender vowel, but then it leads to a lot of crowding such that you end up with a lot of -Cu/-Ci/-Ca trinaries, which doesn't feel right in this particular case.

Take the case of StG, for instance. While there is a degree of nominal marking of gender (e.g. all -chen nouns are neuter, and accusative marking of masculine weak nouns), gender is much more strongly marked on pronouns, determiners, demonstratives, and adjectives.

[Ahzoh]

You could do something like distinguish masculine versus feminine versus a merged neuter/inanimate on the verb, and distinguish masculine/feminine/neuter from inanimate via split-ergativity. And there is no reason to not have an animate neuter; take German Mädchen for instance.

Well yes, the idea was to have masc vs fem vs neuter on the verb, but as I said, that ends up resulting in a rather "phonemically crowded" -Cu/-Ci/-Ca trinary. Now my language is supposed to place a fair bit of cognitive load on vowels (lots of ablaut) but I'm not sure if it's appropriate in this case.

Another issue is that <č> is reflexed as <t> in Vrkhazhian, so there is potential for one of the 3rd person affixes conflating with the 1st person plural affixes, which I don't want.

Alternatively I have thought common/human/adult vs neuter/non-human/child, but then I have to figure out where to source the common gender morpheme/vowel. Though this option would be less preferred than maximal distinction.

[Ahzoh]

Take the case of StG, for instance. While there is a degree of nominal marking of gender (e.g. all -chen nouns are neuter, and accusative marking of masculine weak nouns), gender is much more strongly marked on pronouns, determiners, demonstratives, and adjectives.

In this case it would be nouns making more distinctions than pronouns/affixes, which is the issue.

Also, I should note that Vrkhazhian doesn't have adjectives, it has attributive verbs (which behave like relative clauses) and nouns in the equative case (which don't agree in gender with the head noun). Numerals are also grammatically nouns and not adjectives/determiners. This ends up leaving only demonstratives and interrogatives as the only sources of concord with nouns, which to me is a weak and uninteresting justification for having the particular noun class system that I do.

There are three languages that have basically the same noun class as Vrkhazhian: Burushaski, Old Kannada, and Zande. The first two appear to mark all genders on verbs (even the inanimate), whereas Zande doesn't mark subject on verbs at all.

Ultimately, it's not that it is impossible or unreasonable to mark all noun classes on verbs, but that I lack inspiration for how to go about it. Prefixes? Suffixes? A mix of the two? Same morpheme but different gender ending? Different morphemes entirely? CV(C) shape or VC shape? Hard to say.

[keenir]

Since Vrkhazhian now has four genders, I am struggling immensely to come up with subject-verb agreement suffixes for all the genders. Alternatively, the problem is solved by not distinguishing gender on the verb,

sorry I'm late; maybe have one gender which doesn't have subject-verb agreement if the other three have it. (or, if none of the three have it, maybe just one gender does)

[Travis B.]

You could do something like distinguish masculine versus feminine versus a merged neuter/inanimate on the verb, and distinguish masculine/feminine/neuter from inanimate via split-ergativity. And there is no reason to not have an animate neuter; take German Mädchen for instance.

Well yes, the idea was to have masc vs fem vs neuter on the verb, but as I said, that ends up resulting in a rather "phonemically crowded" -Cu/-Ci/-Ca trinary. Now my language is supposed to place a fair bit of cognitive load on vowels (lots of ablaut) but I'm not sure if it's appropriate in this case.

Another issue is that <č> is reflexed as <t> in Vrkhazhian, so there is potential for one of the 3rd person affixes conflating with the 1st person plural affixes, which I don't want.

Alternatively I have thought common/human/adult vs neuter/non-human/child, but then I have to figure out where to source the common gender morpheme/vowel. Though this option would be less preferred than maximal distinction.

There's no reason why you could not have a four-way distinction between common versus neuter on the verb and animate versus inanimate via alignment (i.e. common animate, neuter animate, common inanimate, and neuter inanimate). That way you can still have four genders, yet only have two distinctions on the verb itself.

[Ahzoh]

I definitely think venting about my issues and discussing about it has helped to generate some ideas.

Ultimately, I think the only possible courses of action are:
A minimal set of affixes/pronouns that only agree in person (would have to reintroduce adjective word class to agree with nouns to justify noun class system)
A set of affixes/pronouns that distinguish only common and neuter (would have to decide "common gender" vowel or devise new morpheme)
A set of affixes/pronouns that fully distinguishes feminine, masculine, and neuter

[Ahzoh]

Yeah, I'm thinking I'm going to go the route of not distinguishing gender on verbs. And I will reintroduce adjectives as a word-class because the language also needs adverbs anyways and so I will have a "declinable modifier" word-class.

Also, I add the optative and jussive to the tense-mood verb paradigm, so now we have (in order): "I do / I did", "I might do", "I shall do", "I would've done", "I wish to do", and "let me do / I must do"

I may add a perfect aspect, which would convey a reallis event with irrealis relevance. Something like "I have punished this child (so you don't need to)" or "the dishes are dirty (so they need to be cleaned)"