zompist wrote: ↑Wed Sep 11, 2024 5:02 am
bradrn wrote: ↑Wed Sep 11, 2024 4:46 am
As for internal etymologies, those are the source of the whole problem. The protolanguage is well-worked-out, and has a strong tendency towards light verb constructions and serial verb constructions; the modern system then results from univerbations of those.
OK, that's cool. I don't know what your etymologies are, but this is something like "I see" < "I'm going to look."
Well… I was sort of hoping to keep this something for people to work out, but the protolanguage is in fact the previous language in the thread. The relevant bits on the verb system are the posts on
word classes (see section ‘Coverbs’) and
verbal morphology.
In this particular case, *
lhiise is a generic verb for forms of perception, and *
meŋul is a coverb which in its nominal use means ‘eye’. The whole system is based on Kalam (Trans-New Guinea), which is however far less verbose: its equivalent for ‘see’ is
wdn nŋ- (also lit. ‘eye perceive’). Also, Kalam doesn’t have the system of lexical aspects, which in the conlang adds another syllable.
Though perhaps the light verbs become grammatical affixes, or at least some of them still have a recognizable meaning?
I have no doubt they will retain their meaning in some capacity. The difference is that they’re now phonologically reduced parts of bipartite roots, rather than free verbs.
(Meanwhile, a bunch of them have separately grammaticalised into bound morphemes, mostly via SVCs. I list a few of them near the end of
this post. But *
lhiise took a different route, and became a
passive participle.)
I don’t really see the resemblance to Sumerian. Algonquian (to my understanding) has a lot of verbs of great specificity, but the most basic verbs are underived and very short.
That's the point: both languages have long verbs, but they're built from short roots.
Fair enough. I never thought of
√lis-mŋun as being a particularly long root, but looking at it again it contributes a whole five morae to the stem. Even simplifying it to
√lis-ŋun would improve the situation, though I think I’d prefer to simplify it further to
√ls-ŋun if I decide to go this route.