How Not To Conlang?

[zompist]

It was once learnt by millions of people.

[citation needed]

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Enc ... ca/Volapük

Maybe not millions, but close enough.

Could you be skeptical of this number? Sure, I would be! Probably it's a not-too-inflated estimate of how many people were interested in the language, enough to buy a book or join a club. Over 300,000 people have bought The Klingon Dictionary, and if you were an excited enough Klingonist you might claim that they were all in some sense speakers....

[xxx]

if dead people count...
volapuk got them before esperanto robbed them...

[xxx]

Hey I like Volapük. Minus the sexism

for those who don't believe in Sapir-Whorf thesis, whatever the language, sexism will occur or not...

[k1234567890y]

well there are not many taboos in conlanging; however, I personally want to see more conlangs with the following features:

- using word orders other than SVO as the basic word order, or using SVO basic word order with mostly postpositions instead of prepositions.
- a priori conlangs without /m/ in base or suppletive forms of 1st person singular.
- a posterior conlangs without generalizing the nominative form of personal pronouns(when generalization happens it is the accusative or oblique form that is more likely to be generalized e.g. modern English you is the generalization of the original 2nd plural oblique form; /mi/ as 1st singular in creoles arose from the generalization of the accusative or oblique forms of English and Romance 1st singular pronouns)
- numerals with irregularities(e.g. 11 and 12 in English) or suppletions(e.g. the -teen and -ty suffixes in English) in respect of the numeral base.
- using strategies other than having a verb meaning "to have" for predicative possessions
- having indefinite pronouns derived from interrogatives or generic nouns.
- having some similarities between universal quantifiers and conjunctions.
- having productive reduplications, either full or partial reduplications.
- smaller phonemic inventory
- the non-use of "th" sounds
- head-marking in clauses
- evidentiality
- words indicating some kinds of abstract ideas like cultural values that can't be neatly translated into English or the mother tongue of the speaker

you don't need to do them, though, it is not a sin if you don't want to do these.

[akam chinjir]

- using word orders other than SVO as the basic word order, or using SVO basic word order with mostly postpositions instead of prepositions.

(...snip...)

- using strategies other than having a verb meaning "to have" for predicative possessions

I recently happened upon the generalisation that verb-first languages do not have "have" verbs---this "appears to be universal," say Clemens and Polinsky, Verb-Initial Word Orders. Blew my mind a bit. (As did the maybe-corollary that no verb-first languages have double-object constructions with "give" verbs.)

[k1234567890y]

(...snip...)

ok (: thanks for sharing

[Xwtek]

Why do you necroing a dead forum?

- having productive reduplications, either full or partial reduplications.

This is quite good. However, I prefer ablaut.

- evidentiality

Common kitchen sink features.

- words indicating some kinds of abstract ideas like cultural values that can't be neatly translated into English or the mother tongue of the speaker

This is just basically asking for a good conlang with developed culture. However, this is surprisingly hard. Especially since English has many words for varied things.

For me, thing that is underrated:

1. Using verbal inflection instead of either adposition or relational noun
2. Not an IE (or IE-like) conlang but using relative pronoun.
3. Language that uses theta roles, obviativity, animacy, etc, when assigning noun cases or assigning case to noun, or using a certain verb voice.
4. (in this board) intentionally unrealistic conlang other than jokelang.

[k1234567890y]

Why do you necroing a dead forum?

wanna say something

For me, thing that is underrated:

1. Using verbal inflection instead of either adposition or relational noun

like applicative voices?

2. Not an IE (or IE-like) conlang but using relative pronoun.

This reminds me of Georgian...Georgian uses relative pronouns but it does not seem to be very IE-like otherwise.

Still a good idea, although for me I'd prefer to see relativizing strategies that are unfamiliar to speakers of an European IE language.

[Salmoneus]

Blew my mind a bit. (As did the maybe-corollary that no verb-first languages have double-object constructions with "give" verbs.)

WALS offers seven verb-first languages with double-object constructions. And that's not including secondary-object constructions and languages that WALS calls 'mixed' (which include multiple constructions).

[akam chinjir]

I'm pretty sure they're not using the expression "double object construction" the same way Haspelmath is in WALS: they're talking about a certain type of syntactic structure, and the WALS article isn't about that at all.

(This presumably isn't the place to go into detail, but if you want loads of detail, they cite Harley, Possession and the double object construction. An illustrative sort of example: in English you can say I gave Mary₁ her₁ hat, with the recipient binding a pronoun in the theme, and you can also do that in, e.g., Japanese or Yaqui; but you can't do that in Irish or Navajo.)

Though---they're taking the lack of a have verb to imply lack of a double object construction, and I don't see how that's supposed to work (the Harley article they cite gives Japanese as an example of a language without have but with a double object construction).

[HourouMusuko]

This reminds me of Georgian...Georgian uses relative pronouns but it does not seem to be very IE-like otherwise.

I don't think I used to realize that relative pronouns are mostly an IE thing. That's a reminder to me and other conlangers that IE =/= every language. It should seem obvious, but it's hard to get out of that IE "bubble" when you're monolingual and so much of linguistics is centered around IE. There are certain IE features that I take for granted and assume all languages have, when IE often proves to be atypical among the world's language families.

[Hallow XIII]

the proper amount of cross-linguistic knowledge to have is when you look at standard average european and go "what the fuck"

[Xwtek]

For me, thing that is underrated:

1. Using verbal inflection instead of either adposition or relational noun

like applicative voices?

parts of it. The other part are directional particle.

2. Not an IE (or IE-like) conlang but using relative pronoun.

This reminds me of Georgian...Georgian uses relative pronouns but it does not seem to be very IE-like otherwise.

Still a good idea, although for me I'd prefer to see relativizing strategies that are unfamiliar to speakers of a European IE language.

[/quote]
At least it would be more interesting than gap strategy, or pronoun retention.

[Imralu]

Why do you necroing a dead forum?

I'd hardly say 15 days constitutes necroing!

WALS offers seven verb-first languages with double-object constructions. And that's not including secondary-object constructions and languages that WALS calls 'mixed' (which include multiple constructions).

How do you search WALS for two features at once?

[Salmoneus]

WALS offers seven verb-first languages with double-object constructions. And that's not including secondary-object constructions and languages that WALS calls 'mixed' (which include multiple constructions).

How do you search WALS for two features at once?

With great frustration and lack of any instructions anywhere on the internet!

What you do is:
a) remember the feature number of one feature
b) select the other feature
c) go to look at the MAP for the second feature
d) where it says what feature it's the map for, there's a little bit of white space underneath the name
e) click on that white space
f) type the number for the first feature
g) it should pop up with the correct feature number/name, and you click on it
h) you then get a map with a different icon for each combination of the two features

[Xwtek]

WALS offers seven verb-first languages with double-object constructions. And that's not including secondary-object constructions and languages that WALS calls 'mixed' (which include multiple constructions).

How do you search WALS for two features at once?

With great frustration and lack of any instructions anywhere on the internet!

What you do is:
a) remember the feature number of one feature
b) select the other feature
c) go to look at the MAP for the second feature
d) where it says what feature it's the map for, there's a little bit of white space underneath the name
e) click on that white space
f) type the number for the first feature
g) it should pop up with the correct feature number/name, and you click on it
h) you then get a map with a different icon for each combination of the two features

Actually, you can just type the name of other feature on that white boxes.

[Imralu]

WALS offers seven verb-first languages with double-object constructions. And that's not including secondary-object constructions and languages that WALS calls 'mixed' (which include multiple constructions).

How do you search WALS for two features at once?

With great frustration and lack of any instructions anywhere on the internet!

What you do is:
a) remember the feature number of one feature
b) select the other feature
c) go to look at the MAP for the second feature
d) where it says what feature it's the map for, there's a little bit of white space underneath the name
e) click on that white space
f) type the number for the first feature
g) it should pop up with the correct feature number/name, and you click on it
h) you then get a map with a different icon for each combination of the two features

Wow, thank you!