Tžuro grammar

[Ketsuban]

I kept going "I should go through the Tžuro grammar again and make a note of the typos I found the first time" and then not doing it, and now that I'm doing it I think Zomp fixed the ones I noticed the first time around so I get to point out pedantic formatting errors and make miscellaneous comments instead.

Is the calligraphic form influenced at all by Nastaliq? Its up-and-to-the-rightness stood out to me when I first learned about it.

Stuff that either should be bold and isn't, or stuff that isn't bold and should be.

• mal! ‘speak!’,
• nebi teach > nebubu taught
• atej > ateje emperors
• čal > čala seas

It looks like the style you use is to put multi-word glosses in single quotes and not quote single-word glosses, but tezat ‘cutting’ violates that rule.

‘heart / ‘guts’ is missing a quote.

The sample sentence kištu paran made me want to finish off by attempting to translate some of Bohemian Rhapsody, but the lexicon doesn't have words for head (!), or trigger despite having gun (krolta).

[bradrn]

Wow, I didn’t even notice that Tžuro was released yet!

If I may add a question: does Tžuro share that weird feature in Old Skourene where verbs agree only with overt arguments and not with unspecified ones? I always wondered where that came from.

Stuff that either should be bold and isn't, or stuff that isn't bold and should be.

There also seem to be a couple of glosses where the final sentence should be italic but isn’t.

[WeepingElf]

I have spotted a mistake that is also in the Old Skourene grammar: an experiencer is not the same as an intransitive subject. Rather, it is a semantic role which is usually the subject, but not necessarily an intransitive one, and can be the object or something else. The English verbs to see, to hear, to feel etc. all have experiencer subjects though they are transitive. In the clause it occurs to me, me is an experiencer.

[bradrn]

I have spotted a mistake that is also in the Old Skourene grammar: an experiencer is not the same as an intransitive subject. Rather, it is a semantic role which is usually the subject, but not necessarily an intransitive one, and can be the object or something else.

It’s a bit more complicated than that… in general I’d agree with you that ‘experiencer’ should be a semantic role, but I’m pretty sure I’ve seen people using it in the sense of ‘intransitive subjects’. (Too tired to look up references now, though.)

[alice]

me is an experiencer.

"I am an experiencer", surely? (runs and hides)

[hwhatting]

me is an experiencer.

"I am an experiencer", surely? (runs and hides)

Him find you, him spank you.

[keenir]

me is an experiencer.

"I am an experiencer", surely? (runs and hides)

Both of you are experiencers? My goodness gracious, that can happen?

[WeepingElf]

Oh dear, what an avalanche of silliness did I tread loose?

[zompist]

I think Zomp fixed the ones I noticed the first time around so I get to point out pedantic formatting errors and make miscellaneous comments instead.

No problem, thank you! Should be fixed now.

Is the calligraphic form influenced at all by Nastaliq? Its up-and-to-the-rightness stood out to me when I first learned about it.

Yep!

The sample sentence kištu paran made me want to finish off by attempting to translate some of Bohemian Rhapsody, but the lexicon doesn't have words for head (!), or trigger despite having gun (krolta).

Added!

If I may add a question: does Tžuro share that weird feature in Old Skourene where verbs agree only with overt arguments and not with unspecified ones? I always wondered where that came from.

If I'm reading my own rules right... not exactly.

E.g. if you are talking about čelepar 'this book', you can say Atej hustu 'the emperor read it', with 'it' marked on the verb. However, in other contexts you can say Atej hust 'the emperor read (something)'.

I give the example of 'The emperor killed a ktuvok' vs. 'the ktuvok died': the latter has no ergative marking. However, Kuštu kuliggir is grammatical and means, as you would expect, 'He/she killed the ktuvok.'

So the Tžuro rule is verbs can agree with a non-overt argument, but not with an understood one.

[zompist]

Also— I'm not sure where I got 'experiencer', but words have multiple meanings, and I defined exactly what I meant.

FWIW there's a lot of variation in this area... e.g. what you and I call a "semantic role", Fillmore originally called "Case" (groan), and Chomsky calls theta role. Comrie uses S for the experiencer, apparently based on 'subject'... it's a terrible choice, because 'subject' is a pretty loaded term, as explained by Comrie in the previous chapter.

Oh, and so far as I can see, what you're calling 'experiencer', Fillmore calls 'Dative'! But that was a long time ago.

[bradrn]

If I may add a question: does Tžuro share that weird feature in Old Skourene where verbs agree only with overt arguments and not with unspecified ones? I always wondered where that came from.

If I'm reading my own rules right... not exactly.

E.g. if you are talking about čelepar 'this book', you can say Atej hustu 'the emperor read it', with 'it' marked on the verb. However, in other contexts you can say Atej hust 'the emperor read (something)'.

I give the example of 'The emperor killed a ktuvok' vs. 'the ktuvok died': the latter has no ergative marking. However, Kuštu kuliggir is grammatical and means, as you would expect, 'He/she killed the ktuvok.'

So the Tžuro rule is verbs can agree with a non-overt argument, but not with an understood one.

Hmm… what do you mean by ‘understood’ here? Surely ‘understood’ arguments must by nature be ‘non-overt’ too?

Meanwhile, can I confirm that an Old Skourene construction like *Ŋatebor ḍişnum ‘the emperor he-saw-it’ (since I can’t find an OS verb for ‘read’) would be ungrammatical in all situations? I presume you would have to say *Ŋatebor ḍişn instead.

[vegfarandi]

Also— I'm not sure where I got 'experiencer', but words have multiple meanings, and I defined exactly what I meant.

FWIW there's a lot of variation in this area... e.g. what you and I call a "semantic role", Fillmore originally called "Case" (groan), and Chomsky calls theta role. Comrie uses S for the experiencer, apparently based on 'subject'... it's a terrible choice, because 'subject' is a pretty loaded term, as explained by Comrie in the previous chapter.

Oh, and so far as I can see, what you're calling 'experiencer', Fillmore calls 'Dative'! But that was a long time ago.

It seems to me that Comrie's S/A/P for intransitive subject/transitive subject/direct object have become pretty much standard terminology in the typology scene. Think of them more as symbols than as abbreviations for subject/agent/patient.

[WeepingElf]

It seems to me that Comrie's S/A/P for intransitive subject/transitive subject/direct object have become pretty much standard terminology in the typology scene. Think of them more as symbols than as abbreviations for subject/agent/patient.

Yes, this is standard terminology. And one must not confuse syntactic slots and semantic roles.

[BGMan]

I thought the script interesting... has traits of not just Indic abugidas, but Arabic and hangul.

[zompist]

Might as well put this here: I've put the grammar of Šureni (i.e. modern Tžuro) on my site.

[WeepingElf]

Thank you! It is always nice to see a new Almean language. BTW: How democratic is the Democratic Union actually? I ask because in our world, most states with the word "Democratic" in their official names aren't really.

[zompist]

Thank you! It is always nice to see a new Almean language. BTW: How democratic is the Democratic Union actually? I ask because in our world, most states with the word "Democratic" in their official names aren't really.

Oh my, lots of history you've missed. The DU formed in 3591 to resist the Xurnese, who wanted to expand eastwards. Later on both Dhekhnam and Čeiy tried their luck too. They're a federal union with social democratic and indeed very fractious politics... outsiders always wonder how anything gets done. United, they've been able to push back the Xurnese and keep up with Eretaldan technology— the elcari are their main manufacturing base.

[bradrn]

Might as well put this here: I've put the grammar of Šureni (i.e. modern Tžuro) on my site.

Phonaesthetically, I think I have a new favourite language of yours! (After Modern Hanying.) Reminds me a little bit of my original plans for Æŋ (the language which eventually became my current conlang Eŋes).

[zompist]

Phonaesthetically, I think I have a new favourite language of yours! (After Modern Hanying.) Reminds me a little bit of my original plans for Æŋ (the language which eventually became my current conlang Eŋes).

Thank you... I gotta wonder what the common component is. Do you really like shwas?

[bradrn]

Phonaesthetically, I think I have a new favourite language of yours! (After Modern Hanying.) Reminds me a little bit of my original plans for Æŋ (the language which eventually became my current conlang Eŋes).

Thank you... I gotta wonder what the common component is. Do you really like shwas?

I’m… not quite sure! I’ve wondered the same thing.

The vowel system is clearly one component — I do like schwas. And also /æ/, apparently. But there’s some common consonants that I like, in particular /ŋ g r ʃ ʒ/. Phonotactics is also a big part of it: both languages have few consonant clusters or vowel hiatus.

None of this explains all my preferences, though. For completeness the other languages of yours I’m most fond of phonaesthetically are, I think: Wede꞉i (and Culoese, but not so much Jeori), Uyseʔ, Bhöɣetan (which strikes me as the bizarre offspring of Sanskrit and Quechua), Flaidish, and I suppose Mei though I haven’t looked at it all that thoroughly. And my least favourites are probably Old Skourene, Šɯk and Xurnese.