Conlang Random Thread

[akam chinjir]

don't know and haven't decided are easy possibilities.

If you use a verb, it might be one that gets a dative subject or something like that, if your language has such things.

Or if yours is a language that uses possession constructions for psychological predicates, you could do that here: I don't have knowledge what to do.

Or if your language doesn't distinguish possession from location, it could be There is not in me knowledge what to do. (Any Irish speakers here? Google translate has me convinced that's what's going on in Níl a fhios agam cad atá le déanamh; though there also appears to be an adjective cinnte meaning sure.)

As for "what to do," there's the question whether that gets treated as a clausal complement to your sure word, or as a relative clause, which maybe can be headless but maybe your language requires a head noun (i'm don't know the thing to do), and in all these cases you can also decide whether your language allows a non-finite clause here (what to do vs what I will do).

[Pabappa]

There could also be a distinction between "I'm not sure if ...." and "I'm not sure which...." that is reflected on the verb.

[Salmoneus]

There are too many options to count, I think.

"Fog waits for my prow", for example. "My mind's guide is drunk". "My liver holds many winds". "I would do a thing if it is not that I do another thing". "At the side of one face stands a second". Etc.

[Xwtek]

Is it realistic to turn inchoative into copula?

[mèþru]

I haven't heard of such a change, but even if it never happened in natlangs it still feels right.

[Qwynegold]

Thanks for the suggestions! I'll make it a verb of some kind. As for how to handle "what to do", I haven't even thought that far yet. This is a slow process... *sigh*

[bradrn]

I'm deriving a daughter from a protolanguage, and decided to run a set of word/plural pairs through the sound changes to see what happens - and it is a mess! There's not even one way of making a plural: depending on the word, you variously have no change, the end consonant being changed, or a random vowel being added to the end of the word. And it's completely unpredictable, to the point where there's a pair of homophones with differing plurals. Is this level of irregularity realistic, or would it end up being analogised away?

[Znex]

I'm deriving a daughter from a protolanguage, and decided to run a set of word/plural pairs through the sound changes to see what happens - and it is a mess! There's not even one way of making a plural: depending on the word, you variously have no change, the end consonant being changed, or a random vowel being added to the end of the word. And it's completely unpredictable, to the point where there's a pair of homophones with differing plurals. Is this level of irregularity realistic, or would it end up being analogised away?

If there are some common patterns, groups might form and align each other to a common word in that group. More frequent words tend to keep irregularity, such as "be", "go", "child", etc.

[zompist]

Plurals are about that broken in Arabic, or in Nishnaabemwin, for very different reasons.

But people also tend to find and overapply useful patterns. So it wouldn't be surprising for the randomness to go down over time.

[akam chinjir]

If there were a thread for random short bits of translation, would people use it?

(I semi-regularly do texts that I think are interesting enough that I'd like to post them, and ideally get feedback on them, but they're not substantial enough for their own threads and don't really fit anywhere else. I'm thinking it might be nice to have a thread where anyone can post texts like that.)

[k1234567890y]

If there were a thread for random short bits of translation, would people use it?

(I semi-regularly do texts that I think are interesting enough that I'd like to post them, and ideally get feedback on them, but they're not substantial enough for their own threads and don't really fit anywhere else. I'm thinking it might be nice to have a thread where anyone can post texts like that.)

maybe just make one such thread and see the outcome.

[Xwtek]

Or scratch the plural and replace it with word meaning group, bundle, etc

[bradrn]

I'm deriving a daughter from a protolanguage, and decided to run a set of word/plural pairs through the sound changes to see what happens - and it is a mess! There's not even one way of making a plural: depending on the word, you variously have no change, the end consonant being changed, or a random vowel being added to the end of the word. And it's completely unpredictable, to the point where there's a pair of homophones with differing plurals. Is this level of irregularity realistic, or would it end up being analogised away?

If there are some common patterns, groups might form and align each other to a common word in that group. More frequent words tend to keep irregularity, such as "be", "go", "child", etc.

The problem is that the plural ending can be completely random - for a significant chunk of words there are no patterns. More specifically, the plural ending for many words is the last vowel of the ancestor, which is unpredictable.

Or scratch the plural and replace it with word meaning group, bundle, etc

Excellent idea - I did think of that at some point, but then managed to forget it somehow. If I can't think of any other method to make it a bit more regular I'll likely do this. What makes it even more plausible is that there are many words which remain unchanged in plural - it would be easy enough to use a periphrastic plural-formation method to disambiguate these.

[Imralu]

I'm deriving a daughter from a protolanguage, and decided to run a set of word/plural pairs through the sound changes to see what happens - and it is a mess! There's not even one way of making a plural: depending on the word, you variously have no change, the end consonant being changed, or a random vowel being added to the end of the word. And it's completely unpredictable, to the point where there's a pair of homophones with differing plurals. Is this level of irregularity realistic, or would it end up being analogised away?

If there are some common patterns, groups might form and align each other to a common word in that group. More frequent words tend to keep irregularity, such as "be", "go", "child", etc.

The problem is that the plural ending can be completely random - for a significant chunk of words there are no patterns. More specifically, the plural ending for many words is the last vowel of the ancestor, which is unpredictable.

Sounds like case declension in Estonian. To know which vowel to use, you basically just have to memorise it ... or learn Finnish first.

[Pabappa]

You could also pick a few nouns where the plural becomes singular. Dutch teen "toe" and schoen "shoe" did this. Helps if it's a noun found in the plural more often than not, but mass nouns might also switch over.

German has a few words that look like plurals, but which I'm told come from the singular of a different noun case. E.g. Daumen, Rahmen.

[Znex]

I'm deriving a daughter from a protolanguage, and decided to run a set of word/plural pairs through the sound changes to see what happens - and it is a mess! There's not even one way of making a plural: depending on the word, you variously have no change, the end consonant being changed, or a random vowel being added to the end of the word. And it's completely unpredictable, to the point where there's a pair of homophones with differing plurals. Is this level of irregularity realistic, or would it end up being analogised away?

If there are some common patterns, groups might form and align each other to a common word in that group. More frequent words tend to keep irregularity, such as "be", "go", "child", etc.

The problem is that the plural ending can be completely random - for a significant chunk of words there are no patterns. More specifically, the plural ending for many words is the last vowel of the ancestor, which is unpredictable.

Welsh is a bit like that actually; to make it simpler, often Welsh nouns have become plural by default and gain new regular singulative forms (eg. dice > one dicee maybe), or plural forms are avoided when counting or in quantitative expressions (eg. "There are nine/a lot of cow in the field" vs. "There are cows in the field"). Otherwise the plurals are still rote learned or have assimilated to similar and more common words

[miekko]

Bryatesle is miekko's. qatama... is that masako's?

It's been so long I don't even know if most of the people are still here... but I do remember the name miekko. []

fwiw Miekko still posts here: http://miniatureconlangs.blogspot.com/

I assume it's the same Miekko

I can confirm that it is indeed the same miekko.

[miekko]

Bryatesle is miekko's. qatama... is that masako's?

The script and font was actually masako's/khang's making, the language itself being mine. (It's still under development.)

[akam chinjir]

The problem is that the plural ending can be completely random - for a significant chunk of words there are no patterns. More specifically, the plural ending for many words is the last vowel of the ancestor, which is unpredictable.

How do they form the plurals of newly-borrowed words?

[anxi]

I'm deriving a daughter from a protolanguage, and decided to run a set of word/plural pairs through the sound changes to see what happens - and it is a mess! There's not even one way of making a plural: depending on the word, you variously have no change, the end consonant being changed, or a random vowel being added to the end of the word. And it's completely unpredictable, to the point where there's a pair of homophones with differing plurals. Is this level of irregularity realistic, or would it end up being analogised away?

If there are some common patterns, groups might form and align each other to a common word in that group. More frequent words tend to keep irregularity, such as "be", "go", "child", etc.

The problem is that the plural ending can be completely random - for a significant chunk of words there are no patterns. More specifically, the plural ending for many words is the last vowel of the ancestor, which is unpredictable.

So… Modern German?

How do they form the plurals of newly-borrowed words?

The language might borrow the plural forms from the source language alongside singular forms. This even happens in English, even though English plurals are otherwise unnaturally regular for a fusional-analytic language.

(Not to be mistaken with Polish — and maybe other Slavic ethnolects — which commonly borrows foreign plural forms using them as the singular stems, and then adds its own plural ending! Eskimosi, czipsy, Rolingstonsi…)