Conlang Random Thread

[Nila_MadhaVa]

The major problem with this is gardenpathing. I've had the same problems with Sajiwan, which does aim for realism (as a CEC), that e.g. has "dem" being the definite plural article, the generic article, the 3rd person pronoun (subject and object), the 3rd person possesive and the plural marker. I often wrote sentences that looked ok, but when rereading them later, I often got gardenpathed and had to rewrite or add commas to make more clear the meaning (in speech, intonation would do a lot of course).


JAL

You're absolutely right! I ran into this very issue almost as soon as I started playing around with the grammar side of things, and I'm still tying to figure out how to deal with it. Earlier today I googled languages with small vocabularies and the first result was Toki Pona. The system of markers it employs to show what role words are playing is very interesting, but I'm wary of borrowing the ideal out of concern to not end up just making a relex. I had thought to use subject and object specific pronouns combined with word order to clarify what was going on before I came across Toki Pona, but even that seems a little too similar now. Oh well, I'll just have to keep working at it.

[jal]

I think the most reasonable analysis is that that’s simply an indefinite article, realised as null.

That would be the analysis for English, but not for Sajiwan or Spanish, that both use the plural definite article.


JAL

[Ares Land]

Is there enough material on Afro-Asiatic to make up a simplistic conlang that purports to be proto-Afro-Asiatic? I don't wan't anything that would stand up to a close examination, more something like pseudo-PIE in that awful movie, Prometheus.

(The idea is just to write a few ominous sounding sentences, so maybe I'll make do with some pseudo-Akkadian or pseudo-Egyptian or something)

[Kuchigakatai]

What’s a ‘generic article’?

I don't know if that's the proper linguistic name, but it's used where English uses the plural, as in "birds can fly", Sajiwan "dem bah u flay". I think it works the same in Spanish.

The generic is the use or non-use of articles when talking about concrete entities in general terms (what they are as a type). English typically uses unmarked (indefinite) nouns, in the plural for count nouns and the singular for mass nouns.

E.g. Beetles amaze me, Languages are complex, I love languages, Orange juice is usually too sour for my taste. (Note that in biology the definite singular is sometimes used when talking about a living being: I find the beetle remarkable, The beetle is remarkable.)

The generic is often discussed because the big Western European languages are in notorious disagreement about it:
- English: unmarked indef. pl. (count nouns), unmarked indef. sg. (mass nouns)
- French/Spanish/Portuguese/Italian: def. pl. (count nouns), def. sg. (mass nouns)
- German: unmarked indef. pl. OR def. pl. (count nouns), unmarked indef. sg. OR def. sg. (mass nouns).

German examples:
- (Die) Sprachen sind wichtig! 'Languages matter! / Les langues sont importantes !' (count nouns)
- (Das) Eisen ist ein Metall. 'Iron is a metal. / Le fer est un métal.' (mass nouns)

[jal]

The generic is the use or non-use of articles when talking about concrete entities in general terms (what they are as a type).

Well, in that case I used it right :).


JAL

[Travis B.]

-deleted out of embarrassment-

[bradrn]

Over the past while I’ve been reading a fascinating book on modality, and it has occurred to me that this is actually a fairly important area of grammar which many conlangers nonetheless don’t pay attention to, in large part because it is a confusing topic with no easy reference to learn from. I’ve always loved the Polysynthesis For Novices thread on the old board (archvied copy), and I was thinking that I could write a similar thread on modality. Would anyone be interested in such a project?

(If I do end up doing it and it goes well, I might do another series on ergativity, another similarly underappreciated topic with many non-obvious subtleties. But I haven’t read anything on ergativity yet — I’m still only halfway through my book on modality.)

Well, the idea of an overview of modality ended up not working: I never even got to the end of the book I was reading. On the other hand, I’ve just finished reading several articles/books on ergativity, and it turns out that there are many important subtleties involved in ergative-absolutive languages which are highly relevant for conlangers but are frequently glossed over in overviews of the subject. If I were to write an overview of ergativity, would anyone be interested?

(Note: if you’re not interested, please just tell me instead of not responding! I’m reposting this because my quoted post simply got ignored, so I had no idea whether anyone was interested or not.)

[Kuchigakatai]

Just do it... Generally there's someone interested in such things. I would be.

[bradrn]

Just do it... Generally there's someone interested in such things. I would be.

Alright then, I’ll do it! I don’t have much to do right now, so I might as well just start now.

[jal]

Alright then, I’ll do it! I don’t have much to do right now, so I might as well just start now.

Thanks, I'd be very interested as well, especially for the glossed-over bits.


JAL

[bradrn]

Alright then, I’ll do it! I don’t have much to do right now, so I might as well just start now.

Thanks, I'd be very interested as well, especially for the glossed-over bits.

I’ve actually already started a thread here. There isn’t actually anything useful there yet, but hopefully I’ll have the first section finished in a couple of days. As for ‘glossing over’, here’s a preview of some of the topics I’d like to cover which I haven’t seen covered in other overviews:

• The situations in which the antipassive is used
• The ways in which control and volition motivate split ergativity
• The processes of change from absolutive→ergative and ergative→absolutive alignment
• Ergative verbal agreement and how it relates to ergative case-marking

[Xwtek]

Is there any writing techniques to insert conlang to the story. My story is about a prince from a medieval kingdom (the name is to be determined). He loves hunting, but after he found an artifact, he is transported to another world. Despite coming from royalty background, he is forced to adapt to a primitive situation, from wearing leather loincloth instead of silk garment, and hunting and farming for survival instead of just a hobby, to facing the culture shock. He later learns the secret of the origin of his own kingdom. as

More: show

the world where he is on is used to be a kingdom that is considered a pinnacle of civilization before a catastrophe happens. (It's like Latin of this world)

. My plan is for the character to speak a conlang (except the main character), and the main character confused with it, but as he learns the conlang, the sentence gradually changes from a conlang to English.

[jal]

My plan is for the character to speak a conlang (except the main character), and the main character confused with it, but as he learns the conlang, the sentence gradually changes from a conlang to English.

That's an interesting idea. However, in general, don't use too much conlanguage, or the reader might be put off, and probably skips that bits. I'd probably handle it like:

"Ah gumbwabwa", Foreigndude insisted, after which he repeated it, and continued to speak in his language. Maindude tried to make sense of it, but apart from "tsotsuga", which seemed to refer to the tracks they had been following, he couldn't make head or tails of it.

and then later, after a few days or weeks have passed:

"Nonuge climb-us dedengu, wall-a pakenda and duril", Foreigndude said, while pointing up the wall. "A wall is climb me?", Maindude tried to ask. Foreigndude laughed. "Yeah, you ogogo climb-o wall-a".

or whatever. Should be fun :).


JAL

[Moose-tache]

A great gag maybe 3/4 of the way through:

"Shut your grogfnath face, Outlander," Foreigndude shouted. This word was new to Princedude.

[TurkeySloth]

The elvish language sounds similar to French and has nasal vowels, making the full vowel system /ɐ ɑ ɑ̃ ɪ ɨ ĩ ø̞ ẽ̞ ɵ̞ õ̞/ (<ä a a/äm/n î i i/îm/n e em/n o om/n>). Shorthand slashes are to save space and mean "or". Considering the Romanization scheme is for orthographic continuity, do any Romanizations strike you as odd?

[Pabappa]

My plan is for the character to speak a conlang (except the main character), and the main character confused with it, but as he learns the conlang, the sentence gradually changes from a conlang to English.

and then later, after a few days or weeks have passed:

"Nonuge climb-us dedengu, wall-a pakenda and duril", Foreigndude said, while pointing up the wall. "A wall is climb me?", Maindude tried to ask. Foreigndude laughed. "Yeah, you ogogo climb-o wall-a".

Animorphs did something like this. The famous line I remmeber is "Go in fergutth vir puny body", said by a tall, strong creature who had to clear out underbrush because the humans following him were too weak to walk through it. The words you *need* to know are the ones in English, but you can still tell that the creature is speaking a foreign language and learning only the bare minimum of English that they need to in order to get the humans to obey.

[akam chinjir]

The generic is the use or non-use of articles when talking about concrete entities in general terms (what they are as a type). English typically uses unmarked (indefinite) nouns, in the plural for count nouns and the singular for mass nouns.

E.g. Beetles amaze me, Languages are complex, I love languages, Orange juice is usually too sour for my taste. (Note that in biology the definite singular is sometimes used when talking about a living being: I find the beetle remarkable, The beetle is remarkable.)

I'm curious about the restriction to concrete entities here. Do you know of languages where other words are treated differently?

(Is suffering nonconcrete? "Suffering comes from desire" is a generic statement, and as far as I can tell uses "suffering" as an ordinary mass noun, for example.)

[chris_notts]

I've increased the restrictions on minor (unstressed) syllables in Pñæk so that in normal words the shape can only be CV and the only vowels are i, a, u, r̩, n̩. The issue is that I have a number of clitic or "particle" forms (e.g. agreement+TAM markers) which don't comply with these rules. The clitics are still reduced (e.g. they don't show phonation distinctions or the more marked clusters), but they do have Cr- onset clusters and other vowels sometimes.

I'm debating whether to change the clitic forms to comply with the minor syllable rules or not. My gut feeling is to leave them, since clitics are in some sense intermediate between affixes and words. But it's quite difficult to find descriptions online of languages with strong unstressed syllable reduction where clitics behave differently. If I look at my dead-tree books, Semelai seems to be an example, since it has some clitics containing /e/ and other vowels which are not allowed in the most reduced syllables in normal words. English strikes me as a possible example too, but it's complicated (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stress_an ... ull_vowels).

Can anyone give descriptions of other languages which have strong unstressed syllable reduction, but where the shapes of (unstressed) clitics are more complex than the shapes of normal unstressed syllables?

[Darren]

Does anyone know of some (free) resources for pidgin and creole languages in Australia? I suspect that more pidgins arose than Wikipedia lists, but I can't find a general survey or even a complete list.

[cedh]

I've increased the restrictions on minor (unstressed) syllables in Pñæk so that in normal words the shape can only be CV and the only vowels are i, a, u, r̩, n̩. The issue is that I have a number of clitic or "particle" forms (e.g. agreement+TAM markers) which don't comply with these rules. The clitics are still reduced (e.g. they don't show phonation distinctions or the more marked clusters), but they do have Cr- onset clusters and other vowels sometimes.

I'm debating whether to change the clitic forms to comply with the minor syllable rules or not. My gut feeling is to leave them, since clitics are in some sense intermediate between affixes and words. But it's quite difficult to find descriptions online of languages with strong unstressed syllable reduction where clitics behave differently. If I look at my dead-tree books, Semelai seems to be an example, since it has some clitics containing /e/ and other vowels which are not allowed in the most reduced syllables in normal words. English strikes me as a possible example too, but it's complicated (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stress_an ... ull_vowels).

Can anyone give descriptions of other languages which have strong unstressed syllable reduction, but where the shapes of (unstressed) clitics are more complex than the shapes of normal unstressed syllables?

Not a natlang, and not really about clitics either, but my conlang Ronc Tyu does something similar:

• Non-final syllables are generally reduced to the shape |(C)ə|, distinguishing only a subset of the available onset consonants, no clusters, no vowel qualities, and no tones.
• The underlying |ə| of a minor syllable surfaces as [ɪ] /i/ if the main syllable contains a front vowel or /j/, as [ʊ] /u/ if the main syllable contains a back vowel or /w/, and as [ɐ] /a/ if the main syllable contains /a/. This can be seen e.g. with the causative prefix |rə-|: tśí ‘be hollow’ → ridźí ‘hollow out’; póu ‘be closed’ → rubóu ‘close’; ká ‘be crooked, be bent’ → ragá ‘bend’.
• But: Some words unexpectedly have minor syllables that do not conform to the above harmony rule. Historically, and sometimes by comparison to derivationally related words, these syllables can be analyzed as having a slightly more complex structure: |(C)jə (C)wə (C)ʁə| > /(C)i (C)u (C)a/. A fairly prominent example is the augmentative prefix, which is underlyingly a reduced syllable |wə-|, surfacing as /u-/ even before words whose major syllable contains a front vowel: myèc ‘house’ → uvyèc ‘representative building; house of the chieftain’ (instead of *wivyèc).
• Underlying |(C)jə (C)wə| become [ɛ ɔ] /e o/ instead if the main syllable contains /a/: màc ‘village’ → omàc ‘large village, town’ (instead of *wamàc or *umàc).
• In some words, two adjacent minor syllables are contracted into a single syllable that still harmonizes with the word stem, but may contain an onset cluster, unlike a normal minor syllable: fae ‘fall’ → ravae ‘drop, cause to fall’ → gravae ‘dropped’ (underlyingly |ɡə-rə-vae|). This may also lead to consonant alternations, as in dinggéc ‘be bright, be colorful’ → glinggéc ‘colored, painted’ (underlyingly |ɡə-dənggéc|).
• If the changed version of such a consonant in between two adjacent minor syllables turns out to be one of /j w ʁ/, you get an unexpected vowel quality again: gundùn ‘sew’ → gindùn ‘sewn’ (underlyingly |ɡə-ɡəndùn| > |ɡjəndùn|).