Zompist Bboard Again

jal wrote: ↑Wed Feb 12, 2020 3:47 am 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

bradrn wrote: ↑Wed Feb 12, 2020 6:24 amI think the most reasonable analysis is that that’s simply an indefinite article, realised as null.

jal wrote: ↑Wed Feb 12, 2020 5:52 am

bradrn wrote: ↑Wed Feb 12, 2020 4:34 amWhat’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.

Ser wrote: ↑Wed Feb 12, 2020 8:43 amThe generic is the use or non-use of articles when talking about concrete entities in general terms (what they are as a type).

bradrn wrote: ↑Tue Jan 28, 2020 2:26 am 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.)

Ser wrote: ↑Wed Feb 12, 2020 6:09 pm Just do it... Generally there's someone interested in such things. I would be.

bradrn wrote: ↑Wed Feb 12, 2020 6:34 pmAlright then, I’ll do it! I don’t have much to do right now, so I might as well just start now.

jal wrote: ↑Thu Feb 13, 2020 1:35 am

bradrn wrote: ↑Wed Feb 12, 2020 6:34 pmAlright 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.

• 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 wrote: ↑Thu Feb 13, 2020 4:28 amMy 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 wrote: ↑Thu Feb 13, 2020 6:18 am

Xwtek wrote: ↑Thu Feb 13, 2020 4:28 amMy 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".

Ser wrote: ↑Wed Feb 12, 2020 8:43 am 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.)

chris_notts wrote: ↑Fri Feb 14, 2020 4:17 pm 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?

• 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|).