Conlang Random Thread

[Ahzoh]

I am finding immense difficulty in coming up with a case system that meshes well with my noun's grammatical genders and noun states.

[äreo]

I am finding immense difficulty in coming up with a case system that meshes well with my noun's grammatical genders and noun states.

What do the genders and noun states look like? and what sort of case system would you like to see?

[Ahzoh]

I am finding immense difficulty in coming up with a case system that meshes well with my noun's grammatical genders and noun states.

What do the genders and noun states look like? and what sort of case system would you like to see?

(NAN = neuter animate, NIN = neuter inanimate):

Base state/Status Rectus:

Code: Select all

      SG |  PL
FEM  -u  / -??
MASC -i  / -??
NAN  -ar / -?? or -an
NIN  -aš / -?? or -an

Construct State/Status Constructus:

Code: Select all

      SG |  PL
FEM  -u  / -ū
MASC -i  / -ī
NAN  -a  / -ā
NIN  -a  / -ā

[Man in Space]

Base state/Status Rectus:

Code: Select all

      SG |  PL
FEM  -u  / -??
MASC -i  / -??
NAN  -ar / -?? or -an
NIN  -aš / -?? or -an

F.PL -wa
M.PL -ya
NAN.PL -an
NIN.PL -an

[Ahzoh]

Base state/Status Rectus:

Code: Select all

      SG |  PL
FEM  -u  / -??
MASC -i  / -??
NAN  -ar / -?? or -an
NIN  -aš / -?? or -an

F.PL -wa
M.PL -ya
NAN.PL -an
NIN.PL -an

I forgot, /w/ and /j/ elide in all positions but word-initial. I also find that longer endings don't always sound good for most words. Like lumbu > lumbāwa. Lumbāwa and longer words sound clunky, especially if case ending are transparent and simply appended to the gender endings.

That's the other thing, I lack diachronic imagination to come up with endings that aren't just single consonants added at the end.

[Man in Space]

Base state/Status Rectus:

Code: Select all

      SG |  PL
FEM  -u  / -??
MASC -i  / -??
NAN  -ar / -?? or -an
NIN  -aš / -?? or -an

F.PL -wa
M.PL -ya
NAN.PL -an
NIN.PL -an

I forgot, /w/ and /j/ elide in all positions but word-initial. I also find that longer endings don't always sound good for most words. Like lumbu > lumbāwa, lumbāwa sounds clunky, especially if case ending are transparent and simply appended to the gender endings.

Make the masculine and feminine plural both -ī.

[Ahzoh]

They have to be distinct, even in the plural. Plus there are aesthetic reasons for for not using /u/ or /i/ or long variants to represent gender neutrality in nouns and verb endings. Limiting, but it produces an elegant symmetry.

And that's why I have great difficulty coming up with case endings. I have a lot of morphological, phonological, and aesthetic constraints.

And not even doing away with case altogether looks good on my language.

[malloc]

And that's why I have great difficulty coming up with case endings. I have a lot of morphological, phonological, and aesthetic constraints.

I know what you mean. It often feels like 90% of the problems in my conlangs arise from having such finicky requirements in those areas.

[alice]

And that's why I have great difficulty coming up with case endings. I have a lot of morphological, phonological, and aesthetic constraints.

I know what you mean. It often feels like 90% of the problems in my conlangs arise from having such finicky requirements in those areas.

Me too, plus a good deal of "how long before someone on the ZBB points out that this is less plausible than something I rejected because it felt wrong".

[foxcatdog]

Amarin has no case and very limited person marking (only existing in first and second person for the subject) so it has no easy ways to rearrange its word order to convey things like emphasis and definiteness. My question is what are some ways i can achieve this other then say a plain passive voice. Possibly i could take the experiential and make certain constructions and use it with some auxillary to convey passive voice which strikes me as the most creative way to handle things. Thoughts?

[bradrn]

Amarin has no case and very limited person marking (only existing in first and second person for the subject) so it has no easy ways to rearrange its word order to convey things like emphasis and definiteness. My question is what are some ways i can achieve this other then say a plain passive voice.

Firstly, note that even languages with very limited morphology are generally fine with rearranging word order a bit. Consider English: extremely limited case-marking and only third-person agreement, yet fronting is perfectly acceptable:

I met Tom yesterday, but Jane I haven't seen for ages.

(example shamelessly stolen from Wikipedia)

There’s also options like the various forms of clefting and pseudo-clefting, e.g.:

It’s Jane I haven’t seen for ages.
Jane is who I haven’t seen for ages.

For topicalisation, left-dislocation is cross-linguistically popular (in fact, probably universal):

(As for) Jane, I haven’t seen her for ages.

Some languages have special focalising particles, often derived from copulae and/or demonstratives:

Jane FOC I haven’t seen for ages.
(← Jane, she I haven’t seen for ages.)
(← Jane is who I haven’t seen for ages.)

In a lot of languages, the post-verbal position is distinguished for focus purposes, though English doesn’t really allow it:

I haven’t seen for ages Jane.

And of course, as you say, the passive is always available, though with a slightly different meaning in this case:

Jane hasn’t been seen for ages.

I feel quite sure there’s many (many, many) more options, but these are the main ones I can think of right now.

[foxcatdog]

Amarin has no case and very limited person marking (only existing in first and second person for the subject) so it has no easy ways to rearrange its word order to convey things like emphasis and definiteness. My question is what are some ways i can achieve this other then say a plain passive voice.

Jane hasn’t been seen for ages.

I feel quite sure there’s many (many, many) more options, but these are the main ones I can think of right now.

I have case markers which also function to mark different kinds of verbal relationships which would be most appropriate to you use for a passive if any could be used?

[bradrn]

Amarin has no case and very limited person marking (only existing in first and second person for the subject) so it has no easy ways to rearrange its word order to convey things like emphasis and definiteness. My question is what are some ways i can achieve this other then say a plain passive voice.

Jane hasn’t been seen for ages.

I feel quite sure there’s many (many, many) more options, but these are the main ones I can think of right now.

I have case markers which also function to mark different kinds of verbal relationships which would be most appropriate to you use for a passive if any could be used?

I can’t answer that without knowing: which case markers are present? And how are used more generally?

But also: there’s no one best answer to this question. Dixon (in his Basic Linguistic Theory) lists a very large number of possibilities for case-marking the moved argument, including dative, instrumental, locative, comitative, purposive and perlative (or even more than one per language). It seems like nearly any non-core case is possible.

[foxcatdog]

Prepositions were many and varied. Some common ones

*ni “DAT”
*tu “GEN”
*nar “LAT”
*wa “ABL”
*ka “LOC.Inner”
*sim “LOC.Outer”
*tin “INST”
*ju “COM”

*tu has quite a number of uses but don’t use it for classic possessors which instead use *na

wiiman na naimaka
servant LNK prince
“The prince’s servant”

Statements of location use *tu to imply neutral location where *ka or *sim would imply a certain sense of locative distance or backgrounding.

inamaa to me tu pan
dog-pl DEM.1 COP GEN out
“These dogs are out”

inajun na ne memi sim pan
dog-PAUC LNK 1.sg COP.IMPF LOC.2 out
“My dogs are outside”

Inalienable non-human possession increasingly used *tu

ne isii pim mimita tu ina
1.sg go-IMPF pet ear-DUAL GEN dog
“I’m going to pet the dog’s ears”

*tu can front a verb to imply a nounlike sense

tu ambinaamminisi
GEN be.healthy-IMPF-DES-2
“If only you were well”

Case markers were also used to link verbs together.

*ni (the dative) marked an action was done for a reason

ne isiju śapa ni aujuna turimaa
1.sg go-DIST DEM.LOC.3 for look-1.sg bird-PL
“I went there to look at birds”

*wa (the ablative) generally indicated that an action was not desirable or achievable due to previous action

mai lauja kikimannu na mipimannu wa pemannu katapi
3.m NEG timid-NECC LNK short-NECC from COP.3.sg.NECC guard
“If only he wasn’t so timid and short he could be a guard”

*tu (the genitive) was generally all purpose when you didn’t want to simply link two verbs in which case you would use the linker *na. In general it marked a break.

paauaujuna apal to tu ne pakanikana apal to ni pasikʷumuńuna
pa-au-auju-na apal to tu ne paka-nika-na apal to ni pasikʷu-muńu-na
EXP-IMPF-see/look-1.sg apple DEM.nonsp of 1.sg eat-USIT-1.sg apple DEM.nonsp for be.healthy-1.sg
“I see an apple, i eat an apple (out of habit), it’s for my health (which is good for me)”

kʷarimanika tu nasiikʷari
kʷari-ma-nika tu nasii+kʷari
fight-IRR-USIT of fight+season=war
“During war it is custom to fight”

*nar the lative marked something as happening because of something else or alternatively naturally following from the previous events

susi mee papumaju nar janaa pai
susi mee papu-ma-ju nar jana-aa pai
wolf DEM.spe be.here-IRR-EXCL to die+CAUS 1.pau
“The wolf may be here, to kill us”

That leaves the locatives, instrumental and comitative. Note this construction would be used with the experiential which implies an action was experienced rather then done voluntarily.

sii panapa
3.f EXP-shine
“She shines (involuntarily)”

[bradrn]

*tu has quite a number of uses but don’t use it for classic possessors which instead use *na … Statements of location use *tu to imply neutral location where *ka or *sim would imply a certain sense of locative distance or backgrounding.

I don’t understand these statements. What do you mean by a ‘classic possessor’ and a ‘neutral location’?

*tu can front a verb to imply a nounlike sense

tu ambinaamminisi
GEN be.healthy-IMPF-DES-2
“If only you were well”

I don’t get how anything in this example sentence ‘implies a nounlike sense’.

That leaves the locatives, instrumental and comitative.

Not necessarily. There’s no reason why you couldn’t reuse one of the other prepositions for a passive construction.

Note this construction would be used with the experiential which implies an action was experienced rather then done voluntarily.

sii panapa
3.f EXP-shine
“She shines (involuntarily)”

This terminology is confusing. I usually see ‘experiential’ used for a verbal form related to the perfect, which implies the speaker has done an action before. (The standard example being Chinese 過 -guò, often translated as ‘ever’.) This kind of experiential, by the way, is also a perfectly good intermediate step in the development of a passive.

By contrast, your construction indicates a lack of agency. I’m not sure I know of a good single-word term for this — perhaps ‘nonvolitive’ or similar. It certainly does have the effect of deemphasising the subject, but I can’t really see a good way to turn this into a passive, at least given the form in your sentence.

[foxcatdog]

*tu has quite a number of uses but don’t use it for classic possessors which instead use *na … Statements of location use *tu to imply neutral location where *ka or *sim would imply a certain sense of locative distance or backgrounding.

I don’t understand these statements. What do you mean by a ‘classic possessor’ and a ‘neutral location’?

Classic possesors as in the relationship defined by a purely possesive case. The genitive in Amarin is more abstract (it would be called something like the relational in Amarin grammars). I think i might have reversed the meaning of the two things in the other example since out implies farther location/more backgrounding then outside

*tu can front a verb to imply a nounlike sense

tu ambinaamminisi
GEN be.healthy-IMPF-DES-2
“If only you were well”

I don’t get how anything in this example sentence ‘implies a nounlike sense’.

It's roughly how Amarin speakers would state someone is in a particular state. It is better translated as "I desire the state of you being healthy"'

That leaves the locatives, instrumental and comitative.

Not necessarily. There’s no reason why you couldn’t reuse one of the other prepositions for a passive construction.

Stop being so pedantic

Note this construction would be used with the experiential which implies an action was experienced rather then done voluntarily.

sii panapa
3.f EXP-shine
“She shines (involuntarily)”

This terminology is confusing. I usually see ‘experiential’ used for a verbal form related to the perfect, which implies the speaker has done an action before. (The standard example being Chinese 過 -guò, often translated as ‘ever’.) This kind of experiential, by the way, is also a perfectly good intermediate step in the development of a passive.

By contrast, your construction indicates a lack of agency. I’m not sure I know of a good single-word term for this — perhaps ‘nonvolitive’ or similar. It certainly does have the effect of deemphasising the subject, but I can’t really see a good way to turn this into a passive, at least given the form in your sentence.

You could call it an Atelic, Nonvolitive or an Experiential based on its various usages. In other Amaric languages its just an Atelicity marker but in Amarin proper its meaning has expanded

[foxcatdog]

I think the following would be suitable

*ni for cases of quirky subject where you want to imply especially something is experienced

na ni paaija
1.sg for EXP-blink
“I blink (involuntarily)"

Also in cases when you want to imply something was done by certain means you use a Genitive+Instrumental (or in this case comitative) because this is supposed to be a nounlike construction.

na juriwi tu ju tepi juwa na mai
1.sg dance-NEAR GEN COM step tepid LNK 3.m
“I danced with his tepid steps”

[keenir]

That leaves the locatives, instrumental and comitative.

Not necessarily. There’s no reason why you couldn’t reuse one of the other prepositions for a passive construction.

Stop being so pedantic

How is it pedantic or bad to reuse a preposition?

[foxcatdog]

Not necessarily. There’s no reason why you couldn’t reuse one of the other prepositions for a passive construction.

Stop being so pedantic

How is it pedantic or bad to reuse a preposition?

I'm not calling the choice pedantic i'm calling him pedantic.

[keenir]

Stop being so pedantic

How is it pedantic or bad to reuse a preposition?

I'm not calling the choice pedantic i'm calling him pedantic.

for what - trying to help you solve the problem you asked for help with?