Zompist Bboard Again

Impressive.

Came up with two varieties of Vrkhazhian: Imperial/Literal and Colloquial/Vernacular Vrkhazhian, which I call Śād Ḳebbūk/Śād Ḳebbāli "Mouth of the Rulers" and Śād Lumbūk/Śād Lumbāli "Mouth of the People"

Anâm kunat eḫḫūk śimūk nālna. (Imperial)
Anu kān eḫḫā śimā ku nālna. (Colloquial)
"I saw them in these houses."

Kunam eḫḫuk. Kunam lûk utu. (Imperial)
Kān eḫḫa dâ. Kān lâ dâ utu. (Colloquial)
"They were here. They were not there."

Nammağdum lûk ribādūm naḳūstun. (Imperial)
Nammağduli kâli ribādū naḳūstun. (Colloquial)
"The palace where the guards will reside."

I successfully managed to digitize all 170 currently-extant glyphs in the CT cuneiform mode of Atski.

Made a text sample:

Mamûs kūnēse kitîs nakābna le Dar-Lumbūk nakūsi.
[mɒˈmuːs kuːˈnæː.sæ kiˈtiːs nɒˈkɒːb.nɒ ˈlæ dɒr.lumˈbuːk nɒˈkuː.si]
"I, who is Mamu, will create a son and he will be the father of humanity."

Nardis kūnēse pitûs nakābna le Nar-Lumbūk nakūsu.
[ˈnɒr.dis kuːˈnæː.sæ piˈtuːs nɒˈkɒːb.nɒ ˈlæ nɒr.lumˈbuːk nɒˈkuː.su]
"I, who is Narad, will create a daughter and she will be the mother of humanity."

An excerpt from from a stele called the Oath of Creation, regarding the two moon deities, who created humanity.

And in the spoken register:
Anu, Mamû, kitê nakābna ye Dar-Lumbā nakūsi.
[ˈɑ.nu mɑˈmuː kiˈtɛː nɑˈkɑːb.nɑ jɛ dɑrˈlum.bɑː nɑˈkuː.si]

Anu, Nardi, pitâ nakābna ye Nar-Lumbā nakūsu.
[ˈɑ.nu ˈnɑr.di piˈtɑː nɑˈkɑːb.nɑ jɛ nɑrˈlum.bɑː nɑˈkuː.su]

Published a blog post on kinship terms in Old Greedian (for those who read French).

Vilike wrote: ↑Fri Oct 01, 2021 3:26 am Published a blog post on kinship terms in Old Greedian (for those who read French).

I like using the same term for brother-in-law and son-in-law. It seems so obvious in retrospect. Is this commonly attested in natlangs?

masako wrote: ↑Thu Sep 02, 2021 9:07 pm

masako wrote: ↑Sun Aug 22, 2021 9:23 am as of today, I am at 333 glyphs for omyatloko, a third of my goal

360!

405!

not all of this was today but i finished and uploaded a ruritanian translation of the writeup on ruritanian names, and created or updated the dictionaries for given and family names as well

Well, technically it was partly yesterday and partly today, but I’ve managed to work on my derivational morphology for tasulek. So now I don’t have to make up new roots all the time, although I don’t like all the derivations… maybe I need to go back to the drawing board

Created the Simplified English language's phonology.

I reduced the number of cases in Vrkhazhian from four to three, thought I don't know what to call the third case, because it functions as a postpositional case, genitive case and secondary object marking case of a ditransitive verb

What do the other cases do?

just accusative and nominative

I might just call it "genitive-postpositional", if I were to advent something, the "adjunct" or "adjunctive".

I’d tend towards ‘oblique’, though that traditionally includes the accusative as well. Honestly, even just ‘genitive’ or ‘dative’ would be fine — those cases tend to cover a large semantic range anyway.

I guess I'll stick with "instrumental". Vrkhazhian is secundative so the recipient or indirect object of a ditransitive verb is already indicated by the accusative, but the theme or direct object is indicated by this third case. Like an inverse dative case.

I'd prefer "genitive".

WeepingElf wrote: ↑Sun Oct 03, 2021 9:29 am I'd prefer "genitive".

I've thought about using that term, and it would make things very simple. But it doesn't feel right since the term has always implied the marked noun modifies (e.g. attributively) another noun and rarely stands alone and even when it does there is an implicit attributive link with another noun (e.g. using the genitive alone as the subject of a reflexive verb construction). The primary function of my third case is not to indicate possession or attribute, so calling it genitive would be misleading.

Mind you, when it comes to fact that the case could be used to express possession, the term instrumental isn't much better either, but it does serve better to denote that the marked object stands alone as the object of an argument and not as attributive to another noun, implied or otherwise.

Now I am aware that case terms are completely arbitrary, but like writing systems where there are strong associations between glyphs and the phonemes they represent, there are ideas strongly associated with case terms.

I also want to go away from using dative because I want to emphasize that the language is secundative (R = P), not indirective (T = P), and the dative has strong association with indicating indirect objects. I know many languages use the dative as a general adpositional case (and even at some point merge with the instrumental) but I still think the term has a greater association with indicating indirect objects of ditransitives.

Leaving aside the instrumental, that only leaves designating it a "postpositional case" or an "oblique case" as potential alternative candidates.

The more you describe it, the more I like "oblique", though I might expect such a system to later have the accusative absorb the object-marking functions (making it an "oblique" case), and this third case to become a sort of "relational" or "adpositional" case.

Rounin Ryuuji wrote: ↑Sun Oct 03, 2021 9:48 pm The more you describe it, the more I like "oblique", though I might expect such a system to later have the accusative absorb the object-marking functions (making it an "oblique" case), and this third case to become a sort of "relational" or "adpositional" case.

In the colloquial register of the language the accusative and instrumental do fuse to become a simple oblique

I certainly thought about pulling a Hindustani and having the third case be a carrier for a series of postpositional case markers. However the accusative can also be the object of postpositions.