Zompist Bboard Again

Man in Space wrote: ↑Sun Oct 08, 2023 1:06 pm I’ve finally put my money where my mouth is and contributed some changes to the revamped ID.

Much appreciated! (Or it will be, once I get the time to look at it… I do have a thesis to write!)

Last night I got a wild hair (hare?) and excavated my Msérsca grammar and dictionary after a few dormant years and reworked a couple details. A lot remains to be discovered, but here's a snippet:

In some cases, a preposition will have a different meaning depending on whether the noun following it is in the common or dative case: i gláit [i glo:it] in the tower vs. i gláindis [i glo:indɪs] into the tower; i mót cfá [i mø:t kfo:] ground coffee vs. i mottis cfá [i mɔt:ɪs kfo:] coffee being ground.

Just came up with a number system today for Balog and rather than describing it, I've given it as a challenge to decode here.

One to twenty are:

1 na
2 ge
3 nega
4 žu
5 nuža
6 guže
7 nugeža
8 ti
9 nita
10 gite
11 nigeta
12 žitu
13 nižuta
14 gižute
15 nigužeta
16 wo
17 nowa
18 gowe
19 nogewa
20 žowu

you should send it to Janko...

I think I have finally made a case system I am actually satisfied with. I don't like the phoneme /o/, but having it is the only way I can satisfy my need for morphophonological symmetry. And I'm not at all fond of superheavy syllables.

Still, it's the best I can do, and I think the case system is naturalistic enough and the quirks should be diachronically explainable. The endings exist in singular-plural pairs, separated by slashes.

Animate Masculine
NOM: -is / -ēs
VOC: -ī / -ēs
ACC: -in / -īn
GEN: -ē / -āya
EQU: -ila / -īla

Animate Feminine
NOM: -us / -ōs
VOC: -ū / -ōs
ACC: -un / -ūn
GEN: -ō / -āwa
EQU: -ula / -ūla

Animate Neuter
NOM: -as / -ās
VOC: -ā / -ās
ACC: -an / -ān
GEN: -aḫ / -āḫ
EQU: -ala / -āla

Inanimate Neuter
NOM: -am / -ān
VOC: N/A or -ā / -ān
ACC: -am / -ān
GEN: -aḫ / -āḫ
EQU: -ala / -āla

Might add two more cases, the ornative (possessing a quality or thing) and the privative (lacking a quality or thing) denoted by -sa and -ma.

Nice. They look vaguely Indo-European; what kind of language are they for?

WeepingElf wrote: ↑Thu Dec 28, 2023 11:08 am Nice. They look vaguely Indo-European; what kind of language are they for?

Vrkhazhian. Ye, I took a lot of inspiration from Old Persian, Sanskrit and Hittite. They have an "ancient language" vibe and aesthetic to them.

Ahzoh wrote: ↑Thu Dec 28, 2023 11:15 am

WeepingElf wrote: ↑Thu Dec 28, 2023 11:08 am Nice. They look vaguely Indo-European; what kind of language are they for?

Vrkhazhian. Ye, I took a lot of inspiration from Old Persian, Sanskrit and Hittite. They have an "ancient language" vibe and aesthetic to them.

Ah, yes. Vrkhazhian is a project I have been following with great interest; I like it. Like you, I am very much into the style of those ancient IE languages since I contracted the "language bug" from my brother's Latin school grammar. My main project Old Albic is an ancient IE language itself, related to Hittite about as closely as Latin is to Sanskrit. (The page on FrathWiki is obsolete; the new version, however, is currently heavily under construction - I am currently working on Proto-Hesperic, which is an intermediate proto-language between PIE and Old Albic.)

Ah, yes. Vrkhazhian is a project I have been following with great interest; I like it. Like you, I am very much into the style of those ancient IE languages since I contracted the "language bug" from my brother's Latin school grammar. My main project Old Albic is an ancient IE language itself, related to Hittite about as closely as Latin is to Sanskrit. (The page on FrathWiki is obsolete; the new version, however, is currently heavily under construction - I am currently working on Proto-Hesperic, which is an intermediate proto-language between PIE and Old Albic.)

I think I am in the right direction of an organic-looking case system that fulfills my expectations, but I am still not sure about having /e: o:/. I added them to solve two problems: one being too much transparency and regularity (e.g. cases just being gender vowel + consonant) and the other being that the endings didn't feel marked enough.

But I just wanted a simpler system of /a a: i i: u u:/

Ahzoh wrote: ↑Thu Dec 28, 2023 3:47 pm

Ah, yes. Vrkhazhian is a project I have been following with great interest; I like it. Like you, I am very much into the style of those ancient IE languages since I contracted the "language bug" from my brother's Latin school grammar. My main project Old Albic is an ancient IE language itself, related to Hittite about as closely as Latin is to Sanskrit. (The page on FrathWiki is obsolete; the new version, however, is currently heavily under construction - I am currently working on Proto-Hesperic, which is an intermediate proto-language between PIE and Old Albic.)

I think I am in the right direction of an organic-looking case system that fulfills my expectations, but I am still not sure about having /e: o:/. I added them to solve two problems: one being too much transparency and regularity (e.g. cases just being gender vowel + consonant) and the other being that the endings didn't feel marked enough.

But I just wanted a simpler system of /a a: i i: u u:/

At the risk of earning ire, then just remove /e: o:/

maybe the "marked enough" will arise organically as you use it over the new year.

Just posted on the CONLANG list about Proto-Hesperic nominal morphology, after posting about phonology last Wednesday.

Still working on the case system, now I have it in a fancy table. All in all I want a system where the singular places stress on the root and the plural places stress on the theme vowel (which also indicates noun class).
My syncretism plans:
1) feminine-masculine syncretism in the genitive and ablative (= only a common-neuter distinction in the ablative and genitive)
2) accusative-instrumental syncretism in the animate plurals
3) nominative-vocative syncretism in the masculine and feminine plural

Drew up some sound changes involving the weak consonants /ʁ ʕ h j w ʔ/

So the language basically goes from having /a a: e e: i i: o o: u u:/ to /a a: i i: u u:/ (not shown here) back to /a a: e e: i i: o o: u u:/ before settling on /æ æ: ɑ ɑ: i i: u u:/ in the end.

ROCK’N’ROLL, both of you.

My case system is now completed, though I'm not a fan of <uḫ iḫ> /ux ix/ as case endings, they will have to do (because I can't find other ways to source genitive morphemes from that are euphonious). I have created two alternative systems and it's hard which one to pick because they each with their pros and cons.

Also I have Animate Neuter vs. Inanimate Neuter instead of Neuter vs. Inanimate because technically Feminine and Masculine can have inanimate nouns within their classes (e.g. bodily functions, related tools and abstract concepts, etc.). Also they (the neuters) have the same origins.

ˀEzu-Nardiḫ, ˀānam darilli simbīya ˀiddīya!
"O Asunardi, I am like a father to those boys!"

Ahzoh wrote: ↑Fri Jan 19, 2024 11:40 pm ˀEzu-Nardiḫ, ˀānam darilli simbīya ˀiddīya!
"O Asunardi, I am like a father to those boys!"

I do really like the look of your language - it really has a nice old Near East vibe to it.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Sat Jan 20, 2024 1:32 pm

Ahzoh wrote: ↑Fri Jan 19, 2024 11:40 pm ˀEzu-Nardiḫ, ˀānam darilli simbīya ˀiddīya!
"O Asunardi, I am like a father to those boys!"

I do really like the look of your language - it really has a nice old Near East vibe to it.

That's the idea. Though, I still haven't decided which system I like more. Some words sound good with one while others don't and vice-versa.

Ahzoh wrote: ↑Sat Jan 20, 2024 3:02 pm

Travis B. wrote: ↑Sat Jan 20, 2024 1:32 pm

Ahzoh wrote: ↑Fri Jan 19, 2024 11:40 pm ˀEzu-Nardiḫ, ˀānam darilli simbīya ˀiddīya!
"O Asunardi, I am like a father to those boys!"

I do really like the look of your language - it really has a nice old Near East vibe to it.

That's the idea. Though, I still haven't decided which system I like more. Some words sound good with one while others don't and vice-versa.

Could you have two declensions, then?

bradrn wrote: ↑Sat Jan 20, 2024 5:09 pm

Ahzoh wrote: ↑Sat Jan 20, 2024 3:02 pm

Travis B. wrote: ↑Sat Jan 20, 2024 1:32 pm

I do really like the look of your language - it really has a nice old Near East vibe to it.

That's the idea. Though, I still haven't decided which system I like more. Some words sound good with one while others don't and vice-versa.

Could you have two declensions, then?

I thought about it, but I have never heard of a morphemic chainshift where the dative (or instrumental) morpheme becomes the accusative morpheme as the accusative morpheme becomes the nominative morpheme.

I think I will choose the first version since it's more consistent with the first person pronouns ānam and ādam

Ahzoh wrote: ↑Sat Jan 20, 2024 5:36 pm

bradrn wrote: ↑Sat Jan 20, 2024 5:09 pm

Ahzoh wrote: ↑Sat Jan 20, 2024 3:02 pm
That's the idea. Though, I still haven't decided which system I like more. Some words sound good with one while others don't and vice-versa.

Could you have two declensions, then?

I thought about it, but I have never heard of a morphemic chainshift where the dative (or instrumental) morpheme becomes the accusative morpheme as the accusative morpheme becomes the nominative morpheme.

Searching the Surrey Syncretisms Database, Telugu has a situation where accusative and nominative fall together in Class D nouns, while nominative and genitive merge in the plural. Not quite parallel to your situation, but I see no reason for your pattern of mergers to be implausible.

(Also, the term ‘chainshift’ isn’t really the right one here… that’s a diachronic phenomenon, whereas this is synchronic. Also, unlike a true chainshift, nothing here is forcing anything else to shift.)