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Re: Conlang Random Thread

Posted: Wed Jul 17, 2019 10:43 pm
by Vijay
1st person dual inclusive, 1st person singular subject + 2nd person singular object, 1st person plural inclusive, 1st person subject + 2nd person object plural(?)

In other words, he's asking whether it's realistic for 'you and me' to change in meaning to 'I _____ you' and for 'you + me + zero or more other people' to change to 'I (we?) _____ you'.

In Indonesian, kita means 'you + me + zero or more people'. In Tagalog, however, kita means something else, e.g. mahal means 'love' and mahal kita means 'I love you'.

Re: Conlang Random Thread

Posted: Wed Jul 17, 2019 10:52 pm
by bradrn
Vijay wrote: Wed Jul 17, 2019 10:43 pm 1st person dual inclusive, 1st person singular subject + 2nd person singular object, 1st person plural inclusive, 1st person subject + 2nd person object plural(?)

In other words, he's asking whether it's realistic for 'you and me' to change in meaning to 'I _____ you' and for 'you + me + zero or more other people' to change to 'I (we?) _____ you'.

In Indonesian, kita means 'you + me + zero or more people'. In Tagalog, however, kita means something else, e.g. mahal means 'love' and mahal kita means 'I love you'.
Thanks Vijay!

Re: Conlang Random Thread

Posted: Wed Jul 17, 2019 11:58 pm
by akam chinjir
Could it be that in both cases you've got a merger of 1s and 2s pronouns? Offhand that seems more likely than either one turning into the other (but I don't know anything about the particular case).

Re: Conlang Random Thread

Posted: Thu Jul 18, 2019 4:04 am
by Xwtek
Vijay wrote: Wed Jul 17, 2019 10:43 pm In other words, he's asking whether it's realistic for 'you and me' to change in meaning to 'I _____ you' and for 'you + me + zero or more other people' to change to 'I (we?) _____ you'.
I actually mean I/we ____ you, with any possible plural marking except I ___ you(SG)

Re: Conlang Random Thread

Posted: Thu Jul 18, 2019 4:07 am
by Xwtek
bradrn wrote: Wed Jul 17, 2019 10:28 pm
Akangka wrote: Wed Jul 17, 2019 9:57 pm Is 1DL(U).INCL > 1SG.S.2SG.O and 1PL.INCL > 1.S.2.O.P(L (either/both subject and object are plural)) realistic, because I saw the Tagalog word for "I ... you" is "kita", which means 1PL.INCL in Indonesian.
What do these abbreviations mean?
Thanks, it turns out I misspelled some glossing abbreviation

Re: Conlang Random Thread

Posted: Thu Jul 18, 2019 4:36 am
by bradrn
Akangka wrote: Thu Jul 18, 2019 4:07 am Thanks, it turns out I misspelled some glossing abbreviation
Not sure how useful you’ll find it, but I’ve always found the Leipzig Glossing Rules to be useful.

Re: Conlang Random Thread

Posted: Thu Jul 18, 2019 11:17 pm
by Xwtek
Is it realistic to have a suppletion for case. For example, the agentive case and the patientive case of word monster is ská̂t and ktããm, respectively.

Not every noun have suppletion.

Re: Conlang Random Thread

Posted: Fri Jul 19, 2019 12:57 am
by Vijay
Yes. That happens in Archi and Lezgian.

Re: Conlang Random Thread

Posted: Fri Jul 19, 2019 7:45 am
by Kuchigakatai
It may also interest you that because of a certain morphological oddity, Standard Arabic امرأة imra'a 'woman' usually undergoes suppletion in the construct state (i.e. when it's possessed in some sense), replaced by some other noun like زوجة zawja 'wife' (in the common context of "his woman"). Well, you can put the word in the construct state if you really want to, but this is normally avoided...

Re: Conlang Random Thread

Posted: Fri Jul 19, 2019 8:39 am
by Salmoneus
Irish has nominative singular bean, 'woman', but genitive singular mná, 'of the woman'. [and nominative plural mná, and genitive plural ban, because... well...]

Diachronically, this isn't suppletion, because both 'bean' and 'mná' are simply inflected forms of the same root. However, due to PIE ablaut, and then obscuring soundchanges, it's effectively suppletive synchronically.

Re: Conlang Random Thread

Posted: Fri Jul 19, 2019 6:47 pm
by Xwtek
Is this realistic:
.
My language is pretty weird. The patientive case for animate noun is sometimes shorter than the agentive case.

Originally it's marked by suffix -i. It causes stress shift and umlaut, and most of the time it's deleted. (Except in some monosyllabic words, where it's root vowel that is deleted and since this language disallow vowelless words, the -i is preserved) Unstressed short vowel and stressed /i/ or /u/ is then deleted between two single consonants except word-finally before a consonant. This makes a word like:

khítes (SG.AGT) > kthéés (SG.PAT)

uncommon but not rare.

Regular words only mark patientive case by umlaut and floating high tone, though.

Re: Conlang Random Thread

Posted: Fri Jul 19, 2019 7:41 pm
by bradrn
Akangka wrote: Fri Jul 19, 2019 6:47 pm Is this realistic:
.
My language is pretty weird. The objective case for animate noun is sometimes shorter than the agentive case.

Originally it's marked by suffix -i. It causes stress shift and umlaut, and most of the time it's deleted. (Except in some monosyllabic words, where it's root vowel that is deleted and since this language disallow vowelless words, the -i is preserved) Unstressed short vowel and stressed /i/ or /u/ is then deleted between two single consonants except word-finally before a consonant. This makes a word like:

khítes (SG.AGT) > kthéés (SG.PAT)

uncommon but not rare.

Regular words only mark patientive case by umlaut and floating high tone, though.
Sounds fine to me.

BTW, what’s an objective case? I’ve never heard of it.

Re: Conlang Random Thread

Posted: Fri Jul 19, 2019 7:52 pm
by Xwtek
bradrn wrote: Fri Jul 19, 2019 7:41 pm
Akangka wrote: Fri Jul 19, 2019 6:47 pm Is this realistic:
.
My language is pretty weird. The objective case for animate noun is sometimes shorter than the agentive case.

Originally it's marked by suffix -i. It causes stress shift and umlaut, and most of the time it's deleted. (Except in some monosyllabic words, where it's root vowel that is deleted and since this language disallow vowelless words, the -i is preserved) Unstressed short vowel and stressed /i/ or /u/ is then deleted between two single consonants except word-finally before a consonant. This makes a word like:

khítes (SG.AGT) > kthéés (SG.PAT)

uncommon but not rare.

Regular words only mark patientive case by umlaut and floating high tone, though.
Sounds fine to me.

BTW, what’s an objective case? I’ve never heard of it.
Whoops, I mean Patientive case. Objective case is identical to Oblique case

Re: Conlang Random Thread

Posted: Fri Jul 19, 2019 7:53 pm
by Travis B.
bradrn wrote: Fri Jul 19, 2019 7:41 pm BTW, what’s an objective case? I’ve never heard of it.
I think Akangka means patientive case by that.

Re: Conlang Random Thread

Posted: Fri Jul 19, 2019 11:08 pm
by Kuchigakatai
Akangka wrote:[...]
Modern Greek masculine nouns are longer in the nominative singular than the accusative singular. E.g. ψαράς psarás 'fisherman (nom.)' vs. ψαρά psará 'fisherman (acc.)'. (Most feminine nouns and all neuter nouns have the same length in both cases.)

This was very likely also the case in pre-Spanish (an early unattested form of Spanish), something observable through internal reconstruction and comparison to Latin, Old French, Old Occitan and Leonese. In a similar way to Greek, many pre-Spanish masculine nouns ended in -s in the nominative singular: *[ˈmaɾkos] 'Mark (nom.)' vs. *[ˈmaɾko] 'Mark (acc.)'.
bradrn wrote:BTW, what’s an objective case? I’ve never heard of it.
In English, the nominative and accusative cases of personal pronouns are very often called "subjective" and "objective" respectively. "Objective case" can refer to the (pro)nominal case that direct and indirect objects take.

Re: Conlang Random Thread

Posted: Sat Jul 20, 2019 3:44 am
by Xwtek
PeterPrincipleTwo wrote: Compound words are a bad idea. Exception: the terminology being coined are built from parts that have exactly one meaning and interpretation (chemical nomenclature). A better idea would be to categorize and sort semantic primitives into modules and create a short root for each one.
Found in a Reddit post. So apparently natlangs like English, German, and Mandarin are bad because they have compound words.

Re: Conlang Random Thread

Posted: Sat Jul 20, 2019 6:40 am
by bradrn
Akangka wrote: Sat Jul 20, 2019 3:44 am
PeterPrincipleTwo wrote: Compound words are a bad idea. Exception: the terminology being coined are built from parts that have exactly one meaning and interpretation (chemical nomenclature). A better idea would be to categorize and sort semantic primitives into modules and create a short root for each one.
Found in a Reddit post. So apparently natlangs like English, German, and Mandarin are bad because they have compound words.
In general, I’m not sure I agree with your interpretation of that statement. Just because PeterPrincipleTwo thinks compound words are bad, that doesn’t necessarily mean he dislikes all natlangs which use them. I myself quite dislike noun classes and classifiers, but I still like languages such as Hebrew and Mandarin.

…but if I Google that post, I find it came from https://www.reddit.com/r/conlangs/comme ... i/eu9ojy3/, where it was cast as a blanket statement to guide an (apparently) new conlanger by saying that compound words should be avoided. And this really isn’t good advice: compounding is one of the most common methods of natlang word formation, and so should be used in conlangs as well. (I believe zompist’s Lexipedia has a good overview of this.) In that context, it’s at best unhelpful, and at worst it’s misleading. I see that at least you replied with a bit of a reality check, so thank you for that!

Re: Conlang Random Thread

Posted: Sat Jul 20, 2019 7:16 pm
by Richard W
Akangka wrote: Fri Jul 19, 2019 6:47 pm Is this realistic:
.
My language is pretty weird. The patientive case for animate noun is sometimes shorter than the agentive case.
Sound changes can result in marked behaviour. For example, for Russian unpalatalised stems, the genitive plural of feminine and neuter nouns is one syllable shorter than the nominative singular.

In Icelandic, for strong masculine nouns, the nominative singular indefinite is usually one syllable longer than the accusative singular indefinite.

Re: Conlang Random Thread

Posted: Sun Jul 21, 2019 4:16 am
by jal
Also, I don't see why inherently "accusative" nouns, i.e. nouns that'll often appear in the accusative (like manipulated objects) wouldn't be shorter than their nominative counterparts.


JAL

Re: Conlang Random Thread

Posted: Sun Jul 21, 2019 7:16 am
by bradrn
jal wrote: Sun Jul 21, 2019 4:16 am Also, I don't see why inherently "accusative" nouns, i.e. nouns that'll often appear in the accusative (like manipulated objects) wouldn't be shorter than their nominative counterparts.


JAL
Because they’re usually more marked?