Conlang Random Thread

[Kuchigakatai]

How realistic is it to have /t͡s d͡z/ but not /t͡ʃ d͡ʒ/ (or any other affricatives)?

Cantonese.

[bradrn]

How realistic is it to have /t͡s d͡z/ but not /t͡ʃ d͡ʒ/ (or any other affricatives)?

Cantonese.

Another excellent example — thank you! (Although admittedly that’s an aspiration rather than a voicing contrast, as is typical for Chinese languages.)

[doctor shark]

Not quite in a conlang, but didn't see any other place where this would fit, so why not.

More: show

OMG MONEY

More: show

OMG MORE MONEY

[Travis B.]

Warum sind sie nicht in einer konstruirte Sprache? Ich wundere mich nur.

[Raphael]

Warum sind sie nicht in einer konstruirte Sprache? Ich wundere mich nur.

Warum sind sie nicht in einer konstruirten Sprache?

[linguistcat]

I might have to take Japanese's particle system and turn it into a case system of sorts for my cat conlang. Lets see how that goes.

[Travis B.]

Warum sind sie nicht in einer konstruirte Sprache? Ich wundere mich nur.

Warum sind sie nicht in einer konstruirten Sprache?

Vielen Dank für die Korrektur.

[jal]

Please take that to the "practice a natlang" thread :). Also, "Sie" is capitalized when it means "you", otherwise it means "they". Furthermore, I don't think you can "be" in a conlang. I'd say "schreiben" is better.


JAL

[Travis B.]

Please take that to the "practice a natlang" thread . Also, "Sie" is capitalized when it means "you", otherwise it means "they". Furthermore, I don't think you can "be" in a conlang. I'd say "schreiben" is better.

By "sie" I meant "they", as in "the banknotes".

[jal]

By "sie" I meant "they", as in "the banknotes".

Right. I must've been sleeping.


JAL

[Travis B.]

By "sie" I meant "they", as in "the banknotes".

Right. I must've been sleeping.

Oh, don't worry about it.

[masako]

I'm kinda wingin' it here...let me know if this is crazy;

root: kir - tooth; dental; ivory
noun: ikir - tooth >> ikirim - teeth
verb: kirek - bite; chew

root: dus - cure; heal; mend; fix
noun: udus - cure >> dusin (-in is agentive) - healer >> gidus (gi- is tool/device) - medicine; medication
verb: dusra - cure; heal

duskirin - dentist

OR

ikirudsin - dentist

Just wanna build euphonic vocabulary. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Qwynegold]

Thanks, but what does AV and BER mean?

AV is presumably active voice, agent voice, or actor voice.

Ber- is an Indonesian prefix with many different meanings. At a guess, going by wikipedia, I'd say the first one forms a continuative (the person who is standing), while the last one is a derivative denominative with a sense of 'possessing [noun]' (so, 'the project had a result' or 'the project was effectual' or similar). But as I don't speak Indonesian, I await correction...

Thanks! Anyway, so Indonesian uses relative clauses for this purpose. If I had to choose between relative clauses and participles, for this conlang I would choose participles because the formation of relative clauses is a bit tricky. :/ Does anyone know of other things natlangs may do? Oh, now that I think about it, that one example of Xwtek is interesting if translating into Japanese:

kare wa otoko wo ut-te korosh-ita
he TOP man OBJ shoot-CONJ kill-PST
He shot the man, killing him.

[akam chinjir]

If I had to choose between relative clauses and participles

I think it's more common to say that a language uses participles as relative clauses, rather than instead of relative clauses. (I'm pretty sure I've seen relative clauses defined as verb forms that get used like adjectives, especially attributively---that is, as relative clauses.) Fwiw.

kare wa otoko wo ut-te korosh-ita
he TOP man OBJ shoot-CONJ kill-PST
He shot the man, killing him.

I feel like this is more an example of a converb than of a participle? By which I mean that (in both the Japanese and the English) the subordinate verb form is being used more like an adverb than like a participle. Admittedly "adverb" is kind of a grab-bag none-of-the-above category.

[Xwtek]

By "sie" I meant "they", as in "the banknotes".

Right. I must've been sleeping.


JAL

Yet, you consistently put "JAL" at the end of each post. (By the way, why don't you use a signature?)

[Xwtek]

By the way, what is the difference between:

A man who is standing over there is my friend

versus

A man standing over there is my friend

[Xwtek]

I'm kinda wingin' it here...let me know if this is crazy;

root: kir - tooth; dental; ivory
noun: ikir - tooth >> ikirim - teeth
verb: kirek - bite; chew

root: dus - cure; heal; mend; fix
noun: udus - cure >> dusin (-in is agentive) - healer >> gidus (gi- is tool/device) - medicine; medication
verb: dusra - cure; heal

duskirin - dentist

OR

ikirudsin - dentist

Just wanna build euphonic vocabulary. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Reminds me of Austroasiatic system. In the Austroasiatic system, a root may be monosyllabic, but a free word cannot (there is a few exceptions, and in some languages, it's abandoned entirely). So the root is derived by reduplication or affixation. Though, probably not *ikirudsin, but duskirin, or even duskir.

[Whimemsz]

By the way, what is the difference between:

A man who is standing over there is my friend

versus

A man standing over there is my friend

They both mean the same thing, but at least for me the second one sounds much more natural and, of the two options, is what I would say. The first one isn't ungrammatical but it sounds clunky and like the type of fake-ish example sentence you find in grammar textbooks and so on.

[Salmoneus]

The first one is extremely unnatural, bordering on ungrammatical for me.

However, if you recast the sentences with the definite article instead of the indefinite, then both are valid, and the version with the relative is effectively just a more formal or in some cases more emphatic equivalent of the version with the participle.

The only grammatical difference is that the version of the relative, with the correct intonation and/or punctuation ("the man, who is...") opens up the possibility of a descriptive, rather than restrictive, interpretation; while this is theoretically possible with the participle version as well, it is MUCH less common with it.

[Richard W]

By the way, what is the difference between:

A man who is standing over there is my friend

versus

A man standing over there is my friend

The former is more compatible with there apparently being only one man standing over there, though even then it has grammatical oddities. The weaker coupling makes the use of the indefinite article less jarring. Additionally, the former may get interpreted as, "A man, who is standing over there, is my friend".

If 'a' means 'any', they are equivalent, and the number of men standing over there is irrelevant.

I think that part of the problem is that "A man is my friend" is an odd sentence. Unless this is an idiomatic use of "is my friend", one would expect "is one of my friends"; it seems odd (as well as sad) that one has only one friend, though it would be acceptable if one had previously been talking about a particular friend, and so the definite "my friend" would naturally refer to him.