Zompist Bboard Again

Howdy y'all, it's been a while. So this is going to be a space where I detail my most recent project. The goal for this project were to combine a marked topic-comment language with an ergative-absolutive alignment in a way that feels naturalistic. As far as I know no currently extant language does this, but if any do I would love to see examples of how it's handled. I haven't conlang'd in a while, mostly do to tech issues (not having a proper IPA or conlanging keyboard on my mac after switching from Windows and ukulele being unintuitive compared to msklc) and this felt like the perfect project to get the brain juices flowing, or whatever. :p

Going to be doing all phonology in SAMPA, because of lack of access to an IPA keyboard outside of using a website and copy/pasting.

Anyway, will post more when I have more to show. Just going to leave with a small sample phrase.

Luluelo catayoatoamac.
/lu.lu.e.lo tsa.ta.jo.a.to.a.mats/
rain-coll-top-abs go-3-pfv-fut-ind
Rain is coming.

There are some convenient virtual IPA keyboards on the Web, such as this and this.

Oh, I know of those too but it'll never be more convenient than a built in keyboard layout. And I got too used to my custom layouts on windows for how slow copy/pasting those would be. I'll eventually beat my head against ukelele until i spit out a custom IPA and conlanging keyboard layout for mac, but until then, SAMPA it is.

communistplot wrote: ↑Sun Mar 19, 2023 12:45 pm The goal for this project were to combine a marked topic-comment language with an ergative-absolutive alignment in a way that feels naturalistic.

Ooh, I did this a while back! I never got too much done, but you can see what I made of that particular conlang here: https://www.verduria.org/viewtopic.php?p=42942#p42942

(not having a proper IPA or conlanging keyboard on my mac after switching from Windows and ukulele being unintuitive compared to msklc)

I like SIL’s keyboards: https://scripts.sil.org/uniipakeyboard.

Nice to see you back. I'd be glad to see more of that conlang!

communistplot wrote: ↑Mon Mar 20, 2023 1:27 am Oh, I know of those too but it'll never be more convenient than a built in keyboard layout. And I got too used to my custom layouts on windows for how slow copy/pasting those would be. I'll eventually beat my head against ukelele until i spit out a custom IPA and conlanging keyboard layout for mac, but until then, SAMPA it is.

I ended up mapping some of my most used symbols to my custom layout (the undertacks for [e̞ o̞], the dental and apical undertacks [t̪ s̺], some odds and ends like [ᵝ ʲ ː]), making copying and pasting the rest not very troublesome.

So let me guess...
This language has a topic marker (or maybe syntactic topic marking, i.e. fronting) that does not indicate case. Other case markers appear on non-topical core arguments. Those arguments are optional, so the verb needs clear transitivity/valence marking. Basically, a system like Korean or Japanese.
Or is it something wackier than that?

Moose-tache wrote: ↑Mon Mar 20, 2023 7:42 pm This language has a topic marker (or maybe syntactic topic marking, i.e. fronting) that does not indicate case. Other case markers appear on non-topical core arguments. Those arguments are optional, so the verb needs clear transitivity/valence marking. Basically, a system like Korean or Japanese.

Sounds pretty much like what I did, though without the verbal marking. There’s only so many ways to combine case-marking and topic-marking.

bradrn wrote: ↑Mon Mar 20, 2023 2:12 am

communistplot wrote: ↑Sun Mar 19, 2023 12:45 pm The goal for this project were to combine a marked topic-comment language with an ergative-absolutive alignment in a way that feels naturalistic.

Ooh, I did this a while back! I never got too much done, but you can see what I made of that particular conlang here: https://www.verduria.org/viewtopic.php?p=42942#p42942

Wow, that looks super cool, and it's interesting to see the different morphological approaches since I've gone for an agglutinative language and yours is analytic.

bradrn wrote: ↑Mon Mar 20, 2023 2:12 am

(not having a proper IPA or conlanging keyboard on my mac after switching from Windows and ukulele being unintuitive compared to msklc)

I like SIL’s keyboards: https://scripts.sil.org/uniipakeyboard.

I have the one from here for mac, it's just so unintuitive (I forget which key combo does what IPA symbol) compared to the one they used to have for windows that was my main keyboard layout since like 2010.

Ares Land wrote: ↑Mon Mar 20, 2023 4:58 am Nice to see you back. I'd be glad to see more of that conlang!

Thank you!! Good to be back.

Rounin Ryuuji wrote: ↑Mon Mar 20, 2023 8:44 am

communistplot wrote: ↑Mon Mar 20, 2023 1:27 am Oh, I know of those too but it'll never be more convenient than a built in keyboard layout. And I got too used to my custom layouts on windows for how slow copy/pasting those would be. I'll eventually beat my head against ukelele until i spit out a custom IPA and conlanging keyboard layout for mac, but until then, SAMPA it is.

I ended up mapping some of my most used symbols to my custom layout (the undertacks for [e̞ o̞], the dental and apical undertacks [t̪ s̺], some odds and ends like [ᵝ ʲ ː]), making copying and pasting the rest not very troublesome.

Yeah, I hope to make a full, intuitive keyboard layout for mac. And then share it so that anyone who needs it can also use it.

Moose-tache wrote: ↑Mon Mar 20, 2023 7:42 pm So let me guess...
This language has a topic marker (or maybe syntactic topic marking, i.e. fronting) that does not indicate case. Other case markers appear on non-topical core arguments. Those arguments are optional, so the verb needs clear transitivity/valence marking. Basically, a system like Korean or Japanese.
Or is it something wackier than that?

It uses both syntactic and morphological marking for topic and case. As for valence, I've been between explicitly using valence/transitivity markings on the verb, using postpositions and/or using syntax to show valence/transitivity.

I'm currently leaning towards using periphrastic constructions on verbs to show valence changes utilizing postpositions.

communistplot wrote: ↑Mon Mar 20, 2023 10:15 pm

bradrn wrote: ↑Mon Mar 20, 2023 2:12 am

(not having a proper IPA or conlanging keyboard on my mac after switching from Windows and ukulele being unintuitive compared to msklc)

I like SIL’s keyboards: https://scripts.sil.org/uniipakeyboard.

I have the one from here for mac, it's just so unintuitive (I forget which key combo does what IPA symbol) compared to the one they used to have for windows that was my main keyboard layout since like 2010.

If you still have the MSLKC file, I made a program to convert it into a couple of different formats, including Mac.

bradrn wrote: ↑Mon Mar 20, 2023 10:20 pm

communistplot wrote: ↑Mon Mar 20, 2023 10:15 pm

bradrn wrote: ↑Mon Mar 20, 2023 2:12 am
I like SIL’s keyboards: https://scripts.sil.org/uniipakeyboard.

I have the one from here for mac, it's just so unintuitive (I forget which key combo does what IPA symbol) compared to the one they used to have for windows that was my main keyboard layout since like 2010.

If you still have the MSLKC file, I made a program to convert it into a couple of different formats, including Mac.

Whoa, that's super cool!! I don't have the msklc source files anymore, several clean wipes and pc's later and all. but I do have the installer for the layout and can probably recreate it when I have some time.

The main argument for transitivity marking on the verb is that it allows you to drop arguments that are not the topic. Without this, there's no way to distinguish an intransitive clause from a transitive clause with an implied subject or object.

Unless, of course, you have some syntactic marker of case, like "subjects, topic or otherwise, alway precede the verb, and objects, topic or otherwise, always follow the verb." But that's pretty awkward and limiting, and would ruin the ergativity.

Moose-tache wrote: ↑Mon Mar 20, 2023 10:38 pm The main argument for transitivity marking on the verb is that it allows you to drop arguments that are not the topic. Without this, there's no way to distinguish an intransitive clause from a transitive clause with an implied subject or object.

Hmm, do you have an example of how this works?

Unless, of course, you have some syntactic marker of case, like "subjects, topic or otherwise, alway precede the verb, and objects, topic or otherwise, always follow the verb." But that's pretty awkward and limiting, and would ruin the ergativity.

Ergative word orders are known, though.

bradrn wrote: ↑Tue Mar 21, 2023 12:15 am

Moose-tache wrote: ↑Mon Mar 20, 2023 10:38 pm Unless, of course, you have some syntactic marker of case, like "subjects, topic or otherwise, alway precede the verb, and objects, topic or otherwise, always follow the verb." But that's pretty awkward and limiting, and would ruin the ergativity.

Ergative word orders are known, though.

They are known, but are considerably rarer than purely morphological ergativity.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Tue Mar 21, 2023 1:48 pm

bradrn wrote: ↑Tue Mar 21, 2023 12:15 am

Moose-tache wrote: ↑Mon Mar 20, 2023 10:38 pm Unless, of course, you have some syntactic marker of case, like "subjects, topic or otherwise, alway precede the verb, and objects, topic or otherwise, always follow the verb." But that's pretty awkward and limiting, and would ruin the ergativity.

Ergative word orders are known, though.

They are known, but are considerably rarer than purely morphological ergativity.

More to the point, they mark ergativity. What I said above is that you'd have to syntactically mark the subject if you wanted to have a topic-comment structure and pro-drop and no transitivity marking on the verb. In other words, having those three features together (topic marking, pro-drop, and no verb marking), you then have to introduce some kind of nominative/accusative syntactic marking, or else you won't be able to tell the difference between an intransitive verb and a transitive verb with an omitted argument. This is obviously not ideal, hence why I think Communistplot should just bite the bullet and mark transitivity on the verb like all good languages do.

Moose-tache wrote: ↑Tue Mar 21, 2023 8:38 pm This is obviously not ideal, hence why I think Communistplot should just bite the bullet and mark transitivity on the verb like all good languages do.

You obviously have a narrow view of what a "good" language is!

Moose-tache wrote: ↑Tue Mar 21, 2023 8:38 pm What I said above is that you'd have to syntactically mark the subject if you wanted to have a topic-comment structure and pro-drop and no transitivity marking on the verb. In other words, having those three features together (topic marking, pro-drop, and no verb marking), you then have to introduce some kind of nominative/accusative syntactic marking, or else you won't be able to tell the difference between an intransitive verb and a transitive verb with an omitted argument.

I don’t see how nominative alignment is any different to ergative alignment here. The respective situations should be more or less symmetrical.

This is obviously not ideal, hence why I think Communistplot should just bite the bullet and mark transitivity on the verb like all good languages do.

Obviously I don’t know any good languages then, since I’m not too familiar with transitivity-marking on the verb… could you elaborate on how this works please?

bradrn wrote: ↑Tue Mar 21, 2023 8:52 pm

Moose-tache wrote: ↑Tue Mar 21, 2023 8:38 pm This is obviously not ideal, hence why I think Communistplot should just bite the bullet and mark transitivity on the verb like all good languages do.

Obviously I don’t know any good languages then, since I’m not too familiar with transitivity-marking on the verb… could you elaborate on how this works please?

TBH, the main sort of transitivity marking I am familiar with is applicatives (which can also often mark ditransitivity).

The most high profile topic-comment languages with pro-drop are Korean and Japanese. In these languages, each verb stem has a valence. In many cases, there are transparently derived stems, like Japanese shimeru/shimaru (stop something/stop yourself), or Korean cuk-/cuki- (die/kill). Both the Japanese a/e alteration and the Korean -i suffix can go both ways. In other words, you have to remember if the default Korean root is transitive and -i makes it middle/passive/intransitive, or if it's inherently intransitive, and -i makes it causative. But very, very few verbs in either language (none, off the top of my head) are labile, the most common situation in English, where the transitivity of a verb is indicated only by what is going on around it.

The marking of transitivity on the verb is common in topic-comment languages with pro-drop for precisely the reasons I mentioned above, and while these are nominative languages, all of this applies to ergative ones as well.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Tue Mar 21, 2023 8:46 pm You obviously have a narrow view of what a "good" language is!

Correct. If you're interested, here is a comprehensive list of objectively good languages, in order of goodness.
0) Korean, the perfect language that cannot even be compared to ordinary tongues
1) Choctaw, the one good language of North America
2) Estonian, actually has some labile verbs, but still quite mellifluous
3) Japanese, a language of heathens who have absorbed some wisdom from their superior neighbors