Zompist Bboard Again

How plausible does my irrealis particle seem? I don't really see anything wrong with it but fresh perspectives can be helpful.

I have a verbal particle which (for now) is dubbed the irrealis particle because, depending on context, it marks the optative, subjunctive, obligative and a mood which I cannot name and acts like the (now archaic) English "I would" when it expresses intent rather than conditionals (e.g. "I would have you tell me").

The particle is aeth /aɪθ/ and can be pre-verbal or post-verbal (depending on how it is being used). The conlang is VSO and is rather similar to literary Welsh morphologically but not wholly (there's no point in re-inventing a natlang).

So, here are some examples:

Aeth esbenan 'may I know' [esbenan = esben- (verbal stem 'know'); -an (first person, singular, non-past suffix.) Therefore esbenan by itself is indicative.]

Ethelan iw aeth esbened 'I wish that I (may) know' (English might use 'knew' here.) [ethel- (verbal stem 'wish'); iw (relative pronoun introduces subordinate clauses); esbened (verbnoun of esben-; used as an infinitive, gerund, and present participle; used here because the tense/aspect is indicated by ethelan.]

Esbenan iw hi egwanev Jonlang aeth 'I know that he should be named Jonlang' [hi (he/she/it); egwanev (past participle of egwan- 'name')]. Here the particle comes at the end of the phrase to mark it as obligative.

The last form is more complex and relies on using 'to be' as an auxiliary:

Bagan aeth esbened othil 'I would have you tell me', however this has to be restructured as 'I would know from you'. [bagan ('be' 1st person singular, future. 'Be' is the only verb with a morphological future tense.); othil (o preposition 'from/of' inflected for 2nd person singular, stem oth-).] This renders it literally as "I shall be may knowing from you" = "I would know from you") The past form 'I would have known from you' just changes bagan to idhin 'I was'.

As I said, I don't really see any issued with it.... yet.

Jonlang wrote: ↑Wed Apr 09, 2025 4:57 am I have a verbal particle which (for now) is dubbed the irrealis particle because, depending on context, it marks the optative, subjunctive, obligative and a mood which I cannot name and acts like the (now archaic) English "I would" when it expresses intent rather than conditionals (e.g. "I would have you tell me").

‘Irrealis’ is a fairly vague term, and it seems appropriate for this range of usages. You should probably be careful to be more specific with your circumscription, though — terms like ‘subjunctive’ are themselves vague and vary wildly between languages.

(Note that ‘subjunctive’ is a particularly tricky term: it’s generally assumed that a language can mark a ‘subjunctive’ category or an ‘irrealis’ category but not both. Depending on who you read, this is either because the two terms are synonyms used primarily in different geographical areas, or because they’re genuinely different moods which happen to have a substantial overlap. I think I understand what you mean here, but as mentioned you should describe the usage more specifically.)

If your question is about having a particle for that, there are examples from natlangs. Russian has a particle бы (by) for marking conditional / hypothetical / irrealis. It is used with past tense forms of the verb. A difference to your particle is that the Russian particle is a clitic, so it cannot be used clause-initially.
*) In it's origin it's a frozen conditional of the verb "to be", and the past tense forms were originally perfect participles. In some other Slavic languages the cognate forms still function as auxiliary plus participle.