Zompist Bboard Again

Turns out that the whole "naturalistic conlangs" thing is extremely difficult, also I need naming languages for my tabletop setting, so I accidentally those instead of working on the Akana relay or Kangshi. Oops.

I started working on these conlangs sometime in 2018, when I ran a D&D campaign set in thinly-disguised Western Europe, with one language playing the part of French, one of German, and one of Arabic. That campaign ended, but I like the languages, so I'm reusing them.

So, some background information: the two languages that are in any way well-developed are called Inggirian and Sarkatic. They are both named after the native name for the regions they are spoken in, (nir-e) Inggir and kats is-Sârkat. Sarkatic is of unknown origin; Inggirian meanwhile has a well-developed ancestor language, Old Inggirian, but the precise pathway of change between the two stages is currently unclear (and it is likely that modern Inggirian will undergo some revision as a result).

Inggirian and Sarkatic form a Sprachbund. Since modern Inggirian is morphosyntactically quite drastically different from Old Inggirian, but very close to modern Sarkatic, it is likely that this is the result of recent assimilation of Inggirian into a preexisting language area, possibly as a result of migration or otherwise increased cultural contact. The Sprachbund is characterized by ergativity that is reflected in the (polypersonal) verbal marking, a discourse structure built on chaining and converbal constructions, and the presence of juxtapositional modification.

A sample of the three languages:

1 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.

• Sarkatic:
  Ndhik i-shelem kosam ûywane, kosam methênîne methêk.
  [nd͡ðɪk i-ʃːɛlɛm kɔsam uːjwanɛ | kɔsam mɛθɛːniːnɛ mɛθɛːk]
  

  ndhik

  earth

  i^X-

  DEF-

  yelem

  whole

  kosam

  one

  ûywa

  language

  -ne

  -INST

  ,

  kosam

  one

  methênî

  speech

  -ne

  -INST

  meth

  speak

  -êk

  -3pS.REAL

• Inggirian:
  Hers-e ialy maxt byrxgam, maxt lerielgem byragan.
  [hɛrsɛ jɑɫɯ mɑχtʰ pɯɾɯ̆xkɑm | mɑχtʰ lɛɾiɛ̯lkɛm pɯɾɑkɑn]
  

  hers

  earth

  -A

  -EZ

  ialy

  all

  maxt

  one

  byrx

  language

  -gAm

  -INST

  ,

  maxt

  one

  leriel

  speech

  -gAm

  -INST

  byr

  speak

  -Ag

  -PST

  -An

  -3sS.REAL

• Old Inggirian:
  Yale perji makat jañbag, makat lerela burneseñ.
  [jale pʰertʃi makʰatʰ tʃaŋpak | makʰatʰ lerela purneseŋ]
  

  yale

  all

  perji

  earth

  makat

  one

  jañbag

  language

  ,

  makat

  one

  lerela

  speech

  bur

  speak

  -ne

  -TNS

  señ

  -3p

2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.

• Ip-herîzuset pôrushan koshê na mbrezâykê awham kats i-Shinarô; tarti whâ mbâchêk.
  [ɪpʰɛriːzusɛt pɔːruʃan kɔʃɛː na mb͡ʙɛzaːjkɛː aw̥am kat͡s ɪʃːinarɔː | tarti w̥aː mbaːt͡ʃɛːk]
  

  i^X-

  DEF-

  herîzu

  east

  -set

  -ABL

  pôru

  travel

  -shan

  -CVB

  kosh

  happen

  -ê

  -3sS.REAL

  naⁿ

  CMPL

  fezâ

  find

  -ik

  -3pA

  -ê

  -3sS.REAL

  awham

  plain

  kats

  land

  i^X-

  DEF-

  Shinar

  Shinar

  -ô

  -LOC

  ;

  tar

  do

  -ti

  -CVB

  whâ

  there

  mbâch

  settle

  -êk

  -3pS.REAL

• Nuxymg uraigam iendesdeni amg-a Sinaraw balxune tyrylsydwany aigaw terimx tuilagasdan.
  [nuxɯmk urɑjkɑm jɛndɛstɛni | ɑmkɑ sinɑrɑw pɑɫxunɛ tʰɯrɯlsɯtwɑnɯ | ɑjkɑw tʰɛrimx tʰujlɑkɑstɑn]
  

  nuxymg

  people

  urai

  east

  -gAm

  -ABL

  iend

  travel

  -AsdAn

  -3pS.REAL

  -I

  -SEQ

  amg

  land

  -A

  -EZ

  Sinar

  Shinar

  -Aw

  -LOC

  balxune

  plain

  tyryl

  find

  -sIdu

  -3pA

  -An

  -3sO.REAL

  -I

  -SEQ

  aig

  that

  -Aw

  -LOC

  terim

  live

  -x

  -INF

  tuil

  decide

  -Ag

  -PST

  -AsdAn

  -3pS.REAL

• Nokomga oraya gama yendañapa Sinarwañ amugaño balak turelutol ñuyubasu ayagaño nakcayuku coyilaseñ.
  [nokʰomka oraja kama jentaŋapʰa sinarwaŋ amukaŋo palakʰ tʰurelutʰol ŋujupasu | ajakaŋo nakʰtʃʰajukʰu tʃʰojilaseŋ]
  

  nokomga

  people

  oraya

  east

  gama

  from

  yenda

  travel

  -ñapa

  -SIM

  Sinar

  Shinar

  -wañ

  -GEN

  amug

  land

  -año

  -LOC

  balak

  plain

  turelu

  search

  -tol

  -SEQ

  ñuyu

  meet

  -basu

  -PERF

  ayag

  that

  -año

  -LOC

  terem

  live

  -yuku

  -INF

  coyila

  decide

  -señ

  -3p

Ooh, another ergative conlang! More details, please! Also, I’m pondering adding converbs to Hlʉ̂, so I’d be interested in hearing more about those as well. I’ve done some research, but good overviews seem hard to find.

(I wish I had something more intelligent to say, but that will need to wait until said details arrive…)

Luckily for you, I have a fair amount of things about Old Inggirian already written up, which I will be happy to post.

So, let us start with Old Inggirian verbal morphology. The inflectional verbal morphology of Old Inggirian divides itself, albeit not neatly, into three sets of forms: bound forms, nominal forms and finite forms. Finite forms are those forms that carry personal marking, and nominal forms are those which may head the body of a relative clause. The finite forms, apart from being the only ones to carry personal marking, may only appear at the end of a sentence or clause. The nominal forms are essentially participles; they can modify noun phrases, head relative clauses, as well as function as converbal forms. In this function, they are less tightly bound to the following clause as the purely converbal forms. The remaining forms act purely as adverbs, more closely bound than the nominal forms, and thus are called bound forms.

In the following, I will present all of these forms in order.

The Finite Forms
The finite forms essentially occupy a 2x2 matrix:

	Realis	Irrealis
No f. reference	-∅	-ki
Fixed reference	-ne	-sin

The precise meaning of these categories, although convenient for analysis, requires explanation.

The Aorist
The aorist is the unmarked form. Its semantic value is simply the assertion of some state or action. Pragmatically, what this means depends on the inherent aspect of the verb: with perfective verbs, this means a past occurrence, whereas with imperfective verbs, it is most often a future or present interpretation. The aorist can be used where the use of the "present" -ne is rendered superfluous by context, but this is rarely done. It has no aspectual interpretation.

The Subjunctive
The subjunctive, similar to the aorist, has no fixed temporal reference, but simply indicates full or partial non-assertion. Its use is therefore very wide. It occurs in complement phrases, especially to verbs of quotation or fearing. It can indicate that the speaker is unsure, for instance because he has inferred the information being communicated. Finally, it can indicate a state of potentiality.

The Present
The Present (which is quite misleadingly named) is an asserted form that carries fixed reference to some point of time. When context does not specify a time period, the default interpretation is essentially the inverse of the Aorist: present/near future for perfective verbs, and past for imperfective ones. However, it is grammatical also to use this form in any other time context. In these situations, its use over the aorist is usually conditioned by the presence of a subclause that refers to a different time.

The Conditional
The conditional is the non-asserted counterpart to the present, and derives its name from the unusual counterfactual construction of Old Inggirian, in which the protasis is a finite verb in the conditional and the apodosis a nominalization in the infinitive. On its own it may fulfill similar functions as the subjunctive, but with a marked time reference (such as a sort of potential-in-the-past).

The Personal Desinences
Old Inggirian has a very pedestrian set of finite personal endings, distinguishing three persons and two numbers. A specialty is that there are two different sets of endings for positive and negative verbs.

Positive

	Singular	Plural
1st	-(e)wa	-(e)gawa
2nd	-(e)jig	-(e)gajag
3rd	-(e)ñ	-(e)señ

Negative

	Singular	Plural
1st	-(ñ)awi	-(ñ)agawi
2nd	-(ñ)aji	-(ñ)ajawi
3rd	-(ñ)a	-(ñ)ajida

The Nominal Forms
The nominal forms, in the earliest texts, are still largely limited to functioning as nouns. They begin to take over as a sort of loosely bound converb or even medial verb in later texts.

The Infinitive
The most basic nominal form during the Old Inggirian stage, the infinitive ends in -yuku for stems with an even number of feet and in -ku for stems with an odd number of feet. The infinitive is an abstract noun in the earliest texts, and later becomes the participial version of the aorist: yorwayuku, "to see", "seeing", "the one who sees".

The Participle
The participle, much like the infinitive, has two metric allomorphs: -nagun and -gun. It acts as a nominal variant of the present: yorwanagun, "the one who saw".

The Perfect
This form, with the metric allomorphs -basu and -cu, acts in all respects like -(yu)ku, except that it can attach only to perfective verbs. Here it takes over the function of a past participle, leaving -(yu)ku to take on a specifically abstract meaning or take on nominal function for imperfective interpretations of the same verb. For example, raku "to die" has the perfective nominalization rakubasu, "who is dead/died" and the imperfective rakunagun, referring to someone who is about to die, or who lay dying in the past.

The infinitive rakuyuku, when used adnominally, thus takes on a sort of future participle function: rakuyuku toroku "the doomed soldiers". For imperfective verbs, this category can be duplicated with the construction -tol woldayuku, with the verb wolda- "become" serving as an aspect-changing auxiliary.

The Bound Forms
The bound forms essentially act as converbs; they are adverbial modifiers to other clauses. It is worth noting that, while for purposes of illustration these are often translated with the English converb -ing, the tight temporal binding they express is most often rendered in English with "and".

The sequential converb
This morpheme, invariantly -tol, expresses that an action was completed immediately prior to the modified clause. Rodmo dagi cagujaku woldatol betelwañ samyobaño galpadeñ: "He caught on a stone and fell on the ground", literally "having become caught on a stone, he fell on the ground".

The simultaneous converb
Metric variants -ñapa and -pa. Expresses the simultaneous occurrence of the action and the modified clause. Nacaleaño-ñi cobuñapa buk gir jamo ñendagay wedawa, "walking around in my garden I suddenly saw a small squirrel".

The causal converb
This converb takes the forms -tolpa and -tolñapa. It is a straightforward combination of the two basic converbs, and expresses causality. Rodmo dagi cagujaku woldatolpa betelwañ samyobaño galpadeñ: "Because he caught on a stone, he fell to the ground".

The negative converb
This converb, with the form -(ñ)ayog, has a similar meaning to English without X-ing; expressing a negated consequence or concomitance of the clause to which it is bound. It is also used, again with the auxiliary wolda, to form negatives of other converbs, for example:

Wediñayog woldatolpa betelwañ samyobaño galpadewa.

wedi

see

-ñayog

-NEG_CVB

wolda

become

-tolpa

-CAUS

betel

ground

-wañ

-GEN

samyob

face

-año

-LOC

galpad

fall

-ewa

-1s

Because I couldn't see, I fell on the ground.

Hallow XIII wrote: ↑Wed Oct 20, 2021 9:46 am The Aorist
The aorist is the unmarked form. Its semantic value is simply the assertion of some state or action. Pragmatically, what this means depends on the inherent aspect of the verb: with perfective verbs, this means a past occurrence, whereas with imperfective verbs, it is most often a future or present interpretation. The aorist can be used where the use of the "present" -ne is rendered superfluous by context, but this is rarely done. It has no aspectual interpretation.

I’m finding this somewhat difficult to interpret, mostly because there’s no such thing as a ‘perfective’ or ‘imperfective’ verb — the terms are ones of aspect, not Aktionsart. Perhaps you meant respectively ‘punctual’ and ‘durative’ instead? Which would make sense, since ‘past for punctual verbs but present for durative verbs’ would be perfectly sensible for an unmarked tense. (For the same reason, I find your ‘present’ tense implausible: semantically speaking, there’s no such thing as a truly present punctual event.)

Also, I think these forms need better names, but I can’t think of anything.

The Participle
The participle, much like the infinitive, has two metric allomorphs: -nagun and -gun. It acts as a nominal variant of the present: yorwanagun, "the one who saw".

Metrical allomorphy is interesting. (So are most things to do with metrics, actually.) Could we have more information please?

The infinitive rakuyuku, when used adnominally, thus takes on a sort of future participle function: rakuyuku toroku "the doomed soldiers". For imperfective verbs, this category can be duplicated with the construction -tol woldayuku, with the verb wolda- "become" serving as an aspect-changing auxiliary.

Does this mean that nouns can be used as nominal modifiers? What exactly is the word class status of adjectives in Old Inggirian?

The Bound Forms
The bound forms essentially act as converbs; they are adverbial modifiers to other clauses. It is worth noting that, while for purposes of illustration these are often translated with the English converb -ing, the tight temporal binding they express is most often rendered in English with "and".

This system seems just slightly too neat compared to what I’ve read, but then again you said naturalism isn’t a goal, so it’s probably fine.

bradrn wrote: ↑Sat Oct 23, 2021 6:53 am

Hallow XIII wrote: ↑Wed Oct 20, 2021 9:46 am The Aorist
The aorist is the unmarked form. Its semantic value is simply the assertion of some state or action. Pragmatically, what this means depends on the inherent aspect of the verb: with perfective verbs, this means a past occurrence, whereas with imperfective verbs, it is most often a future or present interpretation. The aorist can be used where the use of the "present" -ne is rendered superfluous by context, but this is rarely done. It has no aspectual interpretation.

I’m finding this somewhat difficult to interpret, mostly because there’s no such thing as a ‘perfective’ or ‘imperfective’ verb — the terms are ones of aspect, not Aktionsart. Perhaps you meant respectively ‘punctual’ and ‘durative’ instead? Which would make sense, since ‘past for punctual verbs but present for durative verbs’ would be perfectly sensible for an unmarked tense. (For the same reason, I find your ‘present’ tense implausible: semantically speaking, there’s no such thing as a truly present punctual event.)

Also, I think these forms need better names, but I can’t think of anything.

I'll cop to this abuse of language. You're probably right that those should read as "durative" and "punctual", but it's important to note that on some level all these categories really mean in the language-internal context is that one of them selects the nonpast tense as unmarked and the other the past tense. All the -ne tense marker does in the absence of explicit time adverbs, then, is select the respectively marked tense for the verbal category under investigation. Aspect per se isn't a morphological nor even really a semantic category in Old Inggirian, so even lexically "punctual" verbs may be read as imperfective in the right context, and vice-versa. For example yorwa "to look at, watch" is a durative verb; accordingly yorwa-wa translates usually as "I'm looking", but can also be "I will look", while yorwa-ne-wa is "I was looking" or "I looked". Meanwhile weda "to see" is a punctual verb, so the marked tense is nonpast; weda-wa is straightforwardly "I saw", while weda-ne-wa translates as "I (can) see" or "I will see".

bradrn wrote: ↑Sat Oct 23, 2021 6:53 am

The Participle
The participle, much like the infinitive, has two metric allomorphs: -nagun and -gun. It acts as a nominal variant of the present: yorwanagun, "the one who saw".

Metrical allomorphy is interesting. (So are most things to do with metrics, actually.) Could we have more information please?

Sure. Old Inggirian displays a strong pattern of trochaic stress, and consequently prefers an even number of feet in a word. This is reflected by some verbal affixes having allomorphs with an even or odd number of feet, respectively. The system is admittedly somewhat underdeveloped and is lost quite quickly in the development of Modern Inggirian, although it may remain in other descendants.

bradrn wrote: ↑Sat Oct 23, 2021 6:53 am

The infinitive rakuyuku, when used adnominally, thus takes on a sort of future participle function: rakuyuku toroku "the doomed soldiers". For imperfective verbs, this category can be duplicated with the construction -tol woldayuku, with the verb wolda- "become" serving as an aspect-changing auxiliary.

Does this mean that nouns can be used as nominal modifiers? What exactly is the word class status of adjectives in Old Inggirian?

This is another artifact of poor form naming. The "nominal forms" should maybe be called "adnominal forms", since they all principally act as participles, with the classic IE conflation of adjectival and adclausal (~converbal) functions. In Old Inggirian the participles simply have the additional property that if they are used as nouns, instead of implying a concrete head noun as other adjectives would, they take on abstract meanings.

bradrn wrote: ↑Sat Oct 23, 2021 6:53 am

The Bound Forms
The bound forms essentially act as converbs; they are adverbial modifiers to other clauses. It is worth noting that, while for purposes of illustration these are often translated with the English converb -ing, the tight temporal binding they express is most often rendered in English with "and".

This system seems just slightly too neat compared to what I’ve read, but then again you said naturalism isn’t a goal, so it’s probably fine.

Yeah. At the very least, naturalism isn't a higher priority than having a usable language. I think it's okay especially for conlangs intended to provide backdrops to fiction or similar to be done too neatly first and then reveal the inevitable semantic complications later.