A community for conlangs and conlangers
The Dailies. January 25
Did you work on your language today? Create any new rules of grammar or syntax? New progress on a script? New words in your lexicon?
On the other hand, do any excavating or reading or enjoying stuff you've already created? Do you have any favorites to share?
How did you conlang today?




It's weird: I feel like I conlanged yesterday because I did a lot of thinking and reading threads on here, but I didn't actually accomplish anything tangible because it was such a busy day for me. But today I am actually going to do things! Yay!
Well, thinking is probably more important than you give it credit for. After all, if you only did things that are easy to share in these threads, you'd have little more than a lexicon and a loose collection of jargon descriptions, and not a language.
Despite that, I hope you continue to have nice, sharable things for us, too.
That's true. :)
Well, go you for reading and thinking about it. That's mostly all I did myself. It's important stuff. :D
I've come to realize that since I redid cases, I haven't updated incorporation to match, so that's on the priorities list. But, today, I'm going to try to make some of the essential verbs.
Verbs of experience:
Verbs of violence:
General common verbs:
I also just noticed that "it seems to me" is a relatively good example of how the dative-passive voice works. The subject of the verb "seem" is not semantically obligatory, but while in English a dummy is added, in Firen the voice is changed.
Very cool!
I take it that "give sight of" is not the same thing as "seem"?
Oh, never mind that! (There's not even a historical connection in English, as I falsely believed there to be.)
(Most) Verbs of experience in Firen are actually implemented as verbs of giving, but since actual (as in semantically-reflective) verbs of giving of experience are rare in speech, the underlying subject is deleted by placing them in the dative-passive voice. The only semantically-related English verb that has an argument structure that's similar (though not spot-on) is "seem", which is what the last bit is about.
So Firen is like if all the verbs of experience were like "seem", but with a distinct voice (dative-passive) that supported them, rather than English's awkward support that forces certain meanings to supplete (like "methinks", which is a case of object incorporation on a now-dead verb and which does not actually relate to "think".)
What actually probably happened (for certain values of "happened" and "actually", given this is a conlang) was that there were "normal" verbs of experience originally, but "to see" was likened to "to get sight of" and these new forms stuck. ("Seeing" isn't really something you do, after all, it's more of a passive thing. Although I haven't determined yet if there'll be "intentive" verbs like "to look" in Firen, and if so what senses they'll exist for. But you know, semantically, having an experience is not the same as doing an action, so it makes sense on some level to separate them in grammar.)
Now that I think a bit more about argument structures, I think that at least for the verb I glossed as "to see" (and probably "to hear" and maybe "to feel") the active voice would correspond somewhat to "to point out" rather than the much more awkward "to give sight of".
I really really like this set of verbs and how they move around. And I really like your work with datives and passives, etc. in this language.
I've been working on Nahul samples in order to practise some of the new words/word forms I came up with yesterday. As I've also been sick, I haven't done much, though - mostly just some of the "some/any" forms plus the words for non-verbal negations. I've been hampered by having such a small vocabulary in Nahul still.
I realised that I couldn't just have different inanimate forms for "something/anything" and "nothing" according to gender (as there are two inanimate genders) - I also needed to settle on which of them was used for the default abstract meaning, which you'd likely mean most of the time. I settled for the Class 3 forms for "something" and Class 2 forms for "nothing". Balance, I suppose!
I also figured out that you can use both verbal negation + "some/any" and verbal negation plus "none (etc)", but with different nuances in the meaning. The latter is more absolute and emphatic, while the former tends to carry an implied "not right now", "not right here" and/or "not yet" feeling to it.
Mien beló mi emadonel?
'Has anyone seen/Did anyone see the teacher?'
Mien dogei no miel?
'Did you speak to anyone?'
Maddai lu doge no miel.
'I know that you spoke to someone.'
Dogeda no miel.
'I haven't spoken to anyone' (at least not yet)
Dogeda no angel
'I haven't spoken to nobody' (and I'm not planning to, either)
Madedai lu lami eoi emadones.
'I don't know who our teacher is.'
Eoi harakim halam. Mien rumoi mim lu eoi cheharak?1
'It's a big boat. Is they any that's bigger?'
Waneka meen no gien.
'I will give you something.'
Wateka meen phaga gien.
'I will receive something from you.'
Maddai lu watedeka meen phaga gien.
'I know that I won't receive anything from you.'
Maddai lu watedeka muat phaga gien.
'I know that I won't receive nothing from you.' (or: "that I won't receive a single thing" -with a stronger sense of reproachment than the first line)
Beleda miat lileimit halamat.
'I haven't seen any new boat(s). (With an adjective inserted, the enclitic cannot be used.) Beleda mi-halamat. (enclitic mi- meaning 'some/any', singular)
'I haven't seen any boat(s).' (Because I haven't had time perhaps - but I may soon see one.)
Beleda mu-halamat. 'I haven't seen any boat(s).' (lit: I haven't seen no boat). (Because there doesn't seem to be any boats in this place. Maybe they're inland...)
Ular mel-ankhit nogen chorel. (enclitic mel- meaning 'some/any', plural)
'Some women stood outside the house.'
Ratamemar nobes mina.
'Then some (people) became angry.'
Dogar pik mina tethem.
'Some (people) said as much.' (Lit. 'Some also said that.')
Zeenatach phi-halamates, ao uvari miphi murayim.
'We like our boats, but some [of them] are old.'
Kanari bubik fei el-ró da uvari mesel lileyes.
'They have ten swords [=Ten swords belong to them] and some are new.'
Or cheharakim to follow the rules for adjectival inflection I'd settled on before where there's no difference between adjectives in attributive and predicative position. But I'm starting to rethink that, wondering if I should go for a "German" model where predicative position means an unmarked form - or perhaps an in-between model where case and number but not gender is marked in predicative position. Hmm.↩
These are gorgeous and feel both realistic and clear, like I could use them once I learned them enough. Wonderfully done!
Thanks awfully!
igot • [ i.got ] • one's "oughts", the things that one should do — noun. From ago, should (verb)
So on the topic of Akachenti grammar, looks like a full construction can act as a sentence or a free relative clause, whereas an "object construction" serves as a bound relative clause, and these two forms are also considered very differently.
Noun incorporation is very much a thing and a construction that utilizes noun incorporation uses explicitly defined means to refer to the incorporated noun vs. the lexical root verb. So Hushungdahe?, which noted that shonga was acting like a verb in this sentence turned out to be a case of noun incorporation and not a straight up verb derived from the noun. Yay for discovering polysynthetic languages. (Btw, Mohawk is apparently another good example, along with Oneida.)
I think I might know enough now to hit up the inflections for constructions soon, which will have a major effect on which words and derivations make it into the lexicon as their own entries and which appear under a different related word. Fun, fun. (And a bit tedious, but I'm sure it'll be worth it.)
I finally feel like I can feel the shape of this language and how it generally goes about expressing standard concepts. Outlier forms are still not documented, but I'm good with the progress I've made.
And discovered this lovely paper on those in-between parts of speech action nominals and relative clauses, etc.: http://linguistica.sns.it/RdL/23.1/Comrie.pdf
Ooh. Very intriguing, and sounds like a major breakthrough! Congratulations!
Thank you! It's very exciting. Especially seeing something that plays as fast and loose with parts of speech as I do.
And apparently, I wasn't done yet:
Further, I found that hubodigá? is a clear construction meaning "Do you want to say that to me?" with no implied answer and a required form to include the patient. If one wished to imply the answer, not only a change in construction be required, but so would the topical auxiliary verb. Hiádigo? omits the entire "to do" verb construction, required in the first construction to indicate both patient and agent, and adds an initial marker after the question particle hi- to allow the agent its usual position at the end of the construction. It's worth noting that both /ua/ and /ao/ are forbidden vowel combinations.
Current auxiliary verb inventory:
So I was reminded of semantic bleaching and behold, shi, my confusing little helping verb has been degrammaticalized from a slang usage and become an intensifier and is well on its way to becoming a perfective. I may just go ahead and encode it or a variation thereof as a perfective aspect marker in some way.
More vocabulary pulled from old, undeciphered material and a couple previously known but undocumented:
And now I shall leave you all to your own languages again.
Awesome!!! I am currently considering how to express perfective aspect in Nahul, I wonder if I might go for an auxiliary verb this time...
It could be fun. :D
Wait, a perfective, or a perfect?
Having just whipped through two articles explaining the difference and next door to given myself a headache, I am not sure. The one that indicates completion of an act. Which I will ram through my head later.
Well, perfective isn't about completion at all, it's about treating the act as a single atomic event. The perfect indicates that an action (which was completed in the past) has current relevance, like what is marked by have in "I've read this book".
That would make it perfect. Internalizing the difference though might take a few more repetitions to myself.
Oooh! They sometimes call it retrospective (RET)! :immediately adopts terminology to save my sanity: