(Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

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Ahzoh
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Ahzoh »

eldin raigmore wrote: 11 Mar 2021 22:33 https://benjamins.com/catalog/slcs.49
https://books.google.com/books/about/Th ... FHAAAAQBAJ
https://www.amazon.com/Prominence-Aspec ... 9027230528
https://sites.google.com/a/k.books-now. ... GEtrucim35
....
It’s the beginning of a typology.
Not every language is at least one of these.
Not every language is at most one of these.
But it’s very interesting in my opinion anyway.
From what I've read the information is tantalizing. Unfortunately, I have no money and there isn't a free version. Can't even find it on sci-hub.
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I didn’t buy it.
My local public libraries have interlibrary loan arrangements with the university libraries in my state; so I can borrow stuff from the university libraries. Or, at least, I could, before the pandemic.
While I was a student at a college or university, or an alumnus, I could often get items from other nearby universities even across state lines. Maybe you can too.
I only showed you the first four ghits. Later ones might be cheaper. Or maybe you could buy a used copy. Does LibraryThing have a feature that will let you shop for used books?
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eldin raigmore wrote: 12 Mar 2021 16:31 I didn’t buy it.
My local public libraries have interlibrary loan arrangements with the university libraries in my state; so I can borrow stuff from the university libraries. Or, at least, I could, before the pandemic.
While I was a student at a college or university, or an alumnus, I could often get items from other nearby universities even across state lines. Maybe you can too.
I only showed you the first four ghits. Later ones might be cheaper. Or maybe you could buy a used copy. Does LibraryThing have a feature that will let you shop for used books?
I managed to find it off of a shadow library, definitely some interesting idea presented regardind mood-prominence, like having separate person affixes for realis and irrealis moods. Some things are definitely still beyond my comprehension, like the "order of TAM relevance" where aspect is closer to the verb than tense which in turn is closer than mood and how tense or mood prominence can change that--or not.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by eldin raigmore »

Joan Bybee (formerly Joan B. Hill) has done more general work on cross-linguistic morphology (particularly morphology of verbs) that has led to a few books by her that I’ve read.
Between Tense and Aspect and Mood, it is a cross-linguistic universal that whenever both of two of Aspect and Tense and Mood are marked on a verb by inflection,
** Aspect tends to be marked closer to the root than Tense, if they’re both marked on the same side of the root
** Aspect tends to be marked closer to the root than Mood, if they’re both marked on the same side of the root
** Tense tends to be marked closer to the root than Mood, if they’re both marked on the same side of the root.

And she also talked about inflection and derivation and lexical marking such as auxiliary words;
and about other verbal features than aspect and tense and mood (and polarity and voice).
(For instance, valency and agreement among others.)

Bybee’s work is probably more accessible than Bhat’s.
It might also be more trusted, because it’s older.
And/or maybe because her sample supports her conclusions more conclusively, if you know what I mean; even though at the time her work was published sample sizes were generally perforce smaller, since computerization of research aids was not as advanced.

In my opinion they both wrote fascinating work!
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eldin raigmore wrote: 12 Mar 2021 23:34 Joan Bybee (formerly Joan B. Hill) has done more general work on cross-linguistic morphology (particularly morphology of verbs) that has led to a few books by her that I’ve read.
Between Tense and Aspect and Mood, it is a cross-linguistic universal that whenever both of two of Aspect and Tense and Mood are marked on a verb by inflection,
** Aspect tends to be marked closer to the root than Tense, if they’re both marked on the same side of the root
** Aspect tends to be marked closer to the root than Mood, if they’re both marked on the same side of the root
** Tense tends to be marked closer to the root than Mood, if they’re both marked on the same side of the root.
Well I understood that part but I didn't really understand the part about the nucleus, core, and periphery with regards to this matter. I also wasn't sure if the book was suggesting that prominence could defy this order so that a mood-prominent language might have mood grammaticalized closer to the verb.

I also noticed that all the mood-prominent languages have separate sets of subject affixes for the realis and irrealis moods, which is making me wonder if this is obligatory or incidental. Not to mention the defocusing markers.

Lastly, I'm not sure of the sociocultural implications, if any, of having a mood-prominent language.
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I believe I could answer some of your questions (in the sense of explaining what the authors meant) if I had the texts open in front of me; but I can’t answer them from memory.
I think you’re asking the right questions.
(Not like you need me to say so! I am no expert!)
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Post by Omzinesý »

Mood-prominence is a new term to me, as well.
How is it defined? Or is it just a prototype-definition with features that statistically tend to co-appear?
My meta-thread: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5760
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Omzinesý wrote: 13 Mar 2021 09:58 Mood-prominence is a new term to me, as well.
How is it defined? Or is it just a prototype-definition with features that statistically tend to co-appear?
At its bare essence: mood-marking is obligatory while tense and aspect are not. As a consequence, that also means some common features like the perfect aspect behaves different compared to other types of prominences (e.g. tense: past action with present relevance; aspect: perfective action with imperfective [continuing] relevance; mood: realis action with irrealis relevance ["I have read this book so you don't have to"]) It also means that when it comes to negation, it is necessarily dubitative in meaning in the irrealis mood.
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Post by Omzinesý »

Ahzoh wrote: 13 Mar 2021 10:04
Omzinesý wrote: 13 Mar 2021 09:58 Mood-prominence is a new term to me, as well.
How is it defined? Or is it just a prototype-definition with features that statistically tend to co-appear?
At its bare essence: mood-marking is obligatory while tense and aspect are not. As a consequence, that also means some common features like the perfect aspect behaves different compared to other types of prominences (e.g. tense: past action with present relevance; aspect: perfective action with imperfective [continuing] relevance; mood: realis action with irrealis relevance ["I have read this book so you don't have to"]) It also means that when it comes to negation, it is necessarily dubitative in meaning in the irrealis mood.
An interesting concept!
I'm still not convinced that such a distinction is meaningful cos most languages code just one TAM category.
Kalaallisut probably qualifies as a mood-prominent language. At least, it as a non-zero Indicative marker. My understanding has been that it actually has one basic tense of discourse and then means of coding events anterior and posterior relative to it. But maybe not.
I have to read the typological part of Bhat's book and see.
My meta-thread: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5760
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Omzinesý wrote: 15 Mar 2021 11:01 I'm still not convinced that such a distinction is meaningful cos most languages code just one TAM category.
Could you clarify what is meant by "meaningful"? And "code just one TAM category"?

I also have the book here
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Post by Omzinesý »

I (more or less) read Bhat's book.

I think he argues well that mood is a more important category in many languages than is usually thought.

But when it comes to correlations and implications, I'm not convinced at all.
It's true that there are not many stative verbs in European languages and apparently in Indian ones neither though many of them are not tense-prominent. Japanese has verbal adjectives although it apparently is tense-prominent.
Mao Naga "relevant" and "irrelevant" perfects is interesting. I shall use them in some conlang. But there are differences in the uses of perfects even between European languages, even between American and British English. It seems quite challenging a task to explain the differences with tense, aspect, and mood prominence.
He says that in mood-prominent languages the realis is used to code foregrounding (trivially true excluding languages that use the reportative evidential in narratives), but he does not say what is used to code backgrounding, the irrealis?
What he refers to split ergativity in Tibeto-Burman doesn't seem to be split ergativity at all but a defective pronominal paradigm that doesn't distinguish semantic roles.

Interesting ideas for conlanging but not a very useful typology, I think.
My meta-thread: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5760
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Post by Omzinesý »

Ahzoh wrote: 15 Mar 2021 21:30
Omzinesý wrote: 15 Mar 2021 11:01 I'm still not convinced that such a distinction is meaningful cos most languages code just one TAM category.
Could you clarify what is meant by "meaningful"? And "code just one TAM category"?

I also have the book here
Useful could be a better term. I mean that it does not classify languages very well and it does not explain things convincingly.
Tense, aspect, and mood are very often fused into one morpheme, so often that TAM is often seen as one category.
My meta-thread: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5760
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Omzinesý wrote: 18 Mar 2021 23:36so often that TAM is often seen as one category.
Yea. At least in my conlang, the least-marked "tense" is more like a perfective-indicative-past while the more marked one is like an imperfective-potential-future
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I thought I'd asked this before, but seems like I haven't: what would a grammatical case with the meaning "far from" be called? Like, for example, "far from the house". I'm pretty sure if it was formed analogously to other case names, it'd be called abessive, but that name is already used for the case meaning "without", so... I tried to google around to see if any natlangs have cases for this and what they're called if they do, but couldn't find anything.
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Post by DesEsseintes »

Vlürch wrote: 23 Mar 2021 03:22 I thought I'd asked this before, but seems like I haven't: what would a grammatical case with the meaning "far from" be called? Like, for example, "far from the house". I'm pretty sure if it was formed analogously to other case names, it'd be called abessive, but that name is already used for the case meaning "without", so... I tried to google around to see if any natlangs have cases for this and what they're called if they do, but couldn't find anything.
Distantive? (← *distō “I stand apart, afar”)
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Abessive is still valid as an analogy to adessive.

Otherwise: remotessive, distessive, remote ablative
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DesEsseintes wrote: 23 Mar 2021 03:36Distantive? (← *distō “I stand apart, afar”)
That'd work! Thanks.
Ahzoh wrote: 23 Mar 2021 03:57Abessive is still valid as an analogy to adessive.
But hmm... in that case, I guess maybe I really should just call it abessive and put a note like "im not like the other abessives!!!" and call the case that means "without" caritive, since apparently that's a thing that means the same thing as abessive in most languages but for some reason has a different name in some languages.

The problem with calling it abessive, though, is that then the case meaning "to far" would be "ablative", which of course generally just means "from", and I'd have to add another note about how that's also a different case from what the name is usually used for. [>_<] Eh, if I'm doing it with one case, might as well do it with two or more.

...and yeah, my addiction to having way too many and way too precise cases continues.
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Vlürch wrote: 23 Mar 2021 04:10 But hmm... in that case, I guess maybe I really should just call it abessive and put a note like "im not like the other abessives!!!" and call the case that means "without" caritive, since apparently that's a thing that means the same thing as abessive in most languages but for some reason has a different name in some languages.
Most commonly the "without X" case is called a privative, and frankly caritive sounds like a dumb name for a case.
The problem with calling it abessive, though, is that then the case meaning "to far" would be "ablative", which of course generally just means "from", and I'd have to add another note about how that's also a different case from what the name is usually used for. [>_<] Eh, if I'm doing it with one case, might as well do it with two or more.
All lative cases involve the motion of an entity, whereas all essive (and similarly, locative) cases involve the entity statically existing somewhere. Thus, abessive simply means "[existing/located] far from the house" while ablative means "[is moving] away from the house".

You can decompose some of the fancy case-names with their Latin counterparts like:
  • "essive" from Latin esse for "state, condition" (cf. locative from locus "location, spot")
  • "lative" from some Latin root meaning "carry"
  • "ad-" means "at, towards"
  • "ab-" means "from, away"
I break it down like this so that I can consistently and more easily come up with case names. You don't have to have a case names by what's common or typically used by linguists, they aren't always consistent with their nomenclature.
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Shit, there’s no reason your case names have to be derived from classical morphemes.
Call one of them the “ain’t no such thing” case;
Call one of them the “we ain’t got one” case:
Call one of them the “far from here” case;
And call one of them the “going away” case.
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eldin raigmore wrote: 23 Mar 2021 06:18 Shit, there’s no reason your case names have to be derived from classical morphemes.
Call one of them the “ain’t no such thing” case;
Call one of them the “we ain’t got one” case:
Call one of them the “far from here” case;
And call one of them the “going away” case.
I think the problem with those names is that they're clunky and long, on top of the lack of scholarly prestige that their greco-latin counterparts are going to confer.
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