Iluhsa immediately captured my attention at the beginning of last month, and I'm so glad to be able to take the time now to go back and more properly look over everything you've posted about it. I'm absolutely a fan. The look and sound of the language are both very appealing to me, and although certain elements of its aesthetic call certain natlangs or groups of natlangs to mind - <š ž> make me think of certain West and South Slavic languages, <é ó è ò> make me think of certain Romance languages, and <þ ð> remind me of Icelandic, of course - all of these elements together give Iluhsa its own distinctive look, in my opinion. <ġ> for the velar nasal (and voiced velar fricative?)is a nice choice as well. I appreciate all of the protoforms you included, and it was fun trying to work out some of the sound changes that have taken place. Similarly, I enjoyed being able to get a feel for some of the language's morphophonological processes by comparing the surface forms in the example sentences with the underlying forms provided with the glosses below. Finally, before moving on to more specific comments, I want to say that I'm also a fan of what Iluhsa has going on morphosyntactically. Despite the isolating tendencies of the two conlangs I was working with, I definitely tend to prefer more synthetic languages. It was cool seeing new constructions being worked out over the course of the month, and I think I'm going to want to go back over some of the glosses again even after making this post!
Dormouse559 wrote: ↑02 Dec 2020 01:12
The initial idea for the language was that it would make minimal distinctions between adjectives and abstract nouns, as well as the plurals of concrete nouns.
Dòbza, and probably some other color words, falls along that spectrum. The upshot for
dòbza is that it can be used either adjectivally (black-colored) or nominally (the color black / blackness), but it doesn't mark number and can't be the subject of a verb.
Dormouse559 wrote: ↑04 Dec 2020 03:12
The reason that this language merges the plurals of concrete nouns into its adjective/abstract noun spectrum is a quirk of its history. Sound changes made almost all of the language's original plural forms identical to the singular forms, and the ones that remained were so irregular that they tended to get leveled by analogy. The role of the plural was then filled by grammaticalizing a common collective derivation (protolang
mave "cat" vs.
mavoi "cats" vs.
mavoiza "all cats; catkind"). Since the derivation resulted in abstract nouns, plurals became abstract, adjective-y things.
The old plural did stick around in some contexts though. I'll call it paucal. For most nouns, this phenomenon looks like simply a lack of number marking on the noun (
Šini mavi. sleep.3S cat The cat sleeps.;
Šiniònmi mavi. sleep-3P cat The cats sleep.) But
žuhód is one of the nouns that have maintained a distinct paucal, with
žut for that form and
žuhtira in the plural.
Oh, I love this!
Dormouse559 wrote: ↑08 Dec 2020 21:09
On the phonology front, I'm instituting a different system of stress assignment. It's simplest to describe with a mixture of syllables and morae: In words of at least three syllables, stress falls on the syllable containing the antepenultimate mora. In words of two syllables or fewer, stress falls on the syllable containing the penultimate mora. The general effect is that stress can be pulled to the right by heavy syllables. For example, the dative form of
amuþu is
amtido [ˈamtido], with antepenultimate stress; meanwhile the genitive is
amtédox [amˈtedox], with the the final consonant coda causing stress to shift to the penult.
Very nice!
Dormouse559 wrote: ↑12 Dec 2020 07:31
baþi [ˈbaθi]
n - sheep (suppletive PL:
biznara; <
*bautte,
*beizənaza)
baþkói [baθˈkoi̯]
n - cloud (<
baþi +
-kói diminutive)
biznara [ˈbiznara]
n/adj - herd; livestock (<
*beizənaza)
Oh, cool! I think I also derived "cloud" from "sheep" - or vice versa? - in a language of mine ("Y²KS") for Lexember maybe two years ago.
Dormouse559 wrote: ↑13 Dec 2020 07:59
kalli [ˈkalli]
n - flower (<
kʷarəl)
A beautiful word for "flower"!
Dormouse559 wrote: ↑16 Dec 2020 08:57
kað [ˈkað]
n - water (<
*kʷad +
*-əd, no-longer-productive nominalizer)
kað is outstanding, both for "water" and in general!
Dormouse559 wrote: ↑17 Dec 2020 07:27
I spent today breaking my brain over the passive voice in a language whose nouns somewhat recently developed ergative case marking while the rest of the language stayed nominative-accusative. Here's what I wrote:
The passive voice is communicated in one of two ways: by adding the suffix
-(u)xa or by deleting the ergative subject of a verb. The
-(u)xa strategy is mainly used when the patient of the verb is pronominal or when the goal is to form an impersonal construction. These limited uses have to do with the changing grammar of the language. When the language's nouns became morphologically ergative, they lost the accusative case, preventing them from being targeted by the passive voice; pronouns were the only accusative forms that remained. Meanwhile, the passive was also used on intransitive verbs as an impersonal construction, which has survived into the modern language.
[…]
When the direct object is nominal, a passive meaning is communicated by not stating a subject. Whether a single-argument construction is an active intransitive or a passive transitive depends on the transitivity of the verb. Transitivity is treated strictly in the language, but it is often unmarked, in which case it must be learned with the verb.
Oh, interesting! I was wondering what was going on with Iluhsa in terms of alignment.
Dormouse559 wrote: ↑17 Dec 2020 22:36
héinin [ˈhei̯nin]
n - child; offspring or young human (irregular PL:
heiniézza; <
*poine "birth" +
*-en "product of")
Another great word! Seeing <-nin> on a word for a (type of) person makes me think of Japanese.
Dormouse559 wrote: ↑18 Dec 2020 20:18
hindi [ˈhindi]
n - milk (<
*pinte)
That's a fun "false friend", or whatever the exact term would be here!
Dormouse559 wrote: ↑19 Dec 2020 21:22
It occurred to me that
iluhsa is a highly irregular word, even by the language's own standards. When it's declined, half of the root,
iluh-, just disappears. Notice how
iluh +
-a becomes
ila in the second example sentence. I want to use the
-uhsa derivation for other words, but in those cases, I might let analogy even things out.
Dormouse559 wrote: ↑21 Dec 2020 06:25
Not much on Iluhsa for today. Related to this week's theme, I imagine the speakers have or had a focus on the moon. I've decided the language should have a base-14 number system because that's roughly half the number of days in the sidereal month, and the moon's been on my mind lately.
BTW, "tetradecimal" is a crime against Greek and Latin.
Dormouse559 wrote: ↑22 Dec 2020 08:08
Building on what I said yesterday about Iluhsa, I decided on the cardinal numbers. I'm doing a combination of base-14 and base-28. The numbers 1-4 behave mainly like adjectives in that the noun they modify is the head of the phrase. In contrast, higher numbers are more noun‑y, becoming the head of the phrase they appear in while the noun takes the genitive case. These higher numbers also have two forms: one for counting and another for quantifying nouns (I'll list those forms below in that order).
So here are the main numbers I have. I'll put some examples below:
[…]
This is all so cool!
Dormouse559 wrote: ↑30 Dec 2020 22:28
arši [ˈarʃi]
n - moon (<
*arkʷe)
[…]
Funnily enough, I came up with the modern form,
arši, first, but it ended up being the etymon that captured my heart. It's so beautiful
I also really like
vèiti "night",
malis "rule, reign; dominate" and its derivations,
néli "lamp",
niliksi "star",
veinmalsin "lunar station" (although I thought we were getting into sci-fi territory at first),
kéz "ferment" and its derivations,
daur "honey", and
èiksa "time (in general); period of time, duration, era; temporal". Actually, I could have just said "all of the words from this post".
Dormouse559 wrote: ↑01 Jan 2021 09:11
surti [ˈsurti]
v - end, finish, come to an end (<
surza +
-ti, inchoative)
[…]
In the last two pairs of sentences, note how an abstract noun (like
hòumnara and
surza) in the locative case communicates a fleeting or changing state, while the same noun in the absolutive implies a lasting or unchanging state.
Is
surti an intentional reference to
sortir? I like the note about case usage, by the way!
Dormouse559 wrote: ↑30 Dec 2020 22:28
Get it? "Ferment"? Because the theme is "culture"?
Dormouse559 wrote: ↑18 Dec 2020 20:18
For today, I have a word dealing with food. I also have some conjunctions and a negative morpheme, which technically deal in relationships (between words, with the truth
).
Believe it or not, when I wrote that "players who do choose to follow [the themes] should feel free to interpret them however they'd like", this is
exactly the kind of thing I'd hoped to see people doing!
Well, now for something completely different:
Silvish is unquestionably among my favorite a posteriori conlangs in existence. Seeing it change and develop so much over the years has not only been incredibly interesting, but has also helped to encourage me in my own conlanging. Whenever I come across a post with something translated into or otherwise written in Silvish, I always try to take a moment to look over the accompanying gloss and IPA transcription, along with any other notes there might be, and there aren't many other languages that I'd do that for. So, of course, it was a pleasant surprise to see a few Silvish entries from Lexember 2020.
Dormouse559 wrote: ↑17 Dec 2020 22:36
I stumbled across a concept for a Silvish word that I came up with in 2013 and then forgot about. Here's the updated form:
Silvish
entreçhampâ [ʔɛ̃n.tʁe.hɑ̃ˈpɑː]
v - to throw something that will later be retrieved
Lou ppeççheû entreçhampezirön leu ttisuvon.
[lup.pɛˈhœː ʔɛ̃n.tʁe.hɑ̃m.pəˈzi.ʁŋ̩ lœt.ti.syˈvɔ̃ŋ]
DEF-M.C.PL PL-fisherman cast-PST-3P 3P.POS PL-net
The fishermen cast their nets.
Çhakko jhoer jh' entreçhampo la balla avek mui çhen.
[hɑk.kəˈʒuʁ ʒɛ̃n.tʁəˈhɑ̃m.pə laˈbɑl.la ʔaˈvɛk mjyˈhɛ̃ŋ]
every-M.C day 1S.NOM throw-1S DEF-F ball with 1S-POS.OBL dog
I play fetch with my dog every day.
I also had ideas for the word's metaphorical uses in 2013, but I want to let those marinate a bit longer.
This definition feels quite fitting for a word that's been waiting to be "retrieved" for 7 years!
Also, I adore <çh> [h].
Dormouse559 wrote: ↑21 Dec 2020 06:25
However, I do have some more detailed conculture thoughts for
Silvish
l' Antonjhe /
le Tant' Onjhe [lɑ̃ˈtɔ̃ɲ̟.ʒə | le.tɑ̃ˈtɔ̃ɲ̟.ʒə] - the
Antonjhe
The
Antonjhe or
Tant' Onjhe is a spirit or witch said to frequent the valleys and mountain passes of Silvia. Legends portray her variously as a guardian of travelers or as a deadly menace to them. If you get on her good side, she gives you a seemingly unremarkable gift, like an old boot, that fills with gold when you reach your destination. If you displease her, she traps you in a diabolically complex maze; this behavior explains why she is also called
le dona dî labirinto "the lady of the labyrinth". Folk etymologies connect the name
Antonjhe with the given name
Antoinye (Antonia). Meanwhile,
Tant' Onjhe literally means "Aunt Onjhe". However, archeologists have disputed these explanations, linking the Antonjhe to inscriptions found around the region dedicated to the Gaulish goddess Imbetogmia (
imbeto- "many" +
ogmos "path"; "She of many paths"); they hypothesize that Imbetogmia was a mountain deity, with the labyrinth symbolizing the Alps. The Antonjhe's gifts of money may continue associations with trade, a major element of historical life in the Tarentaise and surrounding valleys.
Fantastic! There's something I really love about this kind of partially pre-Christian Alpine folklore, and you've done a great job of capturing the feel of it, so to speak, here! There are certain elements that I believe I recognize from some other stories of the region, such as the boot full of gold, but there's also a lot that makes the
Antonjhe uniquely Silvish.