Categorizing Etihus

[qwed117]

MSA is a way of distinguishing languages based on how the subject of a intransitive statement (one base argument) is treated in comparison to the subject and object of a transitive statement. While it's possible you could "transcend" modern linguistics MSA, it often tends to be that you've
1) described something impossible,
2) already described
3) unobserved

From your description, I'd say that you experience a discontinuity. That's what's causing this ruckus.

I don't have any good tree modeling software, but this is what I'm thinking is what's happening (I'll have to just gloss)
I'll use "The people talk" as an example. There is nothing specific implied in this statement; just that they talk.
what we expect is something like
DEF.PL people(.pl) (stem*)talk(stem)
in your case we can see it as being
DEF.PL people(-pl) be talk-GER +copula deletion
DEF.PL people(-pl) talk-GER +topicalization
DEF.PL talk-GER people(-pl)

So, overall, this implies that change has taken place during the thousand years your conlang exists. This doesn't even strike me as mildly interesting, but it leaves more "fun-room" for stuff like relative clauses, should you choose to include them (although you've already described a hatred for them).

*A verbal stem like spanish "-ar" "-er" "-ir". In the most recent version of Akuriga, that would be "eka-"

[HoskhMatriarch]

What's wrong with "boy-hitting girl" or "running-girl"?? (In English)

Not sure what's wrong. I just think it's silly it's considered grammatically incorrect as an incomplete thought in English.

Maybe the term you're looking for is "precise"? Sometimes it may not be enough to just say "she running girl" and you have to say something much longer and more precise like "she young female-child who is currently rapidly moving her legs to quickly in order to change location".

I was hoping you guys would know of a term. I know there is a concept of "not an exact language" which creates a lot of ambiguity, but Etihus is the opposite, a "very exact language".

Those are grammatically correct, complete thoughts in English, however. They just need very specific contexts, like this:
Girl: *smacks a boy*
Boy: *cries and points* "Boy-hitting girl!"

The boy can call her a boy-hitting girl, he can warn other boys of the boy-hitting girl... But this is a pretty minor point.

Also, I'm pretty sure there isn't a such thing as "not an exact language".

If you meant "too many words" in Etihus to describe a complete concept, that's the difference between Etihus and English. The main target goal of Etihus was for there to be a simple, easy-to-learn oligosynthetic language that could function timelessly, allow a greater freedom of expression than English, removes almost all exceptions to grammar rules (unlike English, which is riddled with them) and removes as much ambiguity as possible.

I actually find most of the examples quite ambigious. "Fast-moving girl", for example, doesn't tell me whether you're saying that there is a fast moving girl or that a specific girl who has been referred to before is now moving fast, nor does it tell me how she's moving fast, e.g. whether it's by sprinting or riding a train or flying or whatever, which you have to use the whole sentence describing ambulating rapidly upon long sticks or whatever to do. In English? "She runs."

If you mean "too many words" for my attempt to describe the language, then it's simply my hopeful strategy to approach a subject from so many POV angles in as simple a manner as possible to target everyone's personal preference for understanding so that irregardless of whose reading, some of the meaning gets through. But I've recently learned that my psychological personality of cognitive functions (i.e. the way I think) is on an almost opposite plane to a majority of people involved in conlanging as a hobby.

Well, you keep describing your language, then people explain what that part of it is called, and then you just argue and say that your language is completely alien to everything, which it is in some ways since there are no natural oligosynthetic languages and the whole it-was-drilled-into-their-heads-by-extradimensional-beings thing doesn't seem plausible at all for a language people would use (wouldn't they still use their native languages to speak to one another, especially considering how alien this language would be to their cultures? also, language-teaching and learning doesn't work that way), but in other ways it's very similar to English, and everything you describe, despite not being particularly naturalistic, can still be described in normal linguistic terms. Like the fact that an ideograph and a series of sounds are not the same, even if they represent the same thing...

my psychological personality of cognitive functions

Is there any difference between what you said here and just saying "my personality" besides how long it takes to say? What you said here is so long and redundant I find it humorous.

If that is true, which makes 10 times more sense to me, then I have been given and reading incorrect or over-complicated definitions of morphosyntactic alignment. The understanding I got, as given in the definitions provided, is that "MSA is a category of how a language handles two arguments of transitive verbs and the single argument of intransitive verbs." (Wikipedia, as one example) If there are no verbs to begin with, how do you categorize the MSA?

The understanding I got from some people, and the conclusion I was leaning towards, was that MSA doesn't apply to Etihus because Etihus can have arguments that omit verbs completely, and it can have arguments within a single word. A single word usually cannot be both a noun, and a verb, and an object all-in-one.

To follow through with your analogy of handedness, wouldn't it be more like, "Ok, a person has no hands. Are they left handed, right handed, or ambidextrous?"

Russian allows null copulas, which means it also has sentences without verbs, but we know it's nominative-accusative because it's "he man" and not "him man" or "man him". Also, plenty of polysynthetic languages and even non-polysynthetic languages like Spanish, Latin and Czech have arguments within a single word. My conlang Hoskh marks 3 arguments on the verb as well as having different sorts of free morphemes that can compound with it to yield long compound words that are equal to sentences in English. However, we know the alignment is active-stative because sometimes the verb is marked where the subject of an intransitive verb is the same as a subject of a transitive verb and sometimes the verb is marked where the subject of an intransitive verb is the same as the direct object of a transitive verb (and sometimes it is even marked the same as the indirect object, such as when it is the experiencer rather than the agent, but that's a completely different thing that's not really alignment) as well as the fact that case-marking on nouns and pronouns matches the marking on verbs in the same way, where subjects of intransitive verbs are sometimes the same as subjects and sometimes the same as direct objects of intransitive verbs (double marking FTW, but I digress).

I should note, Sew'Kyetuh, that the underlying issue is that you confuse how you think it works and how it actually works. You can't get around this except by learning about lingusitics and other languages, including English itself. It might frustrate you to know that what you've written turns out to have been wrong, but we'd never make progress if we never accepted our mistakes. You can't dismiss the truth simply because you don't like what it says.

You came here to know how Etihus was classified, but refusing to believe us because you don't like what we're saying defeats the point.

When I am given a term or a small phrase by someone to try and categorize my conlang, when the person giving me the term is not explaining it, or I didn't understand, I have to go and verify the information. Then I have to hope that what I am reading makes sense, that the sources I'm reading are correct, and that the information therein being described actually does apply to Etihus. After looking up examples in other languages, I can then try to conclude on my own without guidance (since I was given none) that this term or that term probably isn't.

When someone does explain it and it seems that I understand, I take what they say with less verification. But then I have to hope that person has the right idea. I quote those people word-for-word and then when someone tells me that is stupid or not how things work, now I have juggle figuring out who is right or wrong (or if both are wrong) and why. Based on that experience, its foolish for me to take information and try to go along with it just because X or Y person said so.

But since I am not a real learned expert, do not profess to be, nor do I have book references that build up the concept of linguistics from basic to advanced, I use terms like "I believe", "it is possible", "I don't think", "I assume", "I'm not sure"; these should be indicators that I am walking around only with speculation and without absolutes. I haven't outright denied anything, only speculated.

So my learning of linguistics is erratic and all over the place. Through private messages, chat sessions, and different groups, I get different answers everywhere I go. I'm a sponge and a mirror: I absorb information other people give me, filter out the ones that don't add up, and then reflect those things back to others. Except for oligosynthetic (which I found on my own), every term I use to describe Etihus came from another linguist.

MSA is the one that has the greatest amount of variable answers and different reasons why. Trailsend has given me the most objective, unbiased, and clearest definition of MSA so far, even though other linguists I have talked to and articles I have read have given me very different definitions.

All I know for certain, is that Etihus has been extremely easy to teach to people who don't know anything about linguistics.

Who has been learning your conlang? If it's really been that easy to teach to people, it must be pretty similar to English, methinks, because even learning languages that are closely related to English tends to not be easy. Also, I think you've just been making up a lot of things to describe your conlang, e.g. semaphoneme, because a lot of the things you say don't really make sense from a linguistic perspective, like "these sounds are also symbols" or "it has no morphosyntactic alignment".

I don't have any good tree modeling software, but this is what I'm thinking is what's happening (I'll have to just gloss)
I'll use "The people talk" as an example. There is nothing specific implied in this statement; just that they talk.
what we expect is something like
DEF.PL people(.pl) (stem*)talk(stem)
in your case we can see it as being
DEF.PL people(-pl) be talk-GER +copula deletion
DEF.PL people(-pl) talk-GER +topicalization
DEF.PL talk-GER people(-pl)

So, overall, this implies that change has taken place during the thousand years your conlang exists. This doesn't even strike me as mildly interesting, but it leaves more "fun-room" for stuff like relative clauses, should you choose to include them (although you've already described a hatred for them).

Yes, that's how I interpreted that, too. "girl running" = "girl is running" + copula deletion. It could also be something like "there is a running girl", but I don't think that's as likely.

[Trailsend]

If there are no verbs to begin with, how do you categorize the MSA?

The understanding I got from some people, and the conclusion I was leaning towards, was that MSA doesn't apply to Etihus because Etihus can have arguments that omit verbs completely, and it can have arguments within a single word. A single word usually cannot be both a noun, and a verb, and an object all-in-one.

To follow through with your analogy of handedness, wouldn't it be more like, "Ok, a person has no hands. Are they left handed, right handed, or ambidextrous?

Ah, but Etihus definitely has verbs. The fact that it's possible for a statement to not include a verb is very much different than "not having verbs to begin with." In terms of handedness, Etihus is not a person without hands, just a person with hands that sometimes—say, when playing soccer—doesn't use them.

English is classified as a nom-acc language, even though there are plenty of valid statements in English that don't contain a verb. But we don't look at those statements when determining MSA, because those statements are not what MSA is about. Instead we look at transitive clauses and intransitive clauses, of which there are plenty, and compare them. We can do the same for Etihus, as I've shown.

A language in which "there are no verbs to begin with" would be very tricky to pull off. It's an experiment that conlangers attempt every now and then, though slightly less frequently than trying to create a language in which there are no nouns. The reason it's so hard to do is that for it to really work, the language has to behave in such a way that there is no reasonable analysis of it where verbs are a meaningful concept. But that's not what usually happens.

What usually happens is something like:

A: I have created a language with no verbs!
B: (Looking at data from the language) Hm, doesn't look like it. These things here, here, and here all behave like verbs.
A: But they're not verbs. They're adjectives that mean "doing X".
B: You say that, but still, they act like verbs, they do what verbs do. There's no reason not to call them verbs, except that you want to call them adjectives.

This is an important thing to understand, and I think it's what cntrational was getting at when he said "you confuse how you think it works and how it actually works".

A conlanger's supreme prerogative is to say what sentences are and are not grammatically correct in his or her conlang, in whatever circumstances. But there is a point at which that jurisdiction ends, which is analysis. If someone else can look at a conlang and show, with well-supported observations of the available data, that a different analysis makes more sense, the creator's analysis doesn't trump by virtue of being the creator's. The claims you make about how your language works are true only so far as they are the best account anybody can find for what the language is doing.

Here's an example of how this can play out. For background, a clitic is "a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a word, but depends phonologically on another word or phrase". The possessive -'s in English is a clitic.

= = = = =

A: I've been working on how my language handles location. There is a collection of clitics related to location that can be applied to a noun.

1. gafanta eosi.
forest=DAT go.1-PAST
I went to the forest.

2. gafansu eosi.
forest=VIA go.1-PAST
I went through the forest.

B: Those just look like case suffixes. Why do you call them clitics?

A: They're syntactically independent; they go at the end of the whole noun phrase, not on the end of the noun. Like so:

3. gafan akasta eosi.
forest big=DAT go.1-PAST
I went to the big forest.

4*. gafanta akas eosi. (<--the * means "this sentence is not grammatical")
forest=DAT big go.1-PAST

B: Ah, that's definitely not a suffix then. But it might still be a free particle rather than a clitic.

A: They're phonologically dependent on the preceding word. You can tell because they undergo the same word-internal phonetic changes that suffixes do. When a suffix starting with a consonant gets added to a word ending in a vowel, the consonant lenits:

5a. gafan
forest

5b. gafanti
forest-1.POSS
my forest

6a. sata
house

6b. satathi (<-- -ti becomes -thi because sata ends in a vowel)
house-1.POSS
my house

7. satatha eosi (<-- -ta becomes -tha)
house=DAT go.1-PAST
I went to the house

8*. satata eosi
house=DAT go.1-PAST

So you can tell that -ta and -su are syntactically independent, because they get suffixed to whole phrases, but you can tell that they're phonologically dependent because they undergo the same lenition process as suffixes. Therefore, it makes the most sense to call them clitics.

= = = = =

Notice how this kind of discussion is very heavy on examples and comparisons, and doesn't rely at all on interpretations or "But it literally translates as..." arguments. In the end, you can have confidence that what you say about the language is true not just because you say so, but because it really is the best description of how the language works.

If you're interested, a few years ago I drew up a sketch of a language that was intended to "not have verbs to begin with"; you can see the discussion of it here. Note how the whole conversation revolved around analysis of examples—I just let the language speak for itself, and eventually another conlanger determined that the best analysis he could find was in fact that the language had no verbs. (Incidentally, I think that even this would not have meant that MSA "didn't apply" to the language; you could probably find close-enough analogues to transitive and intransitive clauses to make a case for a particular alignment.)

In other news, did my explanation of phonemes make sense?

[Keenir]

my psychological personality of cognitive functions

Is there any difference between what you said here and just saying "my personality" besides how long it takes to say? What you said here is so long and redundant I find it humorous.

it reads to me not as "my personality" but rather "my thought process as I understand it".

[HoskhMatriarch]

my psychological personality of cognitive functions

Is there any difference between what you said here and just saying "my personality" besides how long it takes to say? What you said here is so long and redundant I find it humorous.

it reads to me not as "my personality" but rather "my thought process as I understand it".

Oh, I think I can see that too now, but it's still awkward wording to me (not that I'm never guilty of awkward wording)...

[Thrice Xandvii]

I don't mean to be a negative Nancy here, but this may just be a case of "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him accept your conclusions no matter how well spoken and well reasoned they are." I mean, we are on Page 6 here, and very little if anything has been accomplished.

However, this thread has been very enlightening in terms of finding out the most patient and well meaning of the forum goers in these parts. I think Trailsend should get a medal!

[Trailsend]

However, this thread has been very enlightening in terms of finding out the most patient and well meaning of the forum goers in these parts. I think Trailsend should get a medal!

Aww, shucks. :)

I don't mean to be a negative Nancy here, but this may just be a case of "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him accept your conclusions no matter how well spoken and well reasoned they are." I mean, we are on Page 6 here, and very little if anything has been accomplished.

I don't agree, actually. I have dealt with a lot of "horse-to-water" visitors in the past (anybody remember the PreBabel dude from before the migration?), and I get the sense that this isn't that situation. We have, in fact, made progress; we've clarified what MSA is, we've demonstrated how to apply it to Etihus, and Sew'Kyetuh has been receptive to that. I think what's mostly at play here is a whole lot of confusion and misunderstanding, which we're gradually cutting through.

To that end, I would ask that everybody keep their courtesy-caps on, and make sure that your explanations and examples are as simple and clear as you can make them. Hopefully, this thread will serve as a useful resource for other members that come in looking for guidance on how to analyze their languages.

[sangi39]

I don't mean to be a negative Nancy here, but this may just be a case of "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him accept your conclusions no matter how well spoken and well reasoned they are." I mean, we are on Page 6 here, and very little if anything has been accomplished.

I don't agree, actually. I have dealt with a lot of "horse-to-water" visitors in the past (anybody remember the PreBabel dude from before the migration?), and I get the sense that this isn't that situation. We have, in fact, made progress; we've clarified what MSA is, we've demonstrated how to apply it to Etihus, and Sew'Kyetuh has been receptive to that. I think what's mostly at play here is a whole lot of confusion and misunderstanding, which we're gradually cutting through.

Oh god, Tienzen Gong? Not good, man. His stuff is still online, including several posts from the Old Forum (both posted by himself and other users) which he then replies to.

But either way, I agree that Sew'Kyetuh is nowhere near as bad as Tienzen Gong was and that what's going on here is more a series of misunderstandings which could probably be sorted with more clarification.

[elemtilas]

...

Thank you for writing my reply for me!

To follow through with your analogy of handedness, wouldn't it be more like, "Ok, a person has no hands. Are they left handed, right handed, or ambidextrous?"

Would just like to note that handedness doesn't actually have anything to do with the hands. Handedness arises in the brain, so, yes a double amputee or even a person born without hands is still "right handed" or "left handed". Or one of the other less common possibilities. of course.

Likewise with Etihus. It has the wherewithal that allowed several people to make a determination of its MSA, as demonstrated by the examples given. Even if in some instances it doesn't happen to use that wherewithal!

[HoskhMatriarch]

I don't mean to be a negative Nancy here, but this may just be a case of "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him accept your conclusions no matter how well spoken and well reasoned they are." I mean, we are on Page 6 here, and very little if anything has been accomplished.

I don't agree, actually. I have dealt with a lot of "horse-to-water" visitors in the past (anybody remember the PreBabel dude from before the migration?), and I get the sense that this isn't that situation. We have, in fact, made progress; we've clarified what MSA is, we've demonstrated how to apply it to Etihus, and Sew'Kyetuh has been receptive to that. I think what's mostly at play here is a whole lot of confusion and misunderstanding, which we're gradually cutting through.

Oh god, Tienzen Gong? Not good, man. His stuff is still online, including several posts from the Old Forum (both posted by himself and other users) which he then replies to.

But either way, I agree that Sew'Kyetuh is nowhere near as bad as Tienzen Gong was and that what's going on here is more a series of misunderstandings which could probably be sorted with more clarification.

Wow, I just looked up Tienzen Gong and now I'm probably going to have to read everything (or at least a lot). This is completely ridiculous...

...

Thank you for writing my reply for me!

You're welcome, I guess...

[Trailsend]

Wow, I just looked up Tienzen Gong and now I'm probably going to have to read everything (or at least a lot). This is completely ridiculous...

Dude, no. There's so many more productive things you could do with your time. You could learn FORTRAN. Or, like, handwrite a list of all the positive integers less than 2^16 or something.

[Ahzoh]

Wow, I just looked up Tienzen Gong and now I'm probably going to have to read everything (or at least a lot). This is completely ridiculous...

Dude, no. There's so many more productive things you could do with your time. You could learn FORTRAN. Or, like, handwrite a list of all the positive integers less than 2^16 or something.

I just read some of the Q&A and I feel like the average IQ of the world went down a peg...

[Trailsend]

(seriously though, let's not hijack Sew'Kyetuh with PreBabel commentary. If you really can't resist (please, pleeeease resist), take it to a different thread so we can keep it quarantined.)

[Keenir]

regarding Etihus...I have a question...

I understand the desire to have a conlang which avoids ambiguity... and yes, English does have annoying ambiguities like "he" and "his" in the statement Jim didn't understand why Bob was mad when he said he loves his wife.

But what about statements like
"Do you want cyanide or beer?"
"Yes."
...in which one of the options is not offered seriously & wouldn't be served anyway. Is the broad array of "yes" options still required here?

[HoskhMatriarch]

regarding Etihus...I have a question...

I understand the desire to have a conlang which avoids ambiguity... and yes, English does have annoying ambiguities like "he" and "his" in the statement Jim didn't understand why Bob was mad when he said he loves his wife.

But what about statements like
"Do you want cyanide or beer?"
"Yes."
...in which one of the options is not offered seriously & wouldn't be served anyway. Is the broad array of "yes" options still required here?

Yeah, if you want a bit less ambiguity, you could just have the doch/si kind of word (this doesn't exist in English at the moment so it's hard to explain, I've heard it called a reverse affirmative but Googling that doesn't turn anything up), or use verb repetition instead (like in English "Are you not going to the movie tonight?" "I am").

[Sew'Kyetuh]

This post wasn't necessarily responding to any one person, but I took a little time to walk backwards in my conlanging experience to see what might have happened and I recalled this online book about how to build a conlang. It was the very first resource I used, but since I had already built my conlang, I hoped I could use it to just go down the list on a clipboard and mark off this or that as I found how they applied to Etihus.

Now I'm questioning some of the material therein because some of the feedback I am receiving is possibly playing counter to what was in it. And I can't contact the author like I can with the conlang groups.

This page: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Conlang/I ... te/Writing
is what could have started it all. So I was hoping some of you could take a brief bit to look it over to make sure it is accurate information. To quote it specifically:

There are 5 main types of scripts. This page lists them in order from most to least advanced. The less advanced the system is, the harder it is to learn and change:

1. Alphabets are the type you may be more familiar with. They consist of a series of symbols, usually between 10 and 45, where each symbol represents a consonant or vowel in the language. Some may have some duplicate letters (e.g., English C, K, and Q), but these usually have some historical meaning, discussed later on. Other will have symbols for consonant clusters, such as Greek "Ξ" /ks/, Cyrillic "Ц" /ts/, or even English "X" /ks, gz/.

2. Abjads, also known as Consonantal Alphabets, mark consonants but not vowels. Arabic and Hebrew are examples. While these do have a means of showing vowels, via diacritics, they usually are not shown, except in children's books, books for foreigners, or religious texts. Some, such as Phoenician, had no system for marking vowels at all! They usually contain between 15 and 35 symbols.

3. Abugidas contain consonants paired with vowels that can be changed with diacritics. Hindi and many other South Asian languages are examples. Each symbol has an "inherent vowel", commonly /a/, so you have each individual symbol meaning /pa/, /ba/, /ta/, /da/, etc. The vowels can be changed or muted with diacritics. They usually contain between 30 and 60 symbols, not counting diacritics.

4. Syllabaries contain different symbols for every syllable in the language, such as Amharic, Yi, or Cherokee. In other words, there is a separate syllable for /ka/, /ke/, /ki/, /ko/, etc., for each vowel and consonant. The symbols standing for the same consonant may be related (as in Ojibwe, where symbols are rotated), or may bear no resemblance to other symbols, such as in Yi or Cherokee. Syllabaries generally range in size between about 40 symbols and up to 400, with Yi being the largest standardized one, with over 800.

5. Logographic systems contain symbols that represent single morphemes, or the smallest meaningful unit in language. (e.g. "hand", "-er", "un-" in English.) Many languages contain some logographic symbols, such as "1", "@", and "&", but there are some languages, such as Chinese, Japanese, ancient Egyptian, and Mayan, that use(d) logographs to represent much or all of their entire language.

Ideographic systems use one symbol for one thought or idea. Since languages aren't made up directly of thoughts and ideas, and writing systems represent language, true ideographic systems do not exist. They will be covered for the purposes of "alien" languages, though. Chinese is often described as "ideographic" -- this is either just a loose use of the term to mean "logographic", or it is a misunderstanding -- Chinese characters do not represent ideas directly. Japanese kanji come closer to the "ideographic" ideal, with one symbol representing any of several synonyms in context.

Using that objectively as a base, I realized that according to those raw definitions, Etihus didn't fit any of those. In fact, as I understood it, Etihus is an ideographic system, and Etihus is made up directly made up of thoughts and ideas. But it arranges those thoughts and ideas in an ordered fashion like an alphabet.


= = =

I haven't posted in a while because it seems that I made some headway in some other discussion groups with a single, thought-provocative question which is generating a large amount of useful information from the conlanging community.

Once I confirm and compile that information, I plan to eliminate/lock this thread and restart.

[alynnidalar]

You're still confusing scripts with language. A script is only a way of writing things down--it doesn't actually have anything to do with the language itself, especially not as the language is spoken. For example, the usual way to write English is with an alphabet, but people have created alternate writing methods for English that aren't necessarily alphabets. You could write English with an abugida, a logographic script, a syllabary, whatever you want--it doesn't change anything about the grammar or phonology of English.

[qwed117]

This post wasn't necessarily responding to any one person, but I took a little time to walk backwards in my conlanging experience to see what might have happened and I recalled this online book about how to build a conlang. It was the very first resource I used, but since I had already built my conlang, I hoped I could use it to just go down the list on a clipboard and mark off this or that as I found how they applied to Etihus.

Now I'm questioning some of the material therein because some of the feedback I am receiving is possibly playing counter to what was in it. And I can't contact the author like I can with the conlang groups.

This page: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Conlang/I ... te/Writing
is what could have started it all. So I was hoping some of you could take a brief bit to look it over to make sure it is accurate information. To quote it specifically:

There are 5 main types of scripts. This page lists them in order from most to least advanced. The less advanced the system is, the harder it is to learn and change:

1. Alphabets are the type you may be more familiar with. They consist of a series of symbols, usually between 10 and 45, where each symbol represents a consonant or vowel in the language. Some may have some duplicate letters (e.g., English C, K, and Q), but these usually have some historical meaning, discussed later on. Other will have symbols for consonant clusters, such as Greek "Ξ" /ks/, Cyrillic "Ц" /ts/, or even English "X" /ks, gz/.

2. Abjads, also known as Consonantal Alphabets, mark consonants but not vowels. Arabic and Hebrew are examples. While these do have a means of showing vowels, via diacritics, they usually are not shown, except in children's books, books for foreigners, or religious texts. Some, such as Phoenician, had no system for marking vowels at all! They usually contain between 15 and 35 symbols.

3. Abugidas contain consonants paired with vowels that can be changed with diacritics. Hindi and many other South Asian languages are examples. Each symbol has an "inherent vowel", commonly /a/, so you have each individual symbol meaning /pa/, /ba/, /ta/, /da/, etc. The vowels can be changed or muted with diacritics. They usually contain between 30 and 60 symbols, not counting diacritics.

4. Syllabaries contain different symbols for every syllable in the language, such as Amharic, Yi, or Cherokee. In other words, there is a separate syllable for /ka/, /ke/, /ki/, /ko/, etc., for each vowel and consonant. The symbols standing for the same consonant may be related (as in Ojibwe, where symbols are rotated), or may bear no resemblance to other symbols, such as in Yi or Cherokee. Syllabaries generally range in size between about 40 symbols and up to 400, with Yi being the largest standardized one, with over 800.

5. Logographic systems contain symbols that represent single morphemes, or the smallest meaningful unit in language. (e.g. "hand", "-er", "un-" in English.) Many languages contain some logographic symbols, such as "1", "@", and "&", but there are some languages, such as Chinese, Japanese, ancient Egyptian, and Mayan, that use(d) logographs to represent much or all of their entire language.

Ideographic systems use one symbol for one thought or idea. Since languages aren't made up directly of thoughts and ideas, and writing systems represent language, true ideographic systems do not exist. They will be covered for the purposes of "alien" languages, though. Chinese is often described as "ideographic" -- this is either just a loose use of the term to mean "logographic", or it is a misunderstanding -- Chinese characters do not represent ideas directly. Japanese kanji come closer to the "ideographic" ideal, with one symbol representing any of several synonyms in context.

Using that objectively as a base, I realized that according to those raw definitions, Etihus didn't fit any of those. In fact, as I understood it, Etihus is an ideographic system, and Etihus is made up directly made up of thoughts and ideas. But it arranges those thoughts and ideas in an ordered fashion like an alphabet.


= = =

I haven't posted in a while because it seems that I made some headway in some other discussion groups with a single, thought-provocative question which is generating a large amount of useful information from the conlanging community.

Once I confirm and compile that information, I plan to eliminate/lock this thread and restart.

The only vibe I get from you is "I'm still not listening". This is really irritating. Really irritating. It seems like your only purpose is to go on and input a "thought-provoking idea" that's just awfully wrong.

Second of all, (based on your reference to AUI) I think your language has morphemes that are a single phoneme long, and they combine to form larger words. Unfortunately I can't confirm this because of your increasing obtusity.

[HoskhMatriarch]

This post wasn't necessarily responding to any one person, but I took a little time to walk backwards in my conlanging experience to see what might have happened and I recalled this online book about how to build a conlang. It was the very first resource I used, but since I had already built my conlang, I hoped I could use it to just go down the list on a clipboard and mark off this or that as I found how they applied to Etihus.

Now I'm questioning some of the material therein because some of the feedback I am receiving is possibly playing counter to what was in it. And I can't contact the author like I can with the conlang groups.

This page: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Conlang/I ... te/Writing
is what could have started it all. So I was hoping some of you could take a brief bit to look it over to make sure it is accurate information. To quote it specifically:

There are 5 main types of scripts. This page lists them in order from most to least advanced. The less advanced the system is, the harder it is to learn and change:

1. Alphabets are the type you may be more familiar with. They consist of a series of symbols, usually between 10 and 45, where each symbol represents a consonant or vowel in the language. Some may have some duplicate letters (e.g., English C, K, and Q), but these usually have some historical meaning, discussed later on. Other will have symbols for consonant clusters, such as Greek "Ξ" /ks/, Cyrillic "Ц" /ts/, or even English "X" /ks, gz/.

2. Abjads, also known as Consonantal Alphabets, mark consonants but not vowels. Arabic and Hebrew are examples. While these do have a means of showing vowels, via diacritics, they usually are not shown, except in children's books, books for foreigners, or religious texts. Some, such as Phoenician, had no system for marking vowels at all! They usually contain between 15 and 35 symbols.

3. Abugidas contain consonants paired with vowels that can be changed with diacritics. Hindi and many other South Asian languages are examples. Each symbol has an "inherent vowel", commonly /a/, so you have each individual symbol meaning /pa/, /ba/, /ta/, /da/, etc. The vowels can be changed or muted with diacritics. They usually contain between 30 and 60 symbols, not counting diacritics.

4. Syllabaries contain different symbols for every syllable in the language, such as Amharic, Yi, or Cherokee. In other words, there is a separate syllable for /ka/, /ke/, /ki/, /ko/, etc., for each vowel and consonant. The symbols standing for the same consonant may be related (as in Ojibwe, where symbols are rotated), or may bear no resemblance to other symbols, such as in Yi or Cherokee. Syllabaries generally range in size between about 40 symbols and up to 400, with Yi being the largest standardized one, with over 800.

5. Logographic systems contain symbols that represent single morphemes, or the smallest meaningful unit in language. (e.g. "hand", "-er", "un-" in English.) Many languages contain some logographic symbols, such as "1", "@", and "&", but there are some languages, such as Chinese, Japanese, ancient Egyptian, and Mayan, that use(d) logographs to represent much or all of their entire language.

Ideographic systems use one symbol for one thought or idea. Since languages aren't made up directly of thoughts and ideas, and writing systems represent language, true ideographic systems do not exist. They will be covered for the purposes of "alien" languages, though. Chinese is often described as "ideographic" -- this is either just a loose use of the term to mean "logographic", or it is a misunderstanding -- Chinese characters do not represent ideas directly. Japanese kanji come closer to the "ideographic" ideal, with one symbol representing any of several synonyms in context.

Using that objectively as a base, I realized that according to those raw definitions, Etihus didn't fit any of those. In fact, as I understood it, Etihus is an ideographic system, and Etihus is made up directly made up of thoughts and ideas. But it arranges those thoughts and ideas in an ordered fashion like an alphabet.


= = =

I haven't posted in a while because it seems that I made some headway in some other discussion groups with a single, thought-provocative question which is generating a large amount of useful information from the conlanging community.

Once I confirm and compile that information, I plan to eliminate/lock this thread and restart.

The only vibe I get from you is "I'm still not listening". This is really irritating. Really irritating. It seems like your only purpose is to go on and input a "thought-provoking idea" that's just awfully wrong.

Second of all, (based on your reference to AUI) I think your language has morphemes that are a single letter long, and they combine to form larger words. Unfortunately I can't confirm this because of your increasing obtusity.

That's close to what he has, except the "letters" are made of more than one phoneme.

[Sew'Kyetuh]

The only vibe I get from you is "I'm still not listening". This is really irritating. Really irritating. It seems like your only purpose is to go on and input a "thought-provoking idea" that's just awfully wrong.

Second of all, (based on your reference to AUI) I think your language has morphemes that are a single phoneme long, and they combine to form larger words. Unfortunately I can't confirm this because of your increasing obtusity.

Clearly I listen because I have interacted discussions with some of the members with whom I not only agree with, but get excited when proposals are made that do fit and make sense. I consider ignorance (refusal of information) a sin. But since I'm interested in the truth here, I'm doing my best to sort through the information given to me and see if it applies to the conlang in question. I'm not gullible and I have to verify that the information you give me is correct.

If it is not correct, I have to do my best to explain why it doesn't work that way. If my explanations don't make sense, or they mean something other than what I'm trying to communicate, then it might appear that I'm not listening, but not listening and not understanding are 2 different things.