Search found 672 matches
- 28 Mar 2024 21:12
- Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
- Topic: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here
- Replies: 1110
- Views: 282820
Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here
A current curiosity of mine: for how many grammatical functions do natural languages employ word order? And what are those functions? Though I'd wager the answer will probably be 'everything and anything', so perhaps a more specific question - among the languages anyone here might know about, which...
- 28 Mar 2024 13:40
- Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
- Topic: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here
- Replies: 1110
- Views: 282820
Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here
Another of my 'speculative' questions... How might a language develop an animate/inanimate (or any other binary gender-like) distinction, on demonstratives specifically? I ask about demonstratives, since they are likely one of the first points in the development of a gender system (at least accordin...
- 27 Mar 2024 09:47
- Forum: Conlangs
- Topic: Tsayyākan - Scratchpad
- Replies: 12
- Views: 520
Re: Tsayyākan - Scratchpad
A fun idea... 'Simple' (i.e., non-reduplicated) stems show the following : *p, *t, *k, *s > ps, ts, ks, s ~ mb, nd, ng, nz *h > s ~ n *r, *l > y, y ~ r, l *m *n > no change Additionally, -t added to consonant stems causes some changes (as has been previously mentioned) *pt *kt *tt > ut, it, Vt *mt *...
- 26 Mar 2024 22:36
- Forum: Conlangs
- Topic: Tsayyākan - Scratchpad
- Replies: 12
- Views: 520
Re: Tsayyākan - Scratchpad
Nice work so far. I like the attention given to the declensional classes; I think having variety in inflection is often something overlooked in a priori conlangs. Thanks! To be honest, I probably tend towards having too many declension classes precisely because of the variety! On a similar note, I ...
- 24 Mar 2024 13:33
- Forum: Conlangs
- Topic: Tsayyākan - Scratchpad
- Replies: 12
- Views: 520
Re: Tsayyākan - Scratchpad
A fun idea for plural marking on the participle forms occurred to me, so I'm going to write it down before I forget. Starting with a proto-plural suffix, something like * (i)j . Maybe this is related to the -i in the accusative plural -eri . Initially, this is applied as a regular agglutinative suff...
- 24 Mar 2024 11:38
- Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
- Topic: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here
- Replies: 1110
- Views: 282820
Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here
Not an expert, but since we've raised the question, I'd guess there are three reasons why Latin developed mostly-free word order: a) the word order was probably ancestrally never totally fixed anyway. Strong SOV tendencies in the earliest records may be in part a literary decision, a style of "...
- 24 Mar 2024 09:47
- Forum: Conlangs
- Topic: Tsayyākan - Scratchpad
- Replies: 12
- Views: 520
Re: Tsayyākan - Scratchpad
I like that. Reminds me of Arabic, but not too much. It was indeed (partially) inspired by Semitic-like forms! The verbal system will probably have some more non-concatenativity, but not exactly in the Semitic style. More on the participles The tā-tam/active form is (or was) primarily used to comme...
- 23 Mar 2024 23:29
- Forum: Conlangs
- Topic: Quick Diachronics Challenge
- Replies: 1041
- Views: 268882
Re: Quick Diachronics Challenge
It is retrievable, maybe even more than that. But I agree that the closest should win. That's why I said, I don't want to wait much longer before revealing it. So, why spend more time waiting. Here is the solution I had in mind. The protoform was simple: *ma, my favorite syllable. Ha! Who would hav...
- 23 Mar 2024 20:23
- Forum: Conlangs
- Topic: Quick Diachronics Challenge
- Replies: 1041
- Views: 268882
Re: Quick Diachronics Challenge
Not to spoil the fun or anything, but I thought part of the game was to reconstruct what is possible from the given cognates. If the exact proto-word is unretrievable on the basis of the cognates, then surely the closest one should just win? Otherwise it literally just becomes a guessing game...
- 23 Mar 2024 15:24
- Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
- Topic: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here
- Replies: 1110
- Views: 282820
Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here
Having said that, there may also be one typological nudge in Latin's case: its prepositions and tendency for post-nominal adjectives conflicted with its tendency for final verbs, and moving to SVO resolved that. But that of course is just shifting the question (why did its mixed order originally ar...
- 23 Mar 2024 15:21
- Forum: Conlangs
- Topic: Tsayyākan - Scratchpad
- Replies: 12
- Views: 520
Re: Tsayyākan - Scratchpad
So, I'm not happy with the pronominal system at all. I'll just leave that alone for now. Let's move on to verbs. I feel like doing something that revolves around a participle-like system, starting with something like this: tam- eat tā-tam- eating (active) tam-ām- eaten (passive) With CVCVC roots, th...
- 22 Mar 2024 18:50
- Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
- Topic: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here
- Replies: 1110
- Views: 282820
Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here
I'm afraid I don't know any syntax (in a linguistics sense, imaginary trees and brackets and anagrams and whatnot), so I probably can't give the sort of answer you want. Thank you very much for this! To be honest, my knowledge of syntax/"linguistics" is very rudimentary, and I favour comm...
- 22 Mar 2024 09:52
- Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
- Topic: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here
- Replies: 1110
- Views: 282820
Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here
Related to my recent question about word order, I have another one. Supposing it is true that the shift from SOV starts "top down", what would this look like in practice? Let's use Japanese as an example since it is rigidly SOV/head final. According to the proposed pathway of change, the o...
- 20 Mar 2024 21:48
- Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
- Topic: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here
- Replies: 1110
- Views: 282820
Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here
One intriguing thing is that in VO languages, V-O-Adverb is usually the favored word order when adverbs are involved ─ so if an adverb were to lexicalize into an auxiliary, it would result in V-O-Auxiliary ─ yet this occurs rarely in natlangs, so there must be something else at work! [...] Since au...
- 20 Mar 2024 21:19
- Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
- Topic: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here
- Replies: 1110
- Views: 282820
Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here
I know; I don't have an answer for the overall question, but I thought I could offer some preliminary insights. You did, thank you. Syntax is not often an area I get into, because my questions tend towards the 'why' (a lot of which are probably unanswerable, but interesting to speculate on nonethel...
- 20 Mar 2024 21:04
- Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
- Topic: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here
- Replies: 1110
- Views: 282820
Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here
AFAIK, the FOFC is supposed to be asymetric, so [V-O]-Aux is banned but Aux-[OV] is okay, contrary to what the name suggests. I hasten to add that this in itself does not explain anything and could only be a first step on the way to a potential explanation. Edit: I had misunderstood (apologies!). B...
- 20 Mar 2024 19:54
- Forum: Linguistics & Natlangs
- Topic: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here
- Replies: 1110
- Views: 282820
Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here
Does anyone have any thoughts/ideas on why, in languages that use auxiliary verbs, the order V-O-Aux never seems to appear as a 'default' order, and when alternative orders are allowed, it is exceedingly rare? (Apparently Classical Latin allowed this order, but it was not common, and eventually disa...
- 19 Mar 2024 20:30
- Forum: Conlangs
- Topic: Tsayyākan - Scratchpad
- Replies: 12
- Views: 520
Re: Tsayyākan - Scratchpad
Ok, since this is a scratchpad, scratch all of the above on pronouns. I have come up with a system that I like much better. Preverbal Enclitic Chains Let's only focus on 1st and 2nd persons for now, as 3rd person will somehow be 'peripheral'. We have the following subject enclitics: 1sg. = wa 2sg. =...
- 18 Mar 2024 21:05
- Forum: Conlangs
- Topic: Tsayyākan - Scratchpad
- Replies: 12
- Views: 520
Re: Tsayyākan - Scratchpad
Pronouns and Pronominal Enclitics A series of (pronominal) clitics often precedes the verb. Clitics are always attached to a 'conjunctive' particle, most often a- , which has no meaning, and serves only as a 'joiner' morpheme. Other conjunctive particles will have semantic content. The order of pro...
- 18 Mar 2024 09:51
- Forum: Conlangs
- Topic: Tsayyākan - Scratchpad
- Replies: 12
- Views: 520
Re: Tsayyākan - Scratchpad
Quenya comes to my mind. Interesting! Quenya definitely wasn't an influence here – maybe that's a product of the specific examples. I think it will be less 'mellifluous' and more stop-heavy. I imagine it will look less Quenya once we get to verbs. I like the case paradigm. It's agglutinative and st...