Yay or Nay?

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Re: Yay or Nay?

Post by Creyeditor »

ɶʙ ɞʛ wrote: 20 Dec 2020 20:20 Is this attested or realistic?

/tˤ dˤ sˤ nˤ/ > /ʈ ɖ ʂ ɳ/
It is acoustically plausible because pharyngealization and retroflexation have similar effects on the third formant.
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Re: Yay or Nay?

Post by k1234567890y »

I have a conlang whose roman transcription contains a digraph ae, and I want to replace it with ä or æ, should I do it? also which one would be a better choice?
I prefer to not be referred to with masculine pronouns and nouns such as “he/him/his”.
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Re: Yay or Nay?

Post by shimobaatar »

k1234567890y wrote: 26 Jan 2021 08:43 I have a conlang whose roman transcription contains a digraph ae, and I want to replace it with ä or æ, should I do it? also which one would be a better choice?
For context, what does <ae> represent? What does the rest of the transcription system look like?
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Re: Yay or Nay?

Post by Omzinesý »

k1234567890y wrote: 26 Jan 2021 08:43 I have a conlang whose roman transcription contains a digraph ae, and I want to replace it with ä or æ, should I do it? also which one would be a better choice?
ae amd æ can also be just alternative typografies for the same letter(s).
My meta-thread: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5760
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Re: Yay or Nay?

Post by k1234567890y »

shimobaatar wrote: 26 Jan 2021 16:12
k1234567890y wrote: 26 Jan 2021 08:43 I have a conlang whose roman transcription contains a digraph ae, and I want to replace it with ä or æ, should I do it? also which one would be a better choice?
For context, what does <ae> represent? What does the rest of the transcription system look like?
for this language:

https://conworkshop.com/view_language.php?l=XMY
I prefer to not be referred to with masculine pronouns and nouns such as “he/him/his”.
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Re: Yay or Nay?

Post by shimobaatar »

k1234567890y wrote: 26 Jan 2021 20:37
shimobaatar wrote: 26 Jan 2021 16:12
k1234567890y wrote: 26 Jan 2021 08:43 I have a conlang whose roman transcription contains a digraph ae, and I want to replace it with ä or æ, should I do it? also which one would be a better choice?
For context, what does <ae> represent? What does the rest of the transcription system look like?
for this language:

https://conworkshop.com/view_language.php?l=XMY
Between <ä> and <æ>, I think that I would personally go with <ä>.
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Re: Yay or Nay?

Post by k1234567890y »

shimobaatar wrote: 27 Jan 2021 15:19
k1234567890y wrote: 26 Jan 2021 20:37
shimobaatar wrote: 26 Jan 2021 16:12
k1234567890y wrote: 26 Jan 2021 08:43 I have a conlang whose roman transcription contains a digraph ae, and I want to replace it with ä or æ, should I do it? also which one would be a better choice?
For context, what does <ae> represent? What does the rest of the transcription system look like?
for this language:

https://conworkshop.com/view_language.php?l=XMY
Between <ä> and <æ>, I think that I would personally go with <ä>.
I think so and thanks ><
I prefer to not be referred to with masculine pronouns and nouns such as “he/him/his”.
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Re: Yay or Nay?

Post by qwed117 »

So I’ve been working a bit on the Hlaitype A Priori, and I started working on a longer translational text. I’ve been thinking about existentials too. Right now I’m thinking that existentials are formed from a combination of a deictic pronoun and a verb (probably the copula), similar to the comparable construction in English and Sardinian. eg


mráw1 i1 jong3
COP PROX house
bi at un domo
here is a house

mráw1 kho3 jong3
COP DIST house
nch’est un domo
there is a house

I don’t really have an immediate alternative, but I’m worrrying this is too close to English and also that the use of “i” is too similar to “ibi” and kho” to “nche” or “quis” (or some other latin interrogative pronoun). So is it too close? Should I try something else?

Edit: Edit: One option that I have thought about is merging the construct with a possessive, so we get something like

mráw1 i1 hoy3 jong3
COP PROX 1SG house
"I have a house [here]"

concurrent with that I could also make the function take on weirder roles via the prepositional particle and go for
mráw1 i1 khwa1 hoy3 jong3
COP PROX PREP 1SG house

mráw1 khwa1 i1 hoy3 jong3

COP PREP PROX 1SG house

this I presume would thus require that the deictic marker be placed with a prepositional marker in the standalone existential, so

mráw1 khwa1 i1 jong3
COP PREP PROX house
"There is a house"

Of course, maybe that's not necessary, to get sufficient weirdness, I could treat the preposition as an obligatory O argument (ie make the copula transitive) rather than an S argument

mráw1 jong3 khwa1 i1
COP house PREP PROX

or drop the prepositional marker fully

mráw jong3 i1

COP house PROX

and then only require the prepositional marker in the "tritransitive" possessive case. Of course that could potentially make for weird sentences

mráw1 hwòy2 i1 e̋2 khwa1 jó2
COP sheep PROX to PREP sea
"There's a sheep here [going?] towards the sea"

mráw hwòy2 hoy3 khwa1 i1 e̋2 khwa1 jó2
COP sheep 1SG PREP PROX to PREP sea
"I have a sheep here [going?] towards the sea"


I might make kho3 and i1 work in different manners vis a vis deixis. For example, allowing i1 as a generic deictic marker (cf. English "there", "there is a dog here"), while restricting kho3 solely to movement, ie the last two examples could be equally understood with kho3 presuming that the sheep are moving towards the sea and not merely being pointed towards by the speaker. Or I might even restrict i1 to be wholly static, and develop a static-proximal, static-distal and dynamic set of deictic markers for this.

Thoughts? The question on changing the words still holds, because using i1 and kho3 still feels weird
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Re: Yay or Nay?

Post by Creyeditor »

I know this is not strictly one of the options you suggest, but you could just use the copula alone for the standard existential construction. Indonesian does it like that.

Ada rumah.
COP house
There is a house.

You might still add deictic pronouns optionally if necessary, like in your example.

mráw jong3 i1
COP house PROX

To me, having the deictic pronoun before the copula looks very parallel to English.
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Re: Yay or Nay?

Post by Khemehekis »

Have you considered using the verb "to exist" instead of a copula for "there is" constructions? Cf. Kankonian:

Etesyal aas e shubida.
casserole exist-PRS in refrigerator
There is a casserole in the fridge.
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Re: Yay or Nay?

Post by eldin raigmore »

Khemehekis wrote: 30 Jan 2021 18:37 Have you considered using the verb "to exist" instead of a copula for "there is" constructions? Cf. Kankonian:

Etesyal aas e shubida.
casserole exist-PRS in refrigerator
There is a casserole in the fridge.
I have considered it.
I am still considering it.
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Re: Yay or Nay?

Post by shimobaatar »

qwed117 wrote: 30 Jan 2021 04:53 I don’t really have an immediate alternative, but I’m worrrying this is too close to English and also that the use of “i” is too similar to “ibi” and kho” to “nche” or “quis” (or some other latin interrogative pronoun). So is it too close? Should I try something else?
There's no objective answer, I'd say, to whether or not something is "too close" to English or Sardinian or any other natlang, really. I personally don't mind the fact that the constructions presented in your first two examples here are similar to the equivalent constructions in English and Sardinian, but if it bothers you, then I'd recommend changing it.

To clarify, though, are you concerned by the fact that "i1" and "kho3" are similar to "ibi" and "nche"/"quis" in form/sound, usage/function, or both?
qwed117 wrote: 30 Jan 2021 04:53
Edit: Edit: One option that I have thought about is merging the construct with a possessive, so we get something like

mráw1 i1 hoy3 jong3
COP PROX 1SG house
"I have a house [here]"
I suppose that the absence of a verb for "to have" keeps this from being potentially "too close" to something like "here we have a house" in English?

As Creyeditor suggested, you could make the inclusion of the deictic optional. Another possibility could be making the overt inclusion of the copula optional. You might also consider using a verb other than the copula. If I remember correctly, "es gibt…" ("it gives…") in German is used similarly to "there is…" in English. In (Modern Standard) Arabic, although you could say something like "hunāk(a) bayt(un)" ("there house") for "there is a house", "yūjad(u) bayt(un)" ("a house is found"), with a passive form of the verb, is another possibility.
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Re: Yay or Nay?

Post by Salmoneus »

qwed117 wrote: 30 Jan 2021 04:53 So I’ve been working a bit on the Hlaitype A Priori, and I started working on a longer translational text. I’ve been thinking about existentials too. Right now I’m thinking that existentials are formed from a combination of a deictic pronoun and a verb (probably the copula), similar to the comparable construction in English and Sardinian. eg


mráw1 i1 jong3
COP PROX house
bi at un domo
here is a house

mráw1 kho3 jong3
COP DIST house
nch’est un domo
there is a house

I don’t really have an immediate alternative, but I’m worrrying this is too close to English and also that the use of “i” is too similar to “ibi” and kho” to “nche” or “quis” (or some other latin interrogative pronoun). So is it too close?
I don't understand the question. "Too" close for what? Are there some rules you're trying to follow, or something?

Languages are languages; inevitably, they will look like other languages. There is no requirement to have "sufficient weirdness" - at least, not in the abstract (for some languages there may be a narrative requirement for extreme weirdness).

What's more, I always think people should be wary of this impulse toward negative features: "I must have something that isn't like English, and this isn't like English, so I'll have that". It doesn't tend to produce coherent languages with a distinctive character of their own! Instead, I generally suggest positive decisions: think about what you want the language to be like, and make it like that. Explore the language's own character, rather than making it just "it has to be like this because otherwise it would be too like English and not weird enough". You'll feel more positive about your conlang when you feel pulled toward something, rather than feeling chased away from something.

On the concrete questions:
- an existential constuction with a copula and a deictic is, so far as I'm aware, extremely common. There's no reason to think of it as specifically English.

However, bear in mind that English actually does three things at once - and you can do one or two without doing all three.

The three things in question are:
- English uses the copula (as used in nominal predication) in locational clauses. "The house is by the river", "the house is there", "by the river is a house", "there is a house". Most languages don't - WALS says that around 2/3rds of languages encode location and predication differently, and probably some (a minority) of those that mark them the same way don't use a copula (i.e. most likely they have a zero-copula). However, 1/3rd of languages is still a lot! And such languages dominate Eurasia, apart from the Atlantic fringe, the Pacific coast, and the Bay of Bengal.

- English uses deictic locational clauses as the default existential. I suspect that in almost every language, it will be possible to use a deictic locational clause as an existential, but it won't always be the default existential construction, just as English has alternatives too (including: an existential verb ("God is", "dogs exist", "peace obtains"), adjectival predication ("one-legged cats are found"), nominal predication ("wolverines are a feature of the region"), verbal possession with a dummy pronoun ("we have a winner", "they have a ointment for that"), imperatives ("look, a rabbit!"), and simple nominal ejaculations ("Volcano!!!")). I don't have any stats, but I suspect that deictic locational clauses are among the most common default existential clauses, because they're straightforward, broadly applicable, and easily to generate from common metaphorical uses of deictics. Though they may be less common than plain existentials?

- English also specifically uses a fixed existential construction to form detopicalising locational clauses, with dummy pronouns and overspecification: "there is a fly in my soup" (rather than the topical "a fly is in my soup"). This is more eccentric, and is tied up with topicalisation issues and with word order rules (i.e. the fact that English doesn't allow verb-initial clauses, so if you don't want any other real argument to be a topic then you need to add in a dummy argument). However, it's certainly not unique to English, and also occurs across Europe, and probably beyond (as the problems it fixes are common ones).





- regarding /i/ and /ibi/: why would anyone think that these are "too close"? Likewise, how would /xo/ (or /k_ho/) and /kwis/ be "too close"? An interrogative and an obviative deictic are "too close" if they happen to both have a velar element? And why would anybody care about Sardinian? There's honestly not an anti-Sardinian mafia out there, viciously attacking conlangers if any word in their conlang shares a phoneme with a word in Sardinian, of all languages...
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Re: Yay or Nay?

Post by Creyeditor »

Maybe some background on the design goals of Hlaitype A Priori would help. I tacitly assumed that you were going for a south east asian feeling (because IRL Hlai is spoken on Hainan), but maybe you are aiming at a more east-asian touch or something completely different.
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Re: Yay or Nay?

Post by qwed117 »

Ok, so I was going to discourse, but after sleeping on it (I probably should have done that first :P) come to a "solution" that I like, which is that deictic markers are postverbal and mandated, but actually distinguish temporal remoteness over spatial remoteness (cf the relative impermissability of "here was a[n object]"), and use a verb (phyün) equivalent to "to own, to have" to form existentials. Most verbs in HTAP* have a single present-past remoteness distinction, deriving from a post-appended particle that was likely *aŋɨk/*əmə(w), but the copula (mráw) and this new verb (phyün) don't have a past formed that way, and either lack a past (as the copula, and phyün when used for existentials) or have an irregular past (phyün, when used for possession). That being said the deictic pronouns used here are still spatial/locative, and not temporal, despite marking temporal aspect.

Anyways, thanks for springing ideas for me [:D]

*side note: it's called that because it's phonologically similar to Hlai. I looked at the phonology of the Hlai languages when making the language. I haven't decided if it'll be syntactically similar. In fact already, with question-word fronting and VSO order, it's already very different (the latter was a decision based on WALS saying, I believe, Ayatal in the Philippines had VSO order.
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Re: Yay or Nay?

Post by Creyeditor »

That sounds like a good solution [:)]
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Re: Yay or Nay?

Post by Ahzoh »

Yay or nay:
Change the gender/case system;

Original system:

Code: Select all

Noun:
     NOM / OBL / CONS.NOM / CONS.OBL
MSG: -e  / -i  / -0       / -0
FSG: -a  / -u  / -0       / -0
MPL: -en / -in / -ē       / -ī
FPL: -an / -un / -ā       / -ū

Verb:
MSG: -ī
FSG: -ū
MPL: -im
FPL: -um
Pros:
  • gender distinction maintained in the oblique case
  • flows better with the definite clitic li
Cons:
  • No real diachronic justification for the presence of /e/ as the masculine gender ending when all other instances of /e/ are the result of pharyngeal fronting that occurred after the gender suffixes were established
  • endings are different weight and thus impact stress on the noun
New System:

Code: Select all

Noun:
     NOM / OBL / CONS
MSG: -im / -am / -0
FSG: -um / -am / -0
MPL: -ī  / -ā  / -ê < -*āi
FPL: -ū  / -ā  / -ê < -*āi

Verb:
MSG: -im
FSG: -um
MPL: -ī
FPL: -ū
Pros:
  • The declension of the nouns concords better with the verb
  • fits in line with how the language develops the /e/ phoneme
  • endings are the same syllable weight and thus don't impact the shape of the noun due to stress syncope
Cons:
  • No distinction in gender in the oblique case (and no real means of resolving ambiguity through determiners etc.)
  • doesn't flow well with the definite clitic li
  • verb endings indistinguishable from noun endings
  • feels like a ripoff of Akkadian declension system
Original System:
ṣebēs ḳebbi-li
"the four kings"
ṣebēs ḳebbi ḫallalan-li
"the four strong kings"
ṣebēs ḳebbi ḫallalan eḫḫu talu nakessadamum-li
"the four strong kings who built this city"
ṣebēs ḳebbi ḫallalan eḫḫu talu nakessadamum-li dārīmi nakûm
"the four strong kings who built this city are my fathers"

New System
ṣebēs ḳebbam-li
"the four kings"
ṣebēs ḳebbam ḫallalū-li
"the four strong kings"
ṣebēs ḳebbam ḫallalū eḫḫam talam nakessadamū-li
"the four strong kings who built this city"
ṣebēs ḳebbam ḫallalū eḫḫam talam nakessadamū-li dārāmi nakû
"the four strong kings who built this city are my fathers"
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Re: Yay or Nay?

Post by k1234567890y »

@Ahzoh

how about largely keeping the original system but modify the /e/ to something else and change the length of the -i, -a and -u endings?
I prefer to not be referred to with masculine pronouns and nouns such as “he/him/his”.
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Re: Yay or Nay?

Post by Ahzoh »

k1234567890y wrote: 12 Feb 2021 04:06 @Ahzoh

how about largely keeping the original system but modify the /e/ to something else and change the length of the -i, -a and -u endings?
I can't really do anything to the /e/ because as I have it's basically like /n/ is the plural marker in basic state while /:/ is the plural marker in construct state and the oblique endings are basically the nominative endings plus [+raised]. The declension system is pretty featural.
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Re: Yay or Nay?

Post by k1234567890y »

Ahzoh wrote: 12 Feb 2021 05:02
k1234567890y wrote: 12 Feb 2021 04:06 @Ahzoh

how about largely keeping the original system but modify the /e/ to something else and change the length of the -i, -a and -u endings?
I can't really do anything to the /e/ because as I have it's basically like /n/ is the plural marker in basic state while /:/ is the plural marker in construct state and the oblique endings are basically the nominative endings plus [+raised]. The declension system is pretty featural.
hmm...
I prefer to not be referred to with masculine pronouns and nouns such as “he/him/his”.
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