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

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

Post by Creyeditor »

LinguoFranco wrote: 25 Nov 2022 03:06 I'm toying with making a conlang with height based vowel harmony: vowels in a word must agree with each other based on height.

I came up with a pretty simple system that distinguishes high and low vowels:

High: /i ə u/
Low: /e a o/

One thing I want to do is have a neutral vowel that is opaque, so that it can block the vowel harmony in some, if not all, circumstances, but not sure what vowel I could use for that.

What do you think?
There is a great and data-heavy dissertation on height harmony in Bantu (not ATR harmony). It also has information on height harmony outside of Bantu, e.g. Old Norwegian. (https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/p ... af4d).html)
In ATR harmony, /a/ is often opaque. You could do the same here, maybe and get rid of the schwa? Or introduce a high schwa and a mid schwa and have /a/ be opaque.
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Post by Omzinesý »

One of my gazillion conlang projects is an auxlang.

I think the simplest way to derive (in)transitives is making the verbs ambitransitive, like English 'The potatoes are boiling.' vs 'I'm boiling the potatoes.' But it would be more logical if the lang has an agent slot and a patient slot in its syntax, instead of subject and object slots. So, the agent slot could just be left empty in an intransitive clause. But such word orders (like SVO but VS) are not common and thus "easy" in world languages. Verb-final and verb-initial word orders are of course a possibility, but it's handy to have a verb between the NPs to distinguish them.

I think the puzzle cannot be solved keeping all easy parts
1) agent slot and patient slot
2) verb is between the subject and the object (or the agent and the patient)
3) word order one of the common ones

Which do you think is the least problematic to give up?
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Post by Creyeditor »

I think, if only the agent slot is optionally filled, SV/SOV is relatively unambigious (modulo complex noun phrase arguments). If both the agent and the patient slot are optionally filled, SVO is less ambigious but yields both SV and VS in intransitive clauses. I think this is related to some thoughts I had about syntactically ergative languages but I can't recall.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Salmoneus »

Omzinesý wrote: 28 Nov 2022 17:19 One of my gazillion conlang projects is an auxlang.

I think the simplest way to derive (in)transitives is making the verbs ambitransitive, like English 'The potatoes are boiling.' vs 'I'm boiling the potatoes.' But it would be more logical if the lang has an agent slot and a patient slot in its syntax, instead of subject and object slots. So, the agent slot could just be left empty in an intransitive clause. But such word orders (like SVO but VS) are not common and thus "easy" in world languages. Verb-final and verb-initial word orders are of course a possibility, but it's handy to have a verb between the NPs to distinguish them.

I think the puzzle cannot be solved keeping all easy parts
1) agent slot and patient slot
2) verb is between the subject and the object (or the agent and the patient)
3) word order one of the common ones

Which do you think is the least problematic to give up?
The first. It's so counterintuitive to do that in the first place that it's bound to cause confusion for speakers of real human languages - if not in this issue then in others (eg pivots and other clause-coodinating structures). I know there are small numbers of languages where it's debated whether there are subjects at all, and there are another small number of fluid-S languages in which intransitives strongly keep track of agenthood/patienthood, and there are another small number of language with totally symmetrical pasives and antipassives... but you're really pushing up against the boundaries of what human brains are going to find logical and intuitive.

If it's meant to be an auxlang, an "easy" "world language", why wouldn't you make it closely resemble Standard Average Human? And Standard Average Human has subjects and objects.
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Post by Omzinesý »

Salmoneus wrote: 29 Nov 2022 14:27
Omzinesý wrote: 28 Nov 2022 17:19 One of my gazillion conlang projects is an auxlang.

I think the simplest way to derive (in)transitives is making the verbs ambitransitive, like English 'The potatoes are boiling.' vs 'I'm boiling the potatoes.' But it would be more logical if the lang has an agent slot and a patient slot in its syntax, instead of subject and object slots. So, the agent slot could just be left empty in an intransitive clause. But such word orders (like SVO but VS) are not common and thus "easy" in world languages. Verb-final and verb-initial word orders are of course a possibility, but it's handy to have a verb between the NPs to distinguish them.

I think the puzzle cannot be solved keeping all easy parts
1) agent slot and patient slot
2) verb is between the subject and the object (or the agent and the patient)
3) word order one of the common ones

Which do you think is the least problematic to give up?
The first. It's so counterintuitive to do that in the first place that it's bound to cause confusion for speakers of real human languages - if not in this issue then in others (eg pivots and other clause-coodinating structures). I know there are small numbers of languages where it's debated whether there are subjects at all, and there are another small number of fluid-S languages in which intransitives strongly keep track of agenthood/patienthood, and there are another small number of language with totally symmetrical pasives and antipassives... but you're really pushing up against the boundaries of what human brains are going to find logical and intuitive.

If it's meant to be an auxlang, an "easy" "world language", why wouldn't you make it closely resemble Standard Average Human? And Standard Average Human has subjects and objects.
But it is logical. It's just not what human languages usually do.

'I went home.' -> 'I went home by his action.' = 'He bought me home.'
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Salmoneus »

You can call anything you want "logical", and if you're creating a purely philosophical language there's no reason you can't.

[although obviously in reality no language is more or less 'logical' than any other. Logic in a philosophical sense is a system of rules for deriving conclusions from premises; language is a system of rules for expressing conclusions and premises - logic requires some form of language, but language itself is not governed by logic, and cannot be; it is not the sort of thing that logic CAN apply to (you may as well say that the rules of chess are more or less logical than backgammon). What you're really talking about is whether you personally find something cognitively intuitive.]

However, if you're developing an "easy world language", then making things "logical" shouldn't even be a goal, since what's "logical" - appealing to you personally on a cognitive level - is likely to deviate greatly from what is 'easy' for humans in general (i.e. what is actually intuitive for most people on a practical level).


[I'm afraid I don't understand your last line. You seem to be saying that you can logically deduce a proposition expressed in the passive from one in the active, or that active sentences can be regularly transformed into passives. This is of course true, but is equally true for equivalent sentences/propositions in any language, regardless of their alignment. It doesn't prove that English alignment is actually superior to that of other languages.]
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by eldin raigmore »

'He bought me home.'
You mean “brought”.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by LinguoFranco »

Does it still count as phonemic if long vowels can only occur in stressed syllables, or would that make it allophonic?

I have heard some languages claimed to have long vowels, but that these vowels are always stressed or are only found in stressed syllables.
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Post by Sequor »

LinguoFranco wrote: 30 Nov 2022 17:42 Does it still count as phonemic if long vowels can only occur in stressed syllables, or would that make it allophonic?

I have heard some languages claimed to have long vowels, but that these vowels are always stressed or are only found in stressed syllables.
As long they aren't predictably long in such a position, I'd say they're still phonemic. All the more so if you can find minimal pairs against short vowels, which is quite likely, e.g. [ˈnito] vs. [ˈni:to].

I think German is an example, as (IIRC) long vowels can only occur in syllables with some stress, but you still get minimal pairs like bitten [ˈbɪtn̩ ] 'to ask for sth, request' vs. bieten [ˈbi:tn̩ ] 'to offer sth'.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by LinguoFranco »

Sequor wrote: 30 Nov 2022 17:47
LinguoFranco wrote: 30 Nov 2022 17:42 Does it still count as phonemic if long vowels can only occur in stressed syllables, or would that make it allophonic?

I have heard some languages claimed to have long vowels, but that these vowels are always stressed or are only found in stressed syllables.
As long they aren't predictably long in such a position, I'd say they're still phonemic. All the more so if you can find minimal pairs against short vowels, which is quite likely, e.g. [ˈnito] vs. [ˈni:to].

I think German is an example, as (IIRC) long vowels can only occur in syllables with some stress, but you still get minimal pairs like bitten [ˈbɪtn̩ ] 'to ask for sth, request' vs. bieten [ˈbi:tn̩ ] 'to offer sth'.
I think it also occurs in Welsh?

I'm curious as to what other languages it occurs in?

I'm asking because I want vowel length to be phonemic in my conlang, but I also don't want there to be more than one long vowel per word.
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Post by Sequor »

Egyptian Arabic is another example where long vowels only appear when stressed and the vowel length distinction is also phonemic.

Examples of languages where this happens and it is not phonemic, but rather just allophonic, include Italian and Late Latin (at least as reflected in the descendant languages Old French, Friulian and Dalmatian, possibly others; in the Romance linguistics literature this is known as OSL = open syllable lengthening).
LinguoFranco wrote: 30 Nov 2022 18:26I'm asking because I want vowel length to be phonemic in my conlang, but I also don't want there to be more than one long vowel per word.
Yeah, I was saying that's perfectly natural and attested.
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Post by LinguoFranco »

So, what if you had words like /'kaː.po/ vs /'kam.po/? It'd be allophonic, then, right?

Like, the stressed vowel is only long if the stressed syllable is open. If it's closed, then it's short.
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Post by Sequor »

LinguoFranco wrote: 30 Nov 2022 19:25 So, what if you had words like /'kaː.po/ vs /'kam.po/? It'd be allophonic, then, right?

Like, the stressed vowel is only long if the stressed syllable is open. If it's closed, then it's short.
Then that's allophonic, not phonemic. /'kapo/ ['kaː.po] vs. /'kampo/ ['kam.po].

However if you have /'kapo/ vs. /'kaːpo/ as different words that's another story. Then it'd be phonemic.
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Post by tokibuni »

I've been working on how I want to do comparatives, settling on the conjoined comparative method (as detailed in Wals). I understand the basic uses of it, I think, but I'm having a harder time with some more complicated cases. Also, for clarity, I've used "||" between sentences in the gloss (perhaps I should have used a single line space instead?).

I'm specifically trying to avoid recreating the "more, less, -er, -est" that exists in English.

For a basic comparative, essentially: English: X is taller than Y. Which would be with the conjoined comparative I wish to use: X is tall. Y is small. In my conlang:
Spoiler:

She is taller than her mother.
ara fal qov. ara mön flifal xoti.
COP 3sg tall || COP mother GEN-3sg small
Lit: She is tall. Her mother is small.

Equative:
He is as slow as a snail.
ara fal kik. ara kävus kik.
COP 3sg slow || COP snail slow
Lit: He is slow. A snail is slow.
But then you get cases like: "The dog has less pride than a cat." This resorts in either using a sentence that says the dog has no pride (which isn't true, it has less) if done like above. In which case, I can't figure out how to make this work with a conjoined comparative (I've had no luck in finding many examples). One of the options uses "many/few" which feels like the equivalent of using "more/less" in English. In my attempts to avoid this, I thought perhaps a special conjuction would work ("but" for "less than" and "though" for "more than"). In my language, the two options I've come up with so far:
Spoiler:

A dog has less pride than a cat
olo dak vikita malavu wawa. olo vikita malamazo.
COP:be-at few pride LOC-DEF dog || COP:be-at pride LOC-cat
Lit: At the dog is few pride. At the cat is pride.

VS

olo vikita malavu wawa sön olo vikita malamazo
COP:be-at pride LOC-DEF dog but COP:be-at pride LOC-cat
Lit: At the dog is pride, but at the cat is pride
You could also have these type of comparatives: "A turtle loves rain more than it loves a bird" and "A turtle loves rain more than a bird loves rain." In my conlang as the one above with the dog having less pride than a cat.
Spoiler:

A turtle loves rain more than it loves a bird
o löm nutula isa läs o löm nutula sifa
GNO love NOM-turtle rain though GNO love NOM-turtle bird
Lit: A turtle loves rain, though a turtle loves a bird.

A turtle loves rain more than a bird loves rain
o löm nutula isa läs o löm nusifa isa
GNO love NOM-turtle rain though GNO NOM-bird rain
Lit: A turtle loves rain, though a bird loves rain.
And then finally, I'm unsure how to handle the superlative with this type of comparative. My thoughts so far is to use a second sentence with "all others" and the opposite verb/adjective. Example sentences including: "This is the biggest dog" and "She is the best in her class." In my conlang:
Spoiler:

This is the biggest dog
ara ti wawa siif. ara iu präv ttö xoti.
COP this dog big || COP PL other all small.
Lit: This dog is big. All others are small.

She is the best in her class
ara fal vio malajalvi flifal. ara iu präv ttö nolv malajalvi flifal.
COP 3sg good LOC-class GEN-3sg || COP PL other all bad LOC-class GEN-3sg
Lit: She is good in her class. All others are bad in her class.
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Post by Omzinesý »

Omzinesý wrote: 30 Nov 2022 12:49
Salmoneus wrote: 29 Nov 2022 14:27
Omzinesý wrote: 28 Nov 2022 17:19 One of my gazillion conlang projects is an auxlang.

I think the simplest way to derive (in)transitives is making the verbs ambitransitive, like English 'The potatoes are boiling.' vs 'I'm boiling the potatoes.' But it would be more logical if the lang has an agent slot and a patient slot in its syntax, instead of subject and object slots. So, the agent slot could just be left empty in an intransitive clause. But such word orders (like SVO but VS) are not common and thus "easy" in world languages. Verb-final and verb-initial word orders are of course a possibility, but it's handy to have a verb between the NPs to distinguish them.

I think the puzzle cannot be solved keeping all easy parts
1) agent slot and patient slot
2) verb is between the subject and the object (or the agent and the patient)
3) word order one of the common ones

Which do you think is the least problematic to give up?
The first. It's so counterintuitive to do that in the first place that it's bound to cause confusion for speakers of real human languages - if not in this issue then in others (eg pivots and other clause-coodinating structures). I know there are small numbers of languages where it's debated whether there are subjects at all, and there are another small number of fluid-S languages in which intransitives strongly keep track of agenthood/patienthood, and there are another small number of language with totally symmetrical pasives and antipassives... but you're really pushing up against the boundaries of what human brains are going to find logical and intuitive.

If it's meant to be an auxlang, an "easy" "world language", why wouldn't you make it closely resemble Standard Average Human? And Standard Average Human has subjects and objects.
But it is logical. It's just not what human languages usually do.

'I went home.' -> 'I went home by his action.' = 'He bought me home.'
I'm not sure if it's fruitful to continue debating what is logical.

I just find it "logical" that if you want to add an agentive causer to an unaccusative intransitive clause (i.e. transitivize it) you don't need to change the old construction, just to add the agent.

I'm not trying to get rid of subjects. I'm just speaking about word order.

Before learning English, I found verbs like 'to boil' bery unintuitive. But in an auxlang, you should simultaneously avoid much morphology. So, using one verb in two constructions is handy, but the two constructions should be as similar as possible.

In my first post, I expressed my contrasting motivations. I'm trying to optimize between them.
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Post by Omzinesý »

LinguoFranco wrote: 30 Nov 2022 18:26
I think it also occurs in Welsh?

I'm curious as to what other languages it occurs in?

I'm asking because I want vowel length to be phonemic in my conlang, but I also don't want there to be more than one long vowel per word.
Basically, all Germanic languages have long vowels only in stressed syllables. (I think I once found a counterexample in German, but don't remember what it might have been, a loan word anyways.)

Estonian also has long vowels only in stressed syllables, but Estonian phonology is complicated and vowel length is more about relative length compared to the other syllables.

It seems to be common in so called stress-timed languages.

It could also be interesting to have a conlang with long vowels only in one syllable, but its placement would be independent of stress.
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Post by Omzinesý »

tokibuni wrote: 01 Dec 2022 04:50 ]

But then you get cases like: "The dog has less pride than a cat." This resorts in either using a sentence that says the dog has no pride (which isn't true, it has less) if done like above. In which case, I can't figure out how to make this work with a conjoined comparative (I've had no luck in finding many examples). One of the options uses "many/few" which feels like the equivalent of using "more/less" in English. In my attempts to avoid this, I thought perhaps a special conjuction would work ("but" for "less than" and "though" for "more than"). In my language, the two options I've come up with so far:
Spoiler:

A dog has less pride than a cat
olo dak vikita malavu wawa. olo vikita malamazo.
COP:be-at few pride LOC-DEF dog || COP:be-at pride LOC-cat
Lit: At the dog is few pride. At the cat is pride.

VS

olo vikita malavu wawa sön olo vikita malamazo
COP:be-at pride LOC-DEF dog but COP:be-at pride LOC-cat
Lit: At the dog is pride, but at the cat is pride
You could also have these type of comparatives: "A turtle loves rain more than it loves a bird" and "A turtle loves rain more than a bird loves rain." In my conlang as the one above with the dog having less pride than a cat.
Spoiler:

A turtle loves rain more than it loves a bird
o löm nutula isa läs o löm nutula sifa
GNO love NOM-turtle rain though GNO love NOM-turtle bird
Lit: A turtle loves rain, though a turtle loves a bird.

A turtle loves rain more than a bird loves rain
o löm nutula isa läs o löm nusifa isa
GNO love NOM-turtle rain though GNO NOM-bird rain
Lit: A turtle loves rain, though a bird loves rain.
I think it would be something like 'The cat has pride. The dog has little pride.' or 'The dog has no pride.' depending if it has.

What about 'The turtle loves rain. A bird doesn't love rain equally much.'


I think what you say about superlatives sounds good.
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Post by tokibuni »

Do you think something like "enough" would work well, then? The turtle loves rain. A bird doesn't love rain enough.
Spoiler:

o löm nnukvu tula isa. jät nusifa o löm pamv isa.

GNO love NOM-DEF turtle rain || NEG NOM-bird GNO love enough rain
Lit: The turtle loves rain. A bird doesn’t love rain enough.
Edit: The more I think about it, the more it just makes sense to go with what was suggested. Probably just "equally", so: "The turtle loves rain. A bird doesn't love rain equally."
Last edited by tokibuni on 02 Dec 2022 03:14, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Salmoneus »

Omzinesý wrote:
I'm not trying to get rid of subjects. I'm just speaking about word order.

[...]

In my first post, I expressed my contrasting motivations. I'm trying to optimize between them.
Yes, and you asked which principle to give up, in the context of creating an easy world language, and I gave my opinion. One of your principles directly contradicts the goal of an easy world language, so that's the one you should give up if that's your goal.
I just find it "logical" that if you want to add an agentive causer to an unaccusative intransitive clause (i.e. transitivize it) you don't need to change the old construction, just to add the agent.

[...]

Before learning English, I found verbs like 'to boil' bery unintuitive. But in an auxlang, you should simultaneously avoid much morphology. So, using one verb in two constructions is handy, but the two constructions should be as similar as possible.
But now I'm confused, because what you're talking about here is derivational morphology, which has nothing to do with questions of word order and so on.

What's going on with "to boil"? Well, it's confusing of course, because there's two different verbs "to boil":
The water boils (univalent verb)
I boil the water (bivalent verb)

Specifically, the latter is a causative verb formed from the former (or the former is a decausative formed from etc etc, but the former is both more straightforward and more in line AIUI with the evidence as a whole): "the water boils" > "I boil-0 the water" (i.e. I cause the water to boil). English is very free with created derived verbs with different valency, and in particular modern English usually uses zero-derivation to increase valency, including when creating causative verbs. [by contrast, older forms of English made a lot more use of overt valency-raising prefixes* or ablaut**, or simply periphrasis***; conversely, modern English typically prefers overt derivational particles when reducing valency****, which is one reason I think it makes more sense to see the univalent verb as the basic form here].


In any case, we can see easily that this process is indeed derivational because a) it's only occasionally productive, and b) it produces unpredictable semantics.

So, for instance, "the water boils" > "I boil the water", but "the man snores" > **"I snore the man". "The cactus died" > **"the garderner died the cactus". Most verbs cannot form causatives through this zero-affix.

And, likewise, when valency-increasing zero-derivation is possible, the meaning is unpredictable:
"The water boils" > "I boil the water" [to maintain role, 'water' shifts from subject to patient. The new subject is a causer.]
"The fish smells" > "I smell the fish" [to maintain role, 'fish' shifts from subject to patient; but here the new subject is an observer, not a causer]
"The woman knits" > "The woman knits a scarf" [to maintain role, 'the woman' remains as a subject. The new patient is a product created by the verb]

Different languages can of course have different derivational morphemes, including zero morphemes. There's absolutely no reason why a given language would have to have a zero morpheme that derives causative bivalent verbs from univalent verbs by demoting the subject of the univalent to the object of the divalent and introducing the causer as the subject of the new divalent verb. I mean, there's no reason that has to happen at all! [that sort of demotional causative is not uncommon, and zero derivation of causatives is not uncommon, but plenty of languages have one and not the other, or neither, or have both but not at the same time].

[apparently, ALL human languages have at least some construction that promotes the causer above the causee, and in some sense demotes the causee; but this doesn't have to be by having causer and causee as subject and object of a single verb.]


However, what you were originally talking about was word order, and specifically word order rules that did not make use of the concepts of subject and object, but only of agent and patient. And that isn't particularly closely related to the question of derivational morphology - morphology and word order are different parts of the language.

[Note that eliminating demoting causatives would not by itself eliminate subjects and objects, as demoting causatives are only one of a large number of constructions in which subjects are not necessarily agents and agents are not necessarily subjects. "I'm not going to have any subjects or objects" is a massive deal, a huge, foundational, cross-cutting rule for a language that instantly makes that language very odd, comparatively speaking (it certainly happens, but it's certainly not common). By comparison, "I'm not going to have a causative construction that demotes the undergoer to object position" is a very small thing localised to a small area of grammar. Doing the former to accomplish the latter would be using a bulldozer to swat a fly.]

[that said, lacking demoting comparatives is actually pretty rare in its own right, so it automatically a weird thing to do in a world auxlang]



*such as be-, which often formed bivalents by adding a cause as a patient: "I mourn" > "I bemourn his death" [i.e. his death causes me to mourn]. Later, English adopted en-, which forms bivalents by adding a cause as a subject instead: "his hair tangled" > "I entangled his hair" [i.e. I caused his hair to tangle]. "The flame kindled" > "I enkindled the flame" [i.e. I caused the flame to kindle]. "The depressed man heartened at the news" > "The news enheartened him" [i.e. the news made him hearten]. Over time, however, the valency-modifying role of these prefixes has been obscured, often through the causatives being used to zero-derive new univalent equivalents that have replaced the originals, and instead the prefixes are more frequently used in denominal and deadjectival functions.

**"The tree falls" > "I fell the tree" [i.e. I cause the tree to fall]

***most often with 'do' or 'command' as the auxiliary verbs

****"The man kicks the dog" > "The man kicks out".
Salmoneus
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Salmoneus »

Hmm, I'll equivocate a little, actually.

I do kind of see how these two things (causatives and word order) are related in your argument. It's just that, for me, there seem to be a lot of unexamined intermediate steps!

"I don't like this particular causative construction"
>
"My auxlang won't have this causative construction" (a strange decision, since this construction* is super-common worldwide, and lacking it is strange)
>
"To avoid having this causative construction, in which an undergoer is demoted from subject position, my auxlang will be fluid-S, both morphologically and syntactically" (a really strange decision, since going fluid-S isn't necessary for that goal, and fluid-S languages are really unusual, so not ideal for a world auxlang; plus, genuine question because I've no idea of the answer, are any fluid-S languages fluid both morphologically AND syntactically?)
>
"To justify the language being fluid-S, I'll decree that the language's grammar never has any concept of 'subject' and 'object' anywhere" (super-strange, since, again, that's not necessary, and, again, that's very unusual (I suspect some would argue unattested, but that's probably controversial) and counterintuitive for an 'easy' auxlang"



*by 'this construction', I mean a morphological causative construction that demotes an argument from subject position, not necessarily specifically a zero-marked construction of this sort.
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