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

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

Post by VaptuantaDoi »

teotlxixtli wrote: 17 May 2022 12:49 How do applicatives form? I’ve got a proto-lang and I want it’s daughter to have benefactive, locative, and instrumental applicatives but I’m not sure from what they descend or how they get attached to the verb
You can form them from serial verb compounds. For example, with an instrumental you could have "he cut used the knife" for "he cut with the knife", then just incorporate the "use" morpheme. Likewise "give" for benefactive and "go" for locative". This is how lots of Papuan languages (probably) developed their many applicatives; here's an example of Tairora using a serial verb compound in an applicative-like way:

Code: Select all

rumpatimitero
rumpa -ti     -mi  -te -ro
tie   1SG.OBJ give PFV 3SG.SUBJ.PAST
“He tied it for me”
Where the verb root "give" is incorporated; there's only a relatively short step to wearing down -mi into a benefactive morpheme.

(From The Languages and Linguistics of the New Guineas Area by Bill Palmer)
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Post by Creyeditor »

Similarly, they can be related to adpositions of course. A somewhat constructed example from German (might not be diachronically correct).

Ich be-schneide den Busch.
I at-cut the.ACC bush
I cut the bush.

Ich schneide etwas bei-m Busch.
I cut something at-the.DAT bush
I am cutting something at the bush.
Last edited by Creyeditor on 17 May 2022 16:11, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Omzinesý »

Different voices also get secondary meanings very easily and those secondary meanings can later develop to the primary meaning.

Say "I'm being written the pen." for 'I'm writing with the pen.'
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Post by sangi39 »

Creyeditor wrote: 17 May 2022 14:56 Similarly, they can be related to adpositions of course. A somewhat constructed example from German (might not be diachronically correct).

Ich be-schneide den Busch.
I at-cut the.ACC bush
I cut the bush.

Ich schneide etwas bei-m Busch.
I cut something at-the.DAT bush
I am cutting something at the bush.
I read a couple of papers while I was on my break that suggest that, alongside serial verb incorporation, applicatives can come from preposition incorporation (and presumably adpositions more widely depending on word order), where the preposition marking the oblique gets absorbed into the preceding verb, and the former oblique ends up becoming the second object of a now ditransitive verb.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by teotlxixtli »

VaptuantaDoi wrote: 17 May 2022 14:12
teotlxixtli wrote: 17 May 2022 12:49 How do applicatives form? I’ve got a proto-lang and I want it’s daughter to have benefactive, locative, and instrumental applicatives but I’m not sure from what they descend or how they get attached to the verb
You can form them from serial verb compounds. For example, with an instrumental you could have "he cut used the knife" for "he cut with the knife", then just incorporate the "use" morpheme. Likewise "give" for benefactive and "go" for locative". This is how lots of Papuan languages (probably) developed their many applicatives; here's an example of Tairora using a serial verb compound in an applicative-like way:

Code: Select all

rumpatimitero
rumpa -ti     -mi  -te -ro
tie   1SG.OBJ give PFV 3SG.SUBJ.PAST
“He tied it for me”
Where the verb root "give" is incorporated; there's only a relatively short step to wearing down -mi into a benefactive morpheme.

(From The Languages and Linguistics of the New Guineas Area by Bill Palmer)
Thanks for this explanation! I like this method the best
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Salmoneus »

sangi39 wrote: 17 May 2022 16:47
Creyeditor wrote: 17 May 2022 14:56 Similarly, they can be related to adpositions of course. A somewhat constructed example from German (might not be diachronically correct).

Ich be-schneide den Busch.
I at-cut the.ACC bush
I cut the bush.

Ich schneide etwas bei-m Busch.
I cut something at-the.DAT bush
I am cutting something at the bush.
I read a couple of papers while I was on my break that suggest that, alongside serial verb incorporation, applicatives can come from preposition incorporation (and presumably adpositions more widely depending on word order), where the preposition marking the oblique gets absorbed into the preceding verb, and the former oblique ends up becoming the second object of a now ditransitive verb.
Well, minus the ditransitivity, this is Indo-European. We speak a language packed to the gills with Latin applicative verbs formed from prepositions stuck onto verbs.

The same process also happened in English itself, although there the attached elements were often still more like adverbs than prepositions in many cases:
"I the plains over flew" >[verb motion]> "I overflew the plains"
"I their resistance over came" > "I overcame their resistance"
"I the expedition under took" > "I undertook the expedition"
"I the castle from got" > I forgot the castle ['for-' comes from several different particles that have been merged]
"I your language under stood" > "I understood your language"

[it's less prominent with inherited English words because a) more semantic drift has often occurred, b) English stress patterns have worn down many of the prefixes, merging them or eliminating them entirely, and c) the fondness for zero-derivation and the influx of loanwords have dramatically reduced the utility of this construction as a way of changing verb valency.]
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Post by LittleLynx_53 »

Hey so... This might be a dumb question but I can't find anything in WALS about it and google is not being helpful.

Can a language have object-verb agreement instead of subject-verb?

Could it develop from a language that makes the verb agree with both somehow and people stopped bothering with the subject agreement?

It sounds kind of impractical when I think about it, but I am only an English speaker and I want to make sure it really is strange and isn't just my monolingual bias.
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Post by Creyeditor »

There are languages with object agreement only. I can't come up with a natlang example on the spot though.
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Post by Salmoneus »

Dryer points to Nama, Kolokuma Ijo, Bimoba, Kera, Ngizim, Ingush, Avar, Mundari, Car Nicobarese, Kiribatese, Ponapean, Woleaian, Papago, and Warao. However, he says that some of these may be object pronoun incorporation rather than true agreement (that is, that they're saying "I ate it - the apple", and the 'it' has gotten stuck to the 'ate' - but you can tell the difference because in those languages you either can't have an independent object pronoun, or if you do the incorporated pronominal on or in the verb is dropped instead). Also, some of these languages may have subject agreement in the sentence, just not fixed on the verb.

It's also worth pointing out that other that the three central-eastern malayo-polynesian languages there, none of those languages are related to one another. Indicating that if this phenomenon does arise in a language it doesn't stick around for long in the descendents.

It is more common for this to happen for certain verbs, or in certain situations. Icelandic has object agreement when the object is in the nominative and the subject is in the dative. We could also imagine object agreement when the object is placed in the location in the sentence normally occupied by the subject (eg in emphatic fronting). Apparently ASL has object-only agreement in some verbs, but never subject-only agreement.

Bear in mind also that when we start saying "the verb agrees with the object and not the subject"... well, having the verb agree with it rather than the object is kind of part of what defines a subject, so if you flip that around, I'm not saying that instantly makes the object the subject (because there's lots of other things that define the subject too), but it does start to make the 'object' and 'subject' descriptions a little ambiguous. Particularly if you introduce, say, ergativity, or topic-prominence.

One thing that does spring to mind from English is that periphrastic constructions can be counterintuitive in what they agree with, and can stay that way for a while. The European perfect constructions formed from "have + participle" all originally had the participle agree in case, number and gender with the object, because originally the participle was an adjective modifying the object. Over time, that agreement has been lost (particularly of course in English where most affixes have been lost anyway), although it may still stick around in some European languages. Apparently French still has object agreement when the object precedes the participle. But if we imagine a language in which the auxiliary verb - the 'have' - had already lost its person agreement, while the participle hadn't, the result would have been a construction that agrees with the object, not the subject.

But I think we can conclude that while this sort of thing can arise, in various ways, it's unlikely to remain the general default in a language for any length of time.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by LinguoFranco »

So, I want to make a tonal conlang, but I am unsure about which tonal melodies I want to use. I hear some languages have things like high-falling, low-rising, etc.

I want to keep mine fairly simple, and curious as to what the tendencies are for tonal melodies?
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Post by Creyeditor »

You could look at African tone languages for inspiration. Will all words in your language be monosyllabic? In some tone languages syllables can have low, high, or falling tone. Words however can only have a restricted set of melodies, too, e.g. no more than one high tone stretch per word. Made up tone language nunber one has two possible tones on monosyllabic words:

bá - high tone
nè - low tone

On trisyllabic words you do not find all expected patterns, e.g. you do not find a high - low - high pattern.

*wóràté - high + low + high
zúpúsú - all high
dàfàgà - all low
hékùlà - high + low + low
còvégù - low + high + low
bánámò - high + high + low
etc etc etc
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Post by LinguoFranco »

So, another question about tone:

Rising and falling tones seem to occur in contours, does that mean that if a language has either of these, then it will have contour tone?

Like, if you have a word /ka.na/, which of course has no heavy syllables, does this mean it cannot have a rising or falling tone?
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Post by LinguistCat »

LinguoFranco wrote: 15 Jun 2022 17:15 So, another question about tone:

Rising and falling tones seem to occur in contours, does that mean that if a language has either of these, then it will have contour tone?

Like, if you have a word /ka.na/, which of course has no heavy syllables, does this mean it cannot have a rising or falling tone?
From what I've researched, and a couple videos by Artifexian, what you need to have before having simple contours (which rising and falling are) are the following:

- Flat tones
- A loss of voicing distinction in syllable initial consonants or a loss of syllable final consonants

So you could have a language that currently has flat tones, simple contours and only open syllables, but in the past had only flat tones and various syllable final consonants that affected the tones before being lost.
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Post by LinguoFranco »

LinguistCat wrote: 15 Jun 2022 18:24
LinguoFranco wrote: 15 Jun 2022 17:15 So, another question about tone:

Rising and falling tones seem to occur in contours, does that mean that if a language has either of these, then it will have contour tone?

Like, if you have a word /ka.na/, which of course has no heavy syllables, does this mean it cannot have a rising or falling tone?
From what I've researched, and a couple videos by Artifexian, what you need to have before having simple contours (which rising and falling are) are the following:

- Flat tones
- A loss of voicing distinction in syllable initial consonants or a loss of syllable final consonants

So you could have a language that currently has flat tones, simple contours and only open syllables, but in the past had only flat tones and various syllable final consonants that affected the tones before being lost.
Stupid question, but are "flat tones," just basic high and low word tones?
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Post by Creyeditor »

LinguoFranco wrote: 15 Jun 2022 17:15 So, another question about tone:

Rising and falling tones seem to occur in contours, does that mean that if a language has either of these, then it will have contour tone?

Like, if you have a word /ka.na/, which of course has no heavy syllables, does this mean it cannot have a rising or falling tone?
There is no reason why /kana/ shouldn't have contour tones /kâná/ or /kànâ/ are possible tone patterns in many tone languages.

I have to admit that I do not fully understand the first part of your question. Many languages can have contour tones on light syllables if this helps.
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Post by LinguistCat »

LinguoFranco wrote: 15 Jun 2022 20:29 Stupid question, but are "flat tones," just basic high and low word tones?
No stupid questions [:)] But yeah. Basic tones, non-contour tones, flat tones. I'm not sure what the official term is, but high, mid or low tones that don't change.
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Post by Sequor »

I've seen both "level" and "flat tones" in ling literature.
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Post by LinguoFranco »

Creyeditor wrote: 15 Jun 2022 23:32
LinguoFranco wrote: 15 Jun 2022 17:15 So, another question about tone:

Rising and falling tones seem to occur in contours, does that mean that if a language has either of these, then it will have contour tone?

Like, if you have a word /ka.na/, which of course has no heavy syllables, does this mean it cannot have a rising or falling tone?
There is no reason why /kana/ shouldn't have contour tones /kâná/ or /kànâ/ are possible tone patterns in many tone languages.

I have to admit that I do not fully understand the first part of your question. Many languages can have contour tones on light syllables if this helps.
I'm trying to go for a register/word tone, if that clarifies anything, as opposed to something like Mandarin or Vietnanmese.

I do feel like I am overthinking how tones work.
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There are natlangs that have word-tone melodies like HL oor HLH (where H is a high tone and L is a low . In some languages these yield contour tones like /kânà/ HL.L, /kâná/ HL.H. In other languages contour tones might be more restricted, yielding /kánà/ H.L and /kâná/ for these melodies. Yet other languages might disallow all contour tones and only allow /kánà/ for bisyllabic words here.

To be fully clear, I did not get what you mean by:
LinguoFranco wrote: 15 Jun 2022 17:15 Rising and falling tones seem to occur in contours,
because rising and falling tones are contour tones.
Feel free to ask more questions or the same question again of course.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by LinguoFranco »

Creyeditor wrote: 16 Jun 2022 08:32 There are natlangs that have word-tone melodies like HL oor HLH (where H is a high tone and L is a low . In some languages these yield contour tones like /kânà/ HL.L, /kâná/ HL.H. In other languages contour tones might be more restricted, yielding /kánà/ H.L and /kâná/ for these melodies. Yet other languages might disallow all contour tones and only allow /kánà/ for bisyllabic words here.

To be fully clear, I did not get what you mean by:
LinguoFranco wrote: 15 Jun 2022 17:15 Rising and falling tones seem to occur in contours,
because rising and falling tones are contour tones.
Feel free to ask more questions or the same question again of course.
I meant about rising and falling tones occurring only in heavy syllables such as long vowels.
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