Teune -- Suggestions Requested

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Druidpeter
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Teune -- Suggestions Requested

Post by Druidpeter »

Hello everyone, my name is DruidPeter.

So, I have a conlang called Teune, which I've had sitting on my hard drive for a very long time. I'm having trouble continuing it, because besides what I've written in my grammar document already, every time I look at it I just can't really think of what other features I need to account for. Also, it doesn't help that the last 10 years of my life have been... well, absolute hell. I currently feel like a shattered relic in a world that has moved on for a thousand years, and more.

But I do still want to see if I can get some feedback on my grammar document, because fuck it, why not? Maybe starting to work on this thing will help me pick the pieces of my life back together again, and help me heal, even if just a little.

What I'm looking for, beyond any general commentary and critique that one might typically expect from this sort of thing, is:
  • Specific language features that you would like to see developed or elaborated on. This can be features that my grammar document hasn't even touched at all, if you so wish.
  • Suggestions regarding how I might organize and structure the content in my grammar document. As things stand, I don't really like the general structure of how I am presenting the reference document for this conlang. Any suggestions you could make would be greatly appreciated.
Now then, I don't know if it would be kosher to copy/paste the entire document into the text box, so I'm going to put a google drive link here. But having said that, if you guys want the language to actually be described in post, then I'll see what I can do. The document isn't very large, relatively speaking. Only about 7 pages long.

The Grammar Document: The Teune Language

Finally, I would like to bring up some interesting features about this language that help make it unique:

1. Usage of a single lexical term as a general-purpose, catchall locative. The word, 'ender' not only serves as a preposition denoting any of the following: "in, at, on, near, in between, around, underneath, inside, et al" e.g. a term describing any and all static position, but ALSO can act as a preposition denoting the emotional and/or mental state of animate objects! For example, " <subject phrase> ender <noun>" could actually be used as a sort of prepositional phrase describing the emotional or mental state of the subject in question, depending on the <noun> used.

2. The language has dual systems of noun-phrase construction: One which utilizes high levels of compounding of various root forms and other types of lexical tokens, and another that is primarily preposition based. I know that, in reality, such a system in a natural language would be considered highly unstable. Unfortunately, I ended up developing both systems to a high level of sophistication, and can't bring myself to get rid of one or the other. So any suggestions regarding how these two systems can co-exist would be lovely.

3. Finally, there is a high level symbolic overlap for a variety of language elements and constructs. What I mean by this is that a lot of very distinct and unrelated language features are implemented with morphemes and lexical tokens that are identical in form and pronunciation. Some interesting examples of this:
  • The form '-en' is both the verb infinitive ending, as well as the noun plural ending marker.
  • The form '-e' is both the noun single ending marker(which is elited in a huge number of cases!) as well as the verb present/future tense.
  • And many other odd curiosities like this!
I don't actually know of any conlang or natlang that attempts and/or has features implemented like this. I personally find that it creates a very lexically dense language that is very susceptible to tiny shades of meaning. But I also welcome any discussion regarding how plausible a system like this would be, and whether you the reader find it still possible for such a language to be mostly comprehensible enough for real-world usage.


Well, that's about it. I guess I'll just drop this post here and come back to check on it in a day or two.

For anyone who may be curious about who I am and what confluence of life events brought me here. Well, basically, I'm just a guy who spent the last decade desperately trying to crawl out of a really fucked up life situation. I ended up making a lot of progress, but ultimately am now burned out, probably near 100K in debt, with various goals and dreams that ended up collapsing before my eyes, and who collapsed from exhausting and emotional numbness not *too* long ago. And now I'm just... trying to find a direction to go, I guess.
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Dormouse559
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Re: Teune -- Suggestions Requested

Post by Dormouse559 »

Welcome DruidPeter! I can only imagine how your situation must feel; I do hope picking up Teune again can bring you some comfort.

Druidpeter wrote: 13 Jul 2021 02:562. The language has dual systems of noun-phrase construction: One which utilizes high levels of compounding of various root forms and other types of lexical tokens, and another that is primarily preposition based. I know that, in reality, such a system in a natural language would be considered highly unstable. Unfortunately, I ended up developing both systems to a high level of sophistication, and can't bring myself to get rid of one or the other. So any suggestions regarding how these two systems can co-exist would be lovely.
Hmm, I can't say I've heard of such a system being unstable, but it's helpful to remember that over the evolution of a language, it will almost certainly develop some crosslinguistically strange features, even if they disappear quickly. We conlangers usually work on a snapshot (or snapshots) of a conlang at a specific moment in time, and it is not unrealistic for that snapshot to capture a few weird, unstable features. In that moment, some of these oddities might be just emerging, others could be in their brief prime of full productivity, and still others might be on the way to obsolescence.

Leaving all that aside, there are natlangs with dual systems of noun phrase construction, such as English ("the Finance Department chair" vs. "the chair of the Department of Finance"; "the name of the author" vs. "the author's name") and German. I would be interested in learning more about Teune's strategies here.

3. Finally, there is a high level symbolic overlap for a variety of language elements and constructs. What I mean by this is that a lot of very distinct and unrelated language features are implemented with morphemes and lexical tokens that are identical in form and pronunciation. Some interesting examples of this:
  • The form '-en' is both the verb infinitive ending, as well as the noun plural ending marker.
  • The form '-e' is both the noun single ending marker(which is elited in a huge number of cases!) as well as the verb present/future tense.
  • And many other odd curiosities like this!
I don't actually know of any conlang or natlang that attempts and/or has features implemented like this. I personally find that it creates a very lexically dense language that is very susceptible to tiny shades of meaning. But I also welcome any discussion regarding how plausible a system like this would be, and whether you the reader find it still possible for such a language to be mostly comprehensible enough for real-world usage.
These kinds of ambiguous grammatical markers appear in many languages. As it happens, German also uses -en as a marker of infinitives and some plural nouns. Luckily, context is usually enough to sort out ambiguous morphemes, and they're a good place to look when coming up with puns [:)]


In addition to the noun-phrase rules, it'd be neat to learn more about Teune orthography; you list a few spelling variants in your document, and I see at least two of them in your examples, but there isn't any info on when those alternatives are used. I also noticed <nn> in munne. Does that represent a geminate consonant?

One way to find areas of your conlang that need elaboration is to translate sentences and texts with it. The Translations subforum has various challenges you can try, some of which target specific grammatical features. You can also write posts in Teune on the Conlang Conversation Thread.
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eldin raigmore
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Re: Teune -- Suggestions Requested

Post by eldin raigmore »

I’ve been able to read the .odt Google drive document .
It’s interesting; I dare say impressive!
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Re: Teune -- Suggestions Requested

Post by Salmoneus »

Druidpeter wrote: 13 Jul 2021 02:56
Finally, I would like to bring up some interesting features about this language that help make it unique:

1. Usage of a single lexical term as a general-purpose, catchall locative. The word, 'ender' not only serves as a preposition denoting any of the following: "in, at, on, near, in between, around, underneath, inside, et al" e.g. a term describing any and all static position
[/quote]
This isn't that unusual. Often such a position may be paired with locational nouns for further precision. In some languages, such a preposition can include not only all stationary meanings, but all motive meanings as well! Eg Tok Pisin - 'Boroko i stap long Mosbi', "Boroko is IN Port Moresby", but 'Ol meri i go long Boroko', "the women went TO Boroko".
, but ALSO can act as a preposition denoting the emotional and/or mental state of animate objects! For example, " <subject phrase> ender <noun>" could actually be used as a sort of prepositional phrase describing the emotional or mental state of the subject in question, depending on the <noun> used.
This is probably almost universal - using the same prepositions for physical location and mental state. English uses 'in', 'to' and 'out of' in this way: "he did it in anger", "they were driven to despair", "I did it out of love".
2. The language has dual systems of noun-phrase construction: One which utilizes high levels of compounding of various root forms and other types of lexical tokens, and another that is primarily preposition based. I know that, in reality, such a system in a natural language would be considered highly unstable. Unfortunately, I ended up developing both systems to a high level of sophistication, and can't bring myself to get rid of one or the other. So any suggestions regarding how these two systems can co-exist would be lovely.
Perhaps look to English for some guidance? "the team captain" vs "captain of the team"; "the lifeboat" vs "the kiss of life"; "the mountaintop" vs "the top of the mountain", etc.
3. Finally, there is a high level symbolic overlap for a variety of language elements and constructs. What I mean by this is that a lot of very distinct and unrelated language features are implemented with morphemes and lexical tokens that are identical in form and pronunciation. Some interesting examples of this:
  • The form '-en' is both the verb infinitive ending, as well as the noun plural ending marker.
  • The form '-e' is both the noun single ending marker(which is elited in a huge number of cases!) as well as the verb present/future tense.
  • And many other odd curiosities like this!
I don't actually know of any conlang or natlang that attempts and/or has features implemented like this.
Well, English does this, doesn't it?

The form '-en' marks:
- past participles of strong verbs (rot > rotten)
- plurals of some nouns (ox > oxen)
- factitive verbs (haste > hasten, white > whiten)
- adjectives (gold > golden, dwarf > dwarven)
- in Shakespeare's day, it also formed the infinitive, the present tense plural of verbs, and the diminutives of nouns

The form '-s' marks:
- the plurals of most nouns
- the present indicative third-person singular of verbs
- the genitive of some pronouns, and (with an orthographic but usually non-phonological apostrophe) cliticised possessives of noun phrases
- vocative diminutives (Pops, homes, Toots)
- historically also adverbs (forwards, always, unawares), but now often dropped in this sense

The form '-ing' marks:
- abstract nouns (to learn > his evident learning)
- gerunds (his learning Latin is irrelevant!)
- collective nouns (clothing, roofing)
- present participles
- nouns characterised by origin or creation (to geld > a gelding)

And so on...
Khemehekis
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Re: Teune -- Suggestions Requested

Post by Khemehekis »

DruidPeter: This really strikes me as a Germanic language. Is it a future descendant of English, German, Dutch, or another natlang from the Germanic branch around today? Names like "Russtadt" look like countries on a future Earth.

Also, if you don't mind me blowing my own horn, I'd like to share with you my Kankonian grammar, which comes out as over 150 pages as a Corel WordPerfect document. If you read it, you can get some ideas of what kind of grammatical details you need but don't have covered yet:

https://khemehekis.angelfire.com/basic.htm
♂♥♂♀

Squirrels chase koi . . . chase squirrels

My Kankonian-English dictionary: 86,336 words and counting

31,416: The number of the conlanging beast!
Druidpeter
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Re: Teune -- Suggestions Requested

Post by Druidpeter »

lol. Well, hot damn. And here I thought my own little conlang had been doing something especially unique, lol. hyuk hyuk hyuk! I guess I can't be helped. And no matter, for I still love it for what it is! Haha!

I'm sorry it took so long to respond to all of your replies. I greatly appreciate your feedback! Dormouse559 and Salmoneus! Thank you two especially for your points and examples, they've helped me sort of think of new ways to approach my conlang moving forward.

khemehekis! I have saved your grammar document and shall start moving through it! 150 pages is really thorough! Do you also have an official website and script for this Conlang? With so much detail, I'll bet you've got quite a vocabulary, too! That's really impressive, and I can only dream that Teune one days reaches such a level of detail.

@Eldin Raigmore, thank you! I'm not sure if I myself would quite yet say it's impressive enough to be overly proud of it, haha, but it *is* a conlang that is near and dear to my heart. So I'll keep striving to flesh it out ever more, I promise. :D

I think that, moving forward, I'll keep posting in this thread with in depth analysis of features from this language as I flesh them out. In manageable chunks that only focus on one or two aspects of a language at a time. And in the meantime, I think that those translation challenges are also going to be fun to participate it.

Thanks everyone for your kind words! I take them to heart. :D
Khemehekis
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Re: Teune -- Suggestions Requested

Post by Khemehekis »

Druidpeter wrote: 07 Aug 2021 00:46 khemehekis! I have saved your grammar document and shall start moving through it! 150 pages is really thorough! Do you also have an official website and script for this Conlang? With so much detail, I'll bet you've got quite a vocabulary, too! That's really impressive, and I can only dream that Teune one days reaches such a level of detail.
Thank you for using my grammar to help you!

That is the official website for Kankonian. Oh, and here's what the script looks like: https://khemehekis.angelfire.com/kankalph.htm

Yep, Kankonian has over 77,000 words now. But then again, as I mentioned in the other thread, I've been at Kankonian for 25 years.

Yes, let's hope Teune reaches that level of detail one day. Are you prepared to devote 25 years to building it?
♂♥♂♀

Squirrels chase koi . . . chase squirrels

My Kankonian-English dictionary: 86,336 words and counting

31,416: The number of the conlanging beast!
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Dormouse559
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Re: Teune -- Suggestions Requested

Post by Dormouse559 »

Druidpeter wrote: 07 Aug 2021 00:46 lol. Well, hot damn. And here I thought my own little conlang had been doing something especially unique, lol. hyuk hyuk hyuk! I guess I can't be helped. And no matter, for I still love it for what it is! Haha!
There's a word for that feeling: ANADEW (A Natlang Already Did it, Except Worse)! But that's just part of the wonder of human language, isn't it? No matter how much you learn, it keeps on surprising you :mrgreen:
I think that, moving forward, I'll keep posting in this thread with in depth analysis of features from this language as I flesh them out. In manageable chunks that only focus on one or two aspects of a language at a time. And in the meantime, I think that those translation challenges are also going to be fun to participate it.
I look forward to seeing how Teune develops!
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