Is my case marking system sufficient?

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xBlackWolfx
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Is my case marking system sufficient?

Post by xBlackWolfx »

In my latest attempt at a conlang, i decided to go with a rather small and simple case-marking system, it's based on Japanese. Several prepositions have very broad meanings which helps to eliminate the need to conjure up and remember a large esperanto-like list, and it also dodges the issue that resulted in esperanto's 'je' preposition.

I havent conjured up words yet for most of them, but here they are:

The language is VSO, the agent immedietly follows the verb and is the only case that doesn't have a preposition. I'm sorta uncorfortable with that since the words will be like what you see in lojban (and some creoles apparently) where one word can either be a noun, verb, stative verb, or anything else. The case markers will be the only thing differentiating most of them.

The next is the patien (which may end up as a partitive), its case marker will end in 'e', which is inspired by toki pona's direct object marker (i dont want to have a word in my language that is only one vowel, especially one that will be so commonly used).

The next three are prepositions that dictate direction and position: to at and from. The language will rely heavily on prepositional phrases to form all the others (just like Japanese and Finnish does, i just always thought that was so logical and practical). So 'into' will be 'to the inside of', 'in' will be 'at the inside of' and 'out from' can be said as 'from the inside of' or preferably 'to the outside of'. The only flaw i see with this is i cant figure out any logical way to say 'to run circles around something'.

The next three are rather wierd. They all have words for them unlike the others. The first is 'pe', which functions mostly as a genitive marker but can also mark the noun as simply being the adjective of the previous noun (alot of adjectives will also require it). The next is 'te' which simply says that the next word (normally a noun) has something to do with how the action is performed. It's used to mark adverbs and the instrumental case mostly. The last is 'ni' which is similar to 'te', but marks that the action is directed towards this object in someway, and in alot of cases can be exchanged with the word for 'to', such as in the dative. But in other cases it can't, such as when expressing the idea 'to do something for someone'. It may be removed all together but i think that is rather unlikely. Pe is borrowed from lojban while te and ni come from japanese (the japanese equivalent to te is de, but in my conlang t and d are allophones so technically it can be pronounced either way, i normally imagine them being pronounced half-voiced rather than fulled voiced or fully devoiced).

The last one, two or three I'm a bit divided over. It's based off of japanese 'to' which can mean 'with (someone)' or 'and'. I'm not to confortable with using one word to mean both so they'll probably end up as several different words. The word for 'and' when linking two sentences together will certainly be it's own word (though it'll also have a rather broad meaning, such as '(while) going to the store, i saw fred'.)

Is this sufficient? Will there be any flaws with it? I know that tok pisin apparently gets away with only two (it uses word order to mark the nominative and accusative, bilong marks the genitive and benefactive, and long means everything else, though honesly i dont see how a language could get away with having a single word for both 'from' and 'to')

Does anyone see any glaring holes in my system? Do I need more? I know japanese has alot more than this, but alot of them wont be prepositions in my language. The japanese just attatch mo to the end of a postposition (or in the case of ga and wo, just replace it) to express the idea 'also'. Bakari (only) works the same way. Actually 'also' may not even have a representation in my language, you'll just have to use the prefix for 'and' (which btw is i-).
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Maximillian
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Re: Is my case marking system sufficient?

Post by Maximillian »

Aren't y'all tired of Japanese-based conlangs? Each third conlang here seems to be somehow linked to Japanese... >:
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xBlackWolfx
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Re: Is my case marking system sufficient?

Post by xBlackWolfx »

it's the only non-indo-european language that i'm significantly familiar with. and why do you care what languages i'm drawing inspiration from? only the case-marking system is based off of japanese (and the end result may or may not look anything like japanese). the lexicon is going to end up being almost entirely a-priori, the word order is based off of voksigid (a divergent loglan project that died right after the syntax was decided), and the phonology doesnt look like any language i'm familiar with:

p f m t s n l c k x a e i o u.

'o' may vanish since i'm not using it in too many words, and i may decide to add j and w. and ʂ or ʃ may easily end up in there. i've also considered adding the diphthongs ai au eu oi and possibly ui, and ontop of that it could still possibly end up with vowel length (mostly to get the number of possible syllables to 144, the little conculture i'm coming up for this conlang uses a duodecimal system) the syllable structure was meant to be (C)V[n/m] but it's probably going to end up being CV with maybe ʔ or h added in as a breaker between vowels or words that begin with vowels (even if i do allow syllable-final nasals, they are not allowed at the end of words, so all words will end in vowels).
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Re: Is my case marking system sufficient?

Post by Micamo »

Maximillian wrote:Aren't y'all tired of Japanese-based conlangs? Each third conlang here seems to be somehow linked to Japanese... >:
As far as I can tell that's just BlackWolf's deal.
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Re: Is my case marking system sufficient?

Post by Maximillian »

xBlackWolfx wrote:and why do you care what languages i'm drawing inspiration from?
I don't. It just seems to me lately that too many conlangers are somewhat inspired by Japanese, that's all. And I, personally, get tired of it. But don't take it in an offensive way, it's just the way I think. :roll:
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Re: Is my case marking system sufficient?

Post by Micamo »

Japanese was the first language I ever tried to learn. And I failed so fantastically bad at it that now every language with a simple syllable structure sounds like Japanese to me. Atashi no kaite wa goru o shitte iru! I'm now forced to avoid making CV conlangs for this reason.
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MrKrov
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Re: Is my case marking system sufficient?

Post by MrKrov »

I'm guessing there's a lot of various constructions we're not seeing because otherwise you really haven't specified much of what you're gonna do.
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Re: Is my case marking system sufficient?

Post by Czwartek »

xBlackWolfx wrote:The only flaw i see with this is i cant figure out any logical way to say 'to run circles around something'.
I don't think you've provided enough information to tell if there's a good way of saying that. But if you have cases to mark positions 'into', 'out from' and 'inside', it seems logical to have ones for 'to', 'from' and 'at/by/on', as Finnish does, which work in exactly the same way as the first three cases, except they deal with the rough proximity of the thing. Then all you need is a verb meaning 'to run' or 'to run in circles'. (although without a preposition for 'around' it could be translated as 'to run in circles near to something'.)

If you wanted to go a little further, you could have separate sets of locative cases referring to different sides of something, namely its front and back, left and right, or all four. Then you could construct the sentence as 'to run from something's front to left to back to right repeatedly'.

Although it would seem simpler just to employ a dedicated verb meaning 'to run around something'.
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Re: Is my case marking system sufficient?

Post by xBlackWolfx »

i dont really like the idea of having a verb just to express that concept. that would mean i would also need a verb for 'to draw a circle around' or 'place something in a circle around', 'put up on the walls all around the room' etc...

i think an adverb would be better. you just say the sentence for 'i run at the house' with an adverb that specifies that the action involves encircling the house. i would prefer that actually.

and i think you may be misunderstanding my preposition system. there is no one word for 'into in and out from'. it works exactly like japanese (or finnish if you're more familiar with that) like how japanese says 'ie no naka ni' to express the idea of 'in the house'. the only directional prepostions translate as: movement-toward, movement-away, and located-at. the 'at' preposition simply marks the location or general area where an action occurs. in a language that uses the word for 'to' as the word for 'at' (like alot of the romance languages do) then the sentence 'je cours a la maison' can either mean 'i'm running to the house' or 'i'm running around at the house'. i didnt like this ambiguity in my language (minor as it may be) so i decided to eliminate it. the preposition for 'at' can also be on, under, beside of, or w/e. it's just that the only way to express the ideas of 'ontop of', 'outside of', 'inside of', 'to the left of' etc... is to use the same trick that japanese and finnish uses (though now that i think about it, finnish does actually have seperate cases for in and into, so that may not be the best example...)
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Re: Is my case marking system sufficient?

Post by Systemzwang »

First of all, I would really like to know what you think Finnish does and how you think it does it?

Secondly, no, the existence for a verb like 'to encircle' instead of having a preposition 'around' doesn't mean you need new verbs for 'draw a circle around', 'run around', etc. (You seem to be very willing to create restrictions on what you will accept, but reject every solution that doesn't violate those restrictions - it's a regular pattern with you!).

E.g. you could solve it by as simple a solution as 'to circle with a pencil', 'to circle with stones', 'to circle by foot', 'to run and circle', and whatever verbal derivations your language permits could further add several dimensions to that. Imagination is helpful.
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Re: Is my case marking system sufficient?

Post by Nortaneous »

Maximillian wrote:
xBlackWolfx wrote:and why do you care what languages i'm drawing inspiration from?
I don't. It just seems to me lately that too many conlangers are somewhat inspired by Japanese, that's all. And I, personally, get tired of it. But don't take it in an offensive way, it's just the way I think. :roll:
Really? I've seen a lot of Austronesian-inspired conlangs, but only a few Japanese-inspired ones. But I pay more attention to the ZBB, so that could explain it.
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Re: Is my case marking system sufficient?

Post by Pirka »

xBlackWolfx wrote:i dont really like the idea of having a verb just to express that concept. that would mean i would also need a verb for 'to draw a circle around' or 'place something in a circle around', 'put up on the walls all around the room' etc...
As for the circle problem you mentioned, that's easily remedied by predictable derviation. If you have a root "to draw/form/making/outline a circle" you can do wondrous things with prefixes and suffixes. Take for example Russian:

Base verb: pisatj "to write"
raz-pisatj "to write all over something"
pere-pisatj "to write over something, to rewrite"
ot-pisatj "to sign someone off"
do-pisatj "to finish writing"
na-pisatj "to write (perfective)"
po-pisatj "to write a little"
po-na-pisatj "to write (perfective; also slightly pejorative)"
pod-pisatj "to sign one's autograph/signature"
s-pisatj "to copy something word-for-word"
Can't think of any more right now. But I'm sure you don't need it. ANYWAY, the point is that you can do that (if you're hemming and hawing, remember that Japanese does the same thing to some extent), or you can do anything you want. It's your language. We won't beat you up if we don't like it :]
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