English and typology

[cntrational]

One of the fun things about conlanging is that so much stuff in English that's just weird on a global scale is considered mundane because, well, most conlangers are anglophones. Same goes to European languages in general, to a lesser degree. So let's point out some features of English that're unusual, typologically. Two examples, about the passive:

Some English verbs mean the same thing whether active or passive: "They burned", "They were burned" -- compare "They killed", "They were killed".

"Micamo lent me the grammar" becomes "The grammar was lent to me by Micamo", using the direct object, "the grammar"...or "I was lent the grammar by Micamo", using the indirect object, the reciever of the object, "I/me". Most Indo-European languages don't let you do anything like the latter.

[Shrdlu]

On a grander sale, use of ablaut is uncommon.

[HoskhMatriarch]

English has phrasal compounds. A few other languages also have phrasal compounds, but it's still really weird IMO. I've never seen anyone accidentally or even on purpose make a conlang with phrasal compounds though, so I'm not sure how "mundane" it actually is to people.

One thing that I do see in conlangs all the time from English that's not common, however, is that English rhotic. That might just be people who want something they can pronounce. The German/French uvular rhotic also pops up a lot more frequently than normal for natural languages, but not nearly as disproportionately as the English r. Oh yeah, and the "th"-sounds, those might be even worse than the upside down r when it comes to popping up everywhere.

On a grander sale, use of ablaut is uncommon.

I'm not sure it's all that popular in conlangs outside of the triconsonantal stuff either though...

[cntrational]

I think you can blame the interdentals being so common partly on Tolkien, via Sindarin and the Old English/Old Norse names in LotR, and thus the vast majority of "elvish" and fantasy languages/names.

[Shrdlu]

but generally people want to use uncommon phonemes [not from/in their native language] because it is more fun [exotic]

[cromulant]

English has a giant vowel inventory with a tense-lax distinction. It forms questions through subject-verb inversion. The third person singular is the most marked verb form. It has gender on pronouns only--gender based on the biological sex of the referent. It does not distinguish number in second person pronouns. It uses initial voiced interdental fricatives in grammar words only.

It's a pretty out-there language.

[Ahzoh]

English has phrasal compounds. A few other languages also have phrasal compounds, but it's still really weird IMO. I've never seen anyone accidentally or even on purpose make a conlang with phrasal compounds though, so I'm not sure how "mundane" it actually is to people.

One thing that I do see in conlangs all the time from English that's not common, however, is that English rhotic. That might just be people who want something they can pronounce. The German/French uvular rhotic also pops up a lot more frequently than normal for natural languages, but not nearly as disproportionately as the English r. Oh yeah, and the "th"-sounds, those might be even worse than the upside down r when it comes to popping up everywhere.

I'm guilty of having all three kinds of sounds, though the dentals are only allophonic.

[Sumelic]

People just like the sound of non-sibilant dental fricatives. I don't think you can blame it all on Tolkien; maybe it has a bit to do with Greek loanwords with "th"? Anyway, I also like /ɸ/ and /β/ about as much; they also have that "pretty fricative" feel.

I don't know if it's particularly rare, but the use of auxiliary verbs in English to mark mood (including the future "tense"), and negation seems to be rarely copied by conlangers. My idea of the stereotypical conlanger verb system is one with a bunch of inflectional categories marked directly on the main verb, and with parallel ways of marking the three tenses "past-present-future." (Of course, there's also the strategy where a highly isolating language is made, with no inflection, where everything is marked by particles.)

[Thrice Xandvii]

Some English verbs mean the same thing whether active or passive: "They burned", "They were burned" -- compare "They killed", "They were killed".

Those... don't mean the same thing to me. To say "they burned" generally implies an unspoken "something" in my mind. Even more so for killed. If someone said "they killed" to me, I would never imagine that the "they" in the sentence had been killed, I would ask you who they killed! To render the meanings you intend you'd at the least need to make them reflexive, but even that isn't the same since the passive example could still have been done by someone else, while the reflexive example is only done to themselves.

[HoskhMatriarch]

People just like the sound of non-sibilant dental fricatives. I don't think you can blame it all on Tolkien; maybe it has a bit to do with Greek loanwords with "th"? Anyway, I also like /ɸ/ and /β/ about as much; they also have that "pretty fricative" feel.

I don't know if it's particularly rare, but the use of auxiliary verbs in English to mark mood (including the future "tense"), and negation seems to be rarely copied by conlangers. My idea of the stereotypical conlanger verb system is one with a bunch of inflectional categories marked directly on the main verb, and with parallel ways of marking the three tenses "past-present-future." (Of course, there's also the strategy where a highly isolating language is made, with no inflection, where everything is marked by particles.)

I was going to do auxiliary verbs, but then I decided that I was basically inflecting for everything and incorporating all sorts of things into the verb as one giant compound so it wouldn't really make sense to have auxiliaries. However, I decided to only mark a past-nonpast distinction the way I mark tense (ablaut and maybe some sort of affix or, more likely, something fused with person and mood) and make the "present perfective", which is marked by partial reduplication, be the future. I wonder if that's any better...

Some English verbs mean the same thing whether active or passive: "They burned", "They were burned" -- compare "They killed", "They were killed".

Those... don't mean the same thing to me. To say "they burned" generally implies an unspoken "something" in my mind. Even more so for killed. If someone said "they killed" to me, I would never imagine that the "they" in the sentence had been killed, I would ask you who they killed! To render the meanings you intend you'd at the least need to make them reflexive, but even that isn't the same since the passive example could still have been done by someone else, while the rrlfecive example is only done to themselves.

The wood burned, the wood was burned. The house burned down, the house was burned down. I think it might just be the image of "they" as animate that makes it seem more like the subject (edit: I mean agent).

[Thrice Xandvii]

I think that is exactly it. Pronouns in English usually stand in for people, with the exception of it. And I still haven't come around to 'they' being used as gender neutral singular.

[Dormouse559]

While I admit the pronoun gives a sense of agency, the context made it perfectly clear to me what "they burned" was supposed to mean. I imagined witch hunts and burnings at the stake. As another example of middle-voice "burn" with a human, take "I hope you burn (in Hell)".

[Ahzoh]

The difference I see in burn is that one is transitive and the other is intransitive. What's all this about being a middle voice?

[Znex]

Well it's really more of an ergative voice rather than a reflexive voice. Burning can be done to the object or done to the subject, rather than the subject burning themselves. There's a whole class of verbs that do this in English (eg. break, heal, move, drive) and in some other IE languages, including SAE languages.

[cromulant]

It's called an unaccusative verb.

The semantics are those of a middle voice, even though English does not have one.

[Ephraim]

There is a typologically interesting group of verbs that form semantic pairs consisting of:
1. An intransitive plain verb. This is often alternatively referred to as inchoative, as the situation involves a change-of-state for the subject, or anticausative, as the verb involves no mention of a cause of the situation. Ex: The flag rose.
2. A transitive causal verb. This is often reffered to as the causative member of the pair, as it introduces a cause or an agent to the situation in 1. Ex: They raised the flag.

The plain verb is indeed semantically very similar to a passive form of the corresponding causal (the flag was raised vs the flag rose). The same participant is affected by the same situation. The main difference is perhaps that the plain (anticausative) verb gives no indication of the cause of the situation. The passive form of the causal verb at least indicates that there is an identifiable cause (although the indentity may not be mentioned) and there is often an implication that the cause is a voluntary agent.

Most languages have some way to derive one member of the semantic pair from the other but languages differ in what member is the most basic, if any (of course, languages generally have more than one strategy). I think the typologically most common strategy is to have the plain (anticausative) verb be the most basic and to use some kind of causative derivation. This is illustrated by English rise–raise (Proto-Germanic *rīsaną–*raisijaną), although the derivation is no longer transparent or productive.

Modern European languages are typologically somewhat unusual in that the causal verb tends to be the most basic form. Instead, an anticausative derivation is sed. Most commonly this is (at least historically) also a reflexive formation.

Here, English differ from most European languages by not using reflexive formations for anticausative derivation. Instead, English can often simply use the same verb:
1a. They burned (plain). Swedish: De brann.
1b. They burned the wood (causal). Swedish: De brände skogen.
2a. The door opened (plain). Swedish: Dörren öppnade sig.
2b. He opened the door (causal). Swedish: Han öppnade dörren.

The Swedish examples illustrate both an unprodctive causative derivation (1) and a productive anticausative derivation using a reflexive formation (2).

Many languages probably have some verbs that can be used underived for both the plain and the causal (in Swedish, I can think of "rulla" 'to roll', for example, which works like the cognate English verb), but I think English is fairly unusual in the amount of verbs that work this way. Other European languages tend to have fewer such verbs.

For many of the semantic pairs, you could also introduce another verb to form a triplet:
1. A stative: to know, to be dead
2. An inchoative: to learn, to die
3. A causal: to teach, to kill

See for example:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causative_alternation
http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/conference ... atives.pdf
http://web.stanford.edu/~bclevin/mmm4fin04.pdf
https://www.academia.edu/3452966/More_o ... ternations

[clawgrip]

I think do-support is pretty weird.

[Khemehekis]

Relevant:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1961&p=95172#p95172

[elemtilas]

One of the fun things about conlanging is that so much stuff in English that's just weird on a global scale is considered mundane because, well, most conlangers are anglophones.

I've been saying for years that English is one of the greatest exotic languages you can use for conlang inspiration! Am glad to see a thread on the topic because I think we English speakers tend to disregard it as ordinary and thus begin the futile search for a truly exotic language. I guess we should take a hint when something like every ESL learner in the world says "I give up! English is so hard to learn!" and we all say "how hard can it be? We speak it just fine!" We just don't get how odd it really is, until we start poking around in all the attics and dark corners of the mathom.

Some English verbs mean the same thing whether active or passive: "They burned", "They were burned" -- compare "They killed", "They were killed".

I see the point made by the others, but yes to the above.

English has phrasal compounds. A few other languages also have phrasal compounds, but it's still really weird IMO. I've never seen anyone accidentally or even on purpose make a conlang with phrasal compounds though, so I'm not sure how "mundane" it actually is to people.

I love phrasal compounds and use them with some frequency. I think to most English speakers they just don't register. Until confronted by an ESL learner who asks about things like "put down" vs "putdown" and "put up" and "put up with" and "put off" and "put on" (vs "take off" and "take on").

Same goes for auxiliary verbs. Lovely, and so useful! They're great for distinctions of aspect and mood as well as tense. And, to double your fun, make sure at least some auxiliary verbs keep their original meaning and use as well! Loads of room for mis/polyinterpretation of meaning!

Maggelity personified is English!

[HoskhMatriarch]

English has phrasal compounds. A few other languages also have phrasal compounds, but it's still really weird IMO. I've never seen anyone accidentally or even on purpose make a conlang with phrasal compounds though, so I'm not sure how "mundane" it actually is to people.

I love phrasal compounds and use them with some frequency. I think to most English speakers they just don't register. Until confronted by an ESL learner who asks about things like "put down" vs "putdown" and "put up" and "put up with" and "put off" and "put on" (vs "take off" and "take on").

That's not what a phrasal compound is (at least not as the term was used in the linguistics paper I was reading). A phrasal compound is a compound that has a phrase in it, like "I-told-you-so attitude". I've been trying to keep a list of all the phrasal compounds I use and throwing in ones I've seen/heard others use, and it's been sort of overwhelming because they're pretty common, even if they're not in every single sentence. People productively form these all the time, like "vowel length and tenseness distinctions" (it's quite ridiculous how much productive compounding of extremely long words there is in English, especially considering how we tend to write compound words with spaces. Antidisestablishmentarianism has nothing on inserting-a-speech-in-the-middle-of-a-word technique, think-about-the-non-human-children people, or English-was-OK-like-German-then-French-came-along dialog. And don't get me started on the word I compounded 4 clauses onto...). I have things like this in my conlang, despite it being very West Germanic, because I love compounding and I want all the compounding.

Also, speaking of phrasal compounds: There is this part of the Lexical Integrity Hypothesis called the No Phrase Constraint that states that one cannot have phrases in words. However, the No Phrase Constraint's name itself breaks the No Phrase Constraint because it's [No Phrase] Constraint and not the No [Phrase Constraint]. I found that quite entertaining and thought you might too.

Also, in this page on the No Phrase Constraint:
http://www.glottopedia.org/index.php/No ... Constraint

"Example
The derivational suffix -hood can be attached to nouns (e.g. mother-hood), but not to phrases such as single mother (*single motherhood).
Comment
In English, this constraint does not hold for compounds. The term no phrase constraint itself contains the phrase no phrase. However, in many other languages, it seems to hold for compounds as well."

What? I use phrases with suffixes on them all the time. I used the phrase "one-word-ness" to describe some polysynthetic languages the other day (albeit a bit jokingly), and single-motherhood sounds good to me even in serious contexts ("the government would not make the baby's father pay to help with her single motherhood expenses)... It also sounds good to me, like this one paper said, to say "Something-and-something-ish", like what were the authors who mentioned it, Lieber-and-Scalise-ish? (Found it: http://www3.lingue.unibo.it/mmm2/wp-con ... calise.pdf)

Anyways, sorry for jacking the thread to ramble about phrases in words...