Siglisc (Germanic lang) 4.0

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Siglisc (Germanic lang) 4.0

Post by Omzinesý »

It seems I'm reviving all my short-lasting langs.

The country that the language is spoken in is logically called Sigland. The language is a creoloid, like English or Afrikaans. That is, it is not a creole developed from a pidgin but a language that has been affected by foreign languages so much that some creolization has happened. It is a West-Germanic language and quite closely related to German and Dutch.
Its vocabulary is more Germanic than that of English but its syntax is even more analytic than that of English.

Consonants:
pʰ <p>, tʰ <t>, kʰ <k>
b <b>, d <d>, g <g>
t͡s <z>, t͡ʃ <c>
f <f>, s <sz>, ʃ <sc>, h <h>
v <v>, z <s>
m <m>, n <n>, ŋ <ng>
ɾ <r>
l <l>, j <j>

Vowels:
i <i>, u <u>
ɛ <e>, ɔ <o>
a <a>
Diphthongs:
aɪ <y>, aʊ <au>, ɔɪ <eu>

Vowel length is contrastive though the quality of the following consonant also affects is.

Some soud changes:
t -> t͡s /_[+stress]
θ -> tʰ
ð -> d
st -> s <sz> /_V [+stress]
sk -> ʃ <sc> /_V[+fron]
Vr -> rV /_C
Edit: sv -> ʃ
Edit: tr -> t͡sr -> t͡ʃ
Edit: Examples:
zaid 'time' cognate to Engl. tide, Germ. Zeit
tink 'think'
de 'the'
szagn 'be located', cognate to Engl. stay, Germ. stehen
scal 'should', cognate to Engl. shall
scim 'swim'
ci 'tree, wood' compare. tri 'three'
Contrastive vowel length is lost:
u: -> au
i: -> ai
e: -> i
o -> u
a: -> a

Vowel length appears again when stressed vowel preceding some voiced consonants get long. The same appears in some English dialects. writer and rider being a minimum pair.

Vowels are lengthened before:
Voiced stops: b <b>, d <d>, g <g>
Voiced fricatives: v <v>, z <s>
/l/, /ɾ/ or /j/ if the syllable is open, i.e. /l/, /ɾ/ or /j/ is followed by some vowel
Word-finally

Vowels a not lengthened before:
Voiceless stops: pʰ <p>, tʰ <t>, kʰ <k>
Affricate: t͡ʃ (t͡s) doesn't appear after stressed vowels)
Voiceless fricatives: f <f>, s <sz>, ʃ <sc>, h <h>
Nasals: m <m>, n <n>, ŋ <ng>
Syllable-final: /l/ or /j/ (Syllable-final /ɾ/ is lost by metathesis)

Voicing of obstruents is contrastive only word-initially and before at the onsets of stressed syllables. In all ather positions it is neyralized so that obstruents are always devoiced word-finally and voiced inside words.

See that the sound changes have created new phonemes.
kirk 'church' -> kerk -> t͡ʃerk -> t͡ʃɾek <crek>
kɾi:k <krig> 'war'
Last edited by Omzinesý on 28 Jun 2019 17:01, edited 11 times in total.
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Re: Sylisc (Germanic lang) 0.4

Post by Omzinesý »

Nouns

Nouns do not inflect in Sylisc. Definiteness and number are expressed by articles or other specifiers. There is no grammatical gender.

Articles:
de 'singular definite'
di 'plural definite'
en 'singular indefinite'
Definite plurals do not have an article but nagi, the plural form of pronoun nag 'some', is often used.

de kven 'the woman'
di kven 'the women'
en kven 'a woman'
(nagi) kven '(some) women'

There are still some collective nouns that derive from older plurals. Their pattern is: umlaut +e. The only umlaut processes left are au -> eu and a -> e.

Singulars:
man 'man (male person)' de mene 'humankind'
also plural men 'people'
haus 'house', heuse 'town'
glas 'glass', glese 'glasses'

Body parts of one person, treated as plurals:
zant 'tooth', zente 'teeth (in one's mouth)'
aug [auk] 'eye', euge [ɔɪ̈gɛ] 'one's (two) eyes'
fut [fʊt]'foot', fute [fʊtɛ]'one's feet'
hand 'hand', hende 'one's hands'

Professions formed by suffix -re have a collective form with suffix -ri.
pastre 'priest', pastri 'clergy'
sylre 'sailor', sylri 'group of sailors'
...

Pronouns

1st person pronouns have different object forms

subject, object, possessive sg/pl

ek, my, mye/myi 'I'
dau, dau, daue/daui 'you sg informal'
deu, deu, deue/deui 'you sg formal'
vi, ons, onsi/onsi 'we'
jau, jau, jaue/jaui 'you pl informal'
jeu, jeu, jeue, jeui 'you pl formal'

sy, sy, sye/syi 'logiphoric pronoun, him.her.it.them.self, his,her,its,their of the subject of the clause'

3rd person pronouns do not inflect. Possion is formed with a preposition.
hi 'he/him'
si 'she/her'
de 'it'
di 'they'

Other pronouns:
nag 'some (uncountable)', nage 'some (countable sg)', nagi 'some (countable pl)'
andre 'another', andri 'others' d'andre 'the other', d'andri 'the others'
Last edited by Omzinesý on 22 May 2016 17:27, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Sylisc (Germanic lang) 0.4

Post by Omzinesý »

Verbs

Verbs do not agree person. There three tenses, with different time references, present, past and pluperfect. All of the tenses have a finite and infinite form. The infinite form is formed by adding suffix -n to the respective finite form. The infinite form is historically a merger of the infinitive and the perfect participle.

The (finite) present is the stem of the verb.

Few verbs have a simple past form. Most verbs form their past form as a complex form. The past is formed by auxiliary is haun 'to have' and the infinite form of the main verb. In narratives, present forms are however used instead of complex past forms.
Ek hau gan 'I have gone/I went.'

The pluperfect is formed with the simple past of haun and the (past) infinite.
Ek ha jan. 'I had gone.'
Ek ha fran. 'I had been.'

The strong verbs have different present, simple past, and conjunctive forms.

present, simple past, conjunctive

Suppletive:
sy/s*, fra, fre 'be' (sporadic: var -> vra -> fra)
vit, vesz, visz 'know'

Ablaut:
duh, dah, deh 'do' (<h> is just an orthographic means to differentiate da 'there' from dah 'did' and de 'the/it' from deh 'would do')
can, con, ceud 'feel'
mosz, mosz, meus 'have to'
vend, vand, - 'become'
tenk, tank, dynk 'think that (as an auxiliary of opinion'
ska, sku, sku 'future, conditional'
kan, kon, keud 'be able'
can, con, ceud 'feel'
mosz, mosz, meus 'have to'
hau, hat, het 'have'

Last consonant of the present form lost before the past suffix:
mak, mat, met 'make'
mag, mad, med, 'like'
szag, szad, szed 'be located'
sag, sad, sed 'say'
vel [vɛl], vehl [vɛ:l], - 'want'

Historical ablaut causes palatalization of the first vowel and analogy destroys the ablaut.
ga, ja, je 'go'

*Sy is used when the copula is stressed, s when unsressed. The present infinite is syn.
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Re: Sylisc (Germanic lang) 4.0

Post by Omzinesý »

Almost copying from the version 3.0

Relative clauses

The only relative pronoun vat is used when referring to the whole clause.

Ek hau gan svemn vat fra fyn.
I went swimming which was nice.


Relative clauses with nominal antecedents do have no relative pronoun, but the article of the antecedent is marked with relativized marker -n.

de -> den
di -> din
en -> enn [ɛnᵊn]


The empty gap just marks where the antecedent would be repeated.

Ek hau sin enn man, _ rad it.
I saw a man who was just eating.

Ek hau sin enn man, en bire red it _ .
I saw a man whom a bear was eating.

*rad is an adverb of progressive action.


The prepositions referring to the antecedent go to the end of the clause as they do in English and Swedish. Seems to be called preposition standing.

Den haus bren, vi hymi in.
The house in which we live is burning.


Other inflecting pronouns don't get the relativized suffix, but the article must be used.

Ek si den dye mane, en bire rad it.
I saw your husband a bear was eating.


The etymology of the relativized marker is probably the accusative, because the relativized noun is often the object in the matrix clause.
Compare German:
Ich sah einEN man, den ein Bär gerade aß.

The relativized marker allowes to syntax move heavy relative clauses in the end of the sentence, though the antecedent were at the beginning.

Enn man hau my sin, en bire rad it.
A man a bear was eating saw me.
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Re: Sylisc (Germanic lang) 4.0

Post by Omzinesý »

Rounded front vowels

Prelanguage had
y:
y
ø:
ø
Like all long high vowels /y:/ was diphthongized and became /ɔɪ̈/ <eu> like in German. I'm actually not sure how the process went in German.
Then it was merged with Protogermanic /au/.
/ø:/ rose to /y:/
/y/ and /ø/ were merged.
Phonemic length was lost. /y:/ -> /y/
The chances above happen to all POAs of high and mid vowels.


Rounded front vowels developed a glode /j/ after them. Eventually phonemic rounded front vowels were lost but they can still be pronounced front. That's more usual with /uj/ than /oj/.
/y/ -> /yj/ -> /uj/ [yj ~ uj]
/ø/ -> /øj/ -> /oj/ [øj ~ oj]


Word-final /t͡ʃ/

It has 2 main sources.
1. /j/ that derives from rounded front vowels above + /t/, /d/, /k/, or /g/.
'Seeks' zø:k -> zy:k -> zyjk -> zyt͡ʃ <syc>
As usual, a voiced obstruent after a vowel long. In those cases, <j> is written before <c>.
2. /h/ + /t/ -> /t͡ʃ/. That resembles the corresponding sound change in Spanish.
nac 'night', fec 'fight', rec 'right'...

Word-initial t͡ʃ is just borrowed, from English and French mostly.
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Re: Siglisc (Germanic lang) 4.0

Post by Omzinesý »

I'm considering adding a new phoneme namely ʟ. It generally appears as a word-final allophone of l in Germanic languages. j + l, which derives from front rounded vowels + l, becomes one phoneme ʎ which is later fronted to l which is the allophone of /l/ word-initially. So both [l]s are interpreted as allophones of one consonant, and ʟ is an independent phoneme, which just doesn't appear word-initially.

There are minimal pairs like <full> [fuʟ] 'fool' and <ful> [ful] 'feel' < fujl < fyl.
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Re: Siglisc (Germanic lang) 4.0

Post by Ælfwine »

Me gusta!
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Re: Siglisc (Germanic lang) 4.0

Post by Omzinesý »

Ælfwine wrote:Me gusta!
Gracias
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Re: Siglisc (Germanic lang) 4.0

Post by Omzinesý »

The future will be formed with auxiliary sca, cognate of English shall.
'would' is either its past scu, or present conjunctive of haun heu. I'm not sure how they differ.
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Re: Siglisc (Germanic lang) 4.0

Post by Omzinesý »

Palatalization revised

Loss of rounded front vowels happens before palatalization. So velars preceding them do not palatalize.
Merger of long and short /a/s happens after palatalization.
Reappearance of vowel length distinction do to short and long vowels after them happens thereafter.

When palatalization happens,
front vowels are /i/, /e/, and earlier short /a/.
back vowels are /u/, /o/ and earlier long /a/.

Word-initially (or after unstressed prefixes):
k -> t͡ʃ /_V[+front] <c>
sk -> st͡ʃ -> ʃ /_V[+front] <sc>
g -> j /_V[+front] <j>

Further in the word:
jk -> t͡ʃ
jt -> t͡ʃ
jg -> t͡ʃ
jd -> t͡ʃ
sk -> ʃ V[+front]_
kv -> k

Examples:
fisk -> feʃ <fesc> 'fish'
elsk -> elʃ <elsc> 'loves'
kal -> t͡ʃaʟ <call> 'calls'
sku:l <skuhl> 'school'
ska(ll) -> ʃa -> ʃa: <sca> (analogically ʃu:)
sku: <sku> 'shoe', sky: -> skuj 'a pair of shoes'
ges- -> jes <jess> 'guesses'
kven -> ken 'woman'
kvel -> kell 'source'
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Re: Siglisc (Germanic lang) 4.0

Post by Omzinesý »

Numbers

1. yn /ain/
2. za /tsa/
3. try
4. fuj
5. fem
6. sex
7. siv
8. ac
9. neun
10. zin
Edit: 'first' is fross. The other ordinal numbers are the same words as the cardinal numbers. They are used like all adjectives between the article and the head.
Za man 'two men'
En za man 'a second man'
De za man 'the second man'

Plural articles preceding, the phrase is somewhat ambiguous. The cardinal interpretation is though more natural.

Di za man 'the two men'~ 'the second men(?)'
The ambiguity can be solved with a verb.
Din man zall za 'the men who count two'
Din man kom za 'the men who come the second'
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Re: Siglisc (Germanic lang) 4.0

Post by Omzinesý »

Duhn construction

Duhn is as heterogeneous a verb as its cognate in English. It's also used as an auxiliary for focusing an argument. The usage however differs from that of English.

Siglisc is a V2 language. So any argument can precede the verb.

Ek elsc yse. 'I love ice cream.'
Yse elsc ek. 'Ice cream is loved by me.'
In de haus hemi ek. 'In the house I live.'

Duhn is used if some argument should be focused.
Ek duh elscn yse. 'It's me who loves ice cream.'
Yse duh ek elscn. 'It's ice cream I love.'
In de haus duh ek hemin. 'The house is where I live.'

The past form is dah, not hau i.e. complex past is not used with duhn construction. The pluperfect is complex however.

In de haus dah ek haun livin. 'It was in the house where I had lived.'

The verb itself cannot though be focused by duhn. The verb should just be emphasized in intonation.
Ek ELSC dau. 'I do love you.'
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Re: Siglisc (Germanic lang) 4.0

Post by Omzinesý »

The passives

Siglisc has two passives
1. The dynamic passive, formed by sy (the subjunctive present of syn 'to be') in the present and hau syn (the indicative complex past of syn 'to be') in the past.
2. The static passive, formed by s (the present indicative of syn 'to be') in the present and fra (the indicative simple past of syn 'to be') in the past.
The are often called the sy-hau-syn passive and the s-fra passive, respectively.

De man sy caltn. 'The man is being killed.'~'The man gets killed.' Dynamic present
De man hau syn caltn 'The was beeing killed'~'The man got killed.' Dynamic past

De man s caltn. 'The man is killed (i.e. dead).' Static present
De man fra caltn. 'The man was killed (i.e. dead).' Static past

Passives are used much less in Siglish than in English. Their function is to demote the agent. An inanimate patient can be promoted to the preverbal topic position just by changing the word order and natural semantics tells what is the agent and what is the patient.
Si mag yse, 'She like ice ceream.'
Yse mag si. 'Ice cream is like by her.'

The only clear example of a passive with a by-agent is an animate patient being the topic, and so natural semantics not telling what does what.
De mid elsc de jonge. 'The girl loves the boy.'
De jonge sy elscn of de mid. 'The boy is loved by the girl.'
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Re: Siglisc (Germanic lang) 4.0

Post by Omzinesý »

I'm considering how Germanic words ending in nasal + voiced plosive behave.
Sand
Hand
Hund
Kind

One alternative to go is that word-finally the plosive is not pronounced, but appears word-internally. The preceding vowel does not lengthen, like one before a single nasal.

Han [han] 'hen' -> hani [ha:ni] 'henlike'
Hand [han] 'hand' -> handi [handi] 'handi (person)'

Voiced and voiceless plosives thus are distinct after a nasal word-internally.

Another alternative is that vowel lengthening happens before the nasal + plosive cluster, like in English: hound, kind...
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Re: Siglisc (Germanic lang) 4.0

Post by Omzinesý »

Derivational affixes:

-i that takes the stress is a common denominal verbal suffix. It's related to English -ize and German -ieren. The loss of the consonant is apparently sporadic. Its meaning is usually 'to use X' or 'to make X'.
Foto -> fotoin
Hym 'home' -> hymin 'to live somewhere'
Copi ['kɔbɪ] 'copy' -> copin [kɔ'bi:n] 'to copy'
I'm considering if it had a synthetic past form with /ai/ hymy [hai'mai] 'lived', but I think it would be odd that a productive, resent suffix had a synthetic past if most other verbs don't. Opinions?

-i (not stressed) is a common adjectival suffix. It's related to English -y and German -ig. Its meaning is 'like X' or 'related to X'
Ken 'woman' -> keni 'womanly'
skuhl 'school' -> skuhli 'related to school'

-e is a common nominal suffix that can derive from any lexical class. Its field of meaning is vast.
jong 'young' -> jonge 'boy'
Elscn 'to love' -> elsce 'darling'
Konj 'king' -> konje 'state'
ys 'ice' ->yse 'ice cream'
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Re: Siglisc (Germanic lang) 4.0

Post by Omzinesý »

Bigger numbers
Numbers
1. yn /ain/
2. za /tsa/
3. try
4. fuj
5. fem
6. sex
7. siv
8. ac
9. neun
10. zin
There are two forms for 'ten' and 'hundred'. The first one is used when there is only one of the tens or hundreds, and the latter one is used when there is a number telling the number of them. I wouldn't say it's about grammatical number but the translations seem to be plural.

zin '(one) ten'
-sin 'tens' - just a sporadic lenitation

hunda 'one hundred'
-hun 'hundreds' - loss of the last vowel or historical -er. Word-final /nd/ and /n/ are anyway pronounced similarly.

The order is the same as in German: thousands, hundreds, ones, 'and', tens.


Bigger numbers are simply compounds of the smaller ones above.
11. yn-zin (or yn-an-zin)
12. za-zin (or za-an-zin)
...

The affricate of zin (10) is lenited when it's about tens.
20 zasin
30 trisin

/an/ 'and' is added when tens and smaller numbers are combined
21 yn-an-zasin
22. za-an-zasin

257 zahun-siv-an-femsin (lit. two-hundreds seven and five-tens)


zin man 'ten men'
yn-sin man 'eleven men'
yn zin man 'a [ei] tenth men'

hunda-an-yn dalmazian '101 Dalmatians'
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Re: Siglisc (Germanic lang) 4.0

Post by k1234567890y »

nice (: maybe I should post more about my Germanic conlangs? (:
I prefer to not be referred to with masculine pronouns and nouns such as “he/him/his”.
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Re: Siglisc (Germanic lang) 4.0

Post by Ælfwine »

This is interestingly the opposite of what I am toying around with; an agglutinative Germlang. Though it isn't serious enough to warrant its own thread, and I am already working on Varangian so...
k1234567890y wrote:nice (: maybe I should post more about my Germanic conlangs? (:
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Re: Siglisc (Germanic lang) 4.0

Post by Omzinesý »

Ælfwine wrote:This is interestingly the opposite of what I am toying around with; an agglutinative Germlang. Though it isn't serious enough to warrant its own thread, and I am already working on Varangian so...
k1234567890y wrote:nice (: maybe I should post more about my Germanic conlangs? (:
Yaaaas
I have many conlangs going on, too.
Germanic is a nice place to test diachrony because the languages are so well known.
The palatalizations of Siglisc, for example, all appear in Germanic languages but not in one.

I did also once make a Germanic agglutinative lang. I don't remember much of it, but adjectival -ig suffix developed into the essive case and was agglutinated to the infinitive to make the progressive aspect.
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Re: Siglisc (Germanic lang) 4.0

Post by Ælfwine »

Omzinesý wrote:
Ælfwine wrote:This is interestingly the opposite of what I am toying around with; an agglutinative Germlang. Though it isn't serious enough to warrant its own thread, and I am already working on Varangian so...
k1234567890y wrote:nice (: maybe I should post more about my Germanic conlangs? (:
Yaaaas
I have many conlangs going on, too.
Germanic is a nice place to test diachrony because the languages are so well known.
The palatalizations of Siglisc, for example, all appear in Germanic languages but not in one.

I did also once make a Germanic agglutinative lang. I don't remember much of it, but adjectival -ig suffix developed into the essive case and was agglutinated to the infinitive to make the progressive aspect.
So far my ideas are to use the demonstrative sá (PGmc. *sa) and sú as the 3rd person pronouns to replace hann, hún (he and she respectively) which tend to merge with the definite article -in- when agglutinated. Other concepts including grammaticalization of some prepositions such as pá, meaning "upon" (Swedish: på) from the construction upp á (up on). This will probably be the Superessive case.

Perhaps you should do a future version of Siglisc as agglutinative, maybe? Or perhaps agglutinative derivation for some verbs? Depends on how far you take the analytical path.
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