Commonthroat: a language that only a dog could probably pronounce

[lurker]

Here's a tentative way to compare two nouns. Since adjectives can act like verbs, one might use the adverb gK (more) to modify a sentence where the greater of the two nouns is the subject and the lesser is the object. There is also the word Kg (less) which can act in a similar manner.

As a counterpoint to yesterdays foul-mouthedness, here's an admonition that sires and dams use to scold their pups when they're caught swearing:

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L gK g sLqn PNq g qCrqn
L   gK   g   sL-qn  PNq-b    g   qCr-qn
OPT more POS soul-2 pure-NA  POS mouth-2
May your soul be cleaner than your mouth.

[Visions1]

I've read through the grammar from verbs up to the nonauth questions section. Here are my thoughts:

Overview: Same level of understanding as before. However, the definition of mood is not given. Then again, I have no idea how to define it either. Better call Sal(moneus). Or you could just say "Things like would could should in English."

Pointers:
- I see you’re using a colour scheme to organize headlines/sections. Before I comment on it, I’d like to know how it works.
- It seems like the mood suffixes carry a lot of functions. Don’t change it - I like it a lot, and it’s so satisfying to see how the uses line up with their root meanings. Still, it’s good to addresss elsewhere in the grammar other ways to express these. For example, how do we express the accidental (or as I remember it in Halkomelkem, the “limited control”) for 2nd and 3rd person? How do you take an oath in the language? I think there's a lot going on here.
- How does politeness factor in? (Note I'm still going through interrogatives so maybe I just need to read ahead.)
- Is the dogmatic ever used in dogma (dog-ma)?
- Could 59 also mean “You’d ought to wash your hands, you’d better wash your hands”?
- The distinction between imperative and horative reminds me of the old distinction between shall and will.
- Negative optative/horative/necessative?
- First person imperative or no?
- Could one use nominalization (such as /verb verb.NOMevent) to also mean infinitives? Or does that produce a different thing?

Side points:
- A glossary of gloss abreviations, maybe as an appendix, with definitions, would be great for less-knowledgable readers.
- In 51 slpq means tail; rdc means poor dear.

[lurker]

Overview: Same level of understanding as before. However, the definition of mood is not given. Then again, I have no idea how to define it either. Better call Sal(moneus). Or you could just say "Things like would could should in English."

I'm using the term mood somewhat loosely. Since natlangs blur the various TAME mechanics all the time I figure it's not a big deal to use it here. But you are correct that I should clearly define what I mean by mood in the grammar. The overall vibe is that mood reflects how strongly the speaker believes what he is saying. Authoritative is a neutral, but the listener is to assume the speaker is telling the truth as he understands it. Nonauthoritative shows the speaker is less confident in the truth of the statement, which is where it bleeds into things like evidentiality (I saw it happen and am quite sure, vs I infer that it happened because I saw or heard the consequences of the action), as well as the "stupid question" use of the nonauthoritative. The dogmatic mood puts the focus on the truth of the statement. The speaker is sure what he's saying is true, and the listener is to take his statement as fact. This leads to the use of the dogmatic for promises and threats.

- I see you’re using a colour scheme to organize headlines/sections. Before I comment on it, I’d like to know how it works.

I'm using a command line utility called Pandoc along with a custom script to convert from markdown to the dialect of BBCode used by phpbb. The color scheme is part of the script, and I believe it uses different colors to differentiate what would be heading levels in markdown or HTML. I've converted the document to .docx format since I need a way to automatically update captions and cross references.

- It seems like the mood suffixes carry a lot of functions. Don’t change it - I like it a lot, and it’s so satisfying to see how the uses line up with their root meanings. Still, it’s good to addresss elsewhere in the grammar other ways to express these. For example, how do we express the accidental (or as I remember it in Halkomelkem, the “limited control”) for 2nd and 3rd person? How do you take an oath in the language? I think there's a lot going on here.

Thanks! I'm trying to avoid the kitchen sink problem, so my first instinct is to see if I can use an existing grammatical feature or construction rather than make a new one, as long as it doesn't become ambiguous. I believe Shigeru Miyamoto once said something to the effect of "the best solution is one that solves more than one problem." and that's become a design criterion for this lang.

Yes, I need to address how to express intention in the 2nd person indicative and 3rd person generally. One must use paraphrastic constructions using either adverbs "accidentally" etc. or serial verb constructions "man-3P slip-A fall-A".

- How does politeness factor in? (Note I'm still going through interrogatives so maybe I just need to read ahead.)

I've addressed polite commands (using G + the nonauthoritative verb suffix), but I also need to cover honorifics in the grammar. They're covered here in the thread but I need to make it official. I also need to canonize the use of honorifics as pseudo pronouns. Right now you can't drop the object of a preposaiton, and must use another noun in situations where you would otherwise want to drop it, like in a relative clause where the replaced noun is the object of a preposition "The box into which I put the book..." I touch on the use of nouns to express how the speaker feels about the agent or patient or the sentence as a whole "POS brother-3P hit-A angry-1 / I'm mad my brother hit me.", and these honorifics stem from that usage.

- Could 59 also mean “You’d ought to wash your hands, you’d better wash your hands”?

As a general rule the imperative (direct or polite) means the speaker expects the listener to carry out the action. Your sentence I think would use either the hortative (which in some dialects is interchangeable with the polite imperative, but officially does not carry any obligation, but rather means something like "you really should..". Or you can use the necessitative, which usually implies that the action is necessary to achieve a specific result. I need to tease out the subtleties of these three moods, especially in the third person, as the imperative can also work in the 1st or 3rd person, and in such cases is called the jussive and may overlap with the other two moods.

- Negative optative/horative/necessative?

Thanks for the reminder! In my head it seems obvious that you would use the adverb rnL (not), but I need to make that clear in the text, as it may not be obvious to the reader.

Is the dogmatic ever used in dogma (dog-ma)?

The dogmatic is in fact used to proclaim dogmas, as dogmas, at least as I define them, are axioms that one must hold to be true in order to be considered a member of a group (see my explanation of the dogmatic mood in last year's Lexember thread). The Great Commandment used to be called The Dogma of Sapience, but I changed the English rendering because only the last sentence jkqn jkqn rgjK qCb "ye shall become brighter yourselves" is in the dogmatic mood, and in this case it's used as a promise rather than an axiom. And yes, the pun on dogs is deliberate.

- Could one use nominalization (such as /verb verb.NOMevent) to also mean infinitives? Or does that produce a different thing?

So right now nominals are formed with the suffixes -GH (the concept of the verb) and -HG (a specific event or act of the verb). They are plain nouns and do not take objects as infinitives or participles would. Some verbs can take whole sentences as objects or even subjects, which is how you accomplish a similar meaning. So "I like climbing trees" would be something like "climb-A tree-3I please-A friend-1".

If you stick a deictic suffix directly on a verb you form the nomen agentis. You can also use the voice coverbs rj- rp- etc. as prefixes on verbs to form a nomen patientis, or what you'd use -ee for in English. All of this I need to spell out in the grammar.

- In 51 slpq means tail; rdc means poor dear.

Yes. The gloss should be see-A poor-2 cut-NA POS tail-2. I copied that example from an earlier post when I still had qN as a 2nd person possessive determiner.

Thanks again for taking the time to review my grammar, it really helps

[lurker]

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sCqn b rjGjqg rj MNrg rBFq.
sC-qn b rjGjq-g   rj-0  MNr-g  rBFq-0
pile-2 of shit-3I PAS-A fur-3I cover-A
[you are] a pile of shit wrapped in fur. 

Or more literally

"you, pile of shit by fur covered"

You may substitute skin for fur when addressing a human. Although as I write this it occurs to me that yinrih may put more stock in the thin vellus hairs that constitute what's left of our shaggy simian pelage.

So as you can see I've been focusing on profanity lately. A bit ironic given that the missionaries who land on Earth wouldn't use such language, except perhaps Tod on occasion. As a military man I'm betting he has some rather creative turns of phrase.

[lurker]

One of the traditional Healer's Invocations, specifically the one featured in this story.

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GJBC-qn	fCq-0	lr	h	rnq-g	lr	slPq-3I	cF	DC	m	qgJ-0	sfc-l	rdc	bq	B	qCr-p	b	qGHGH-p	qjkr-0	g	jk-fd-2
allmaker-2	have-A	nor	PL	paw-3I	nor	tail-3I.	yet	below	ADV	use-A	pup-1	poor	in_order_to	from	mouth	of	death-3D	pull-A	POS	little-DIM-2

It is rendered thus in the story:

O Creator of the universe, paws and tail hast thou none, yet wield me, wretched whelp that I am, as thine instrument here below, and rest this least of thy little ones from the jaws of death.

the phrase DC m "here below" uses the particle m /short low strong grunt/ which replaces the object of a preposition and turns that preposition into an adverb.

[lurker]

rPqg

/chuff, long high strong grunt, huff, short low weak growl/

Noun

Originally, this was the standard word for "hearthkeeper", however, it took on negative connotations relating to clerics who abuse their position for worldly ends. In some dialects, it still simply means "hearthkeeper" with no negative connotations. However, the newer more negative meaning is supplanting the old, necessitating the coinage of the more common term sbrPrmKg, literally "hearth-custodian".

rPqGHg originally meant "priesthood" or the condition of being a hearthkeeper, but now means something like "priestcraft", or the use of religious office toward worldly ends.

The word may be rendered in English as "witch" when using its more negative meaning, compare the use of the word "witches" to refer to the Bene Gesserit in Dune. In an allusion to the yinrih's canine appearance, the word "bitch" may also be used.

[lurker]

OK, so I think the 3rd person imperative implies the subject is capable of carrying out the action, while the 3rd person necessitative does not.

G sfc-Mr qMP-0 g rnq-p
IMP pup-3P wash-A POS paw-3D
The pup must wash his paws.

but

pM sCb-Mr sBr-0
NEC ship-3P leave-A
The ship must leave.

[Visions1]

I think the necessative for sophonts could either imply:
1) That it simply needs to be done, and no exhortation is implied ("People will need to take out their passports")
or
2) It's even more urgent/imperative than imperative ("People really need to take out their passports!")
I think these are mutually exclusive.

[lurker]

rDfg

/chuff, late high strengthening whine, short low weak growl/

Noun

1. Continent
2. Landmass of any size surrounded by water
3. A rocky island, (as opposed to a floating vegetation raft)

Derived terms:

rDfFrkp

from rDf + Frk (back [anatomy])

The name of the continent where the yinrih evolved. "back" here is a reference to a dam carrying kits on her back. Compare how Africa is referred to as the cradle of Humanity. Newman's Dale is on the southern bank of the broad river running roughly along the equator, where Yih's ring appears as a thin line stretching from East to West. Wayfarers quickly expanded southward after the Theophany while the remaining Shamanists remained in Newman's Dale.

[lurker]

OK, I think I've got my adverb conumdrum worked out. I hinted before that adding m after a preposition in place of an object turns that preposition into an adverb.

DC sBCp nl rjHKp
The book is under the table

but

DC m nl rjHKp
The book is underneath

I think you can qualify this adverbial phrase by preceeding it with a noun phrase using time words like day, year, etc.

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rdr  MNr-Mr	DC	m	0	bf-0	GJHG-p
one day-3P 	below	ADV	[you]	finish-A	task-3D

You finished that task a day ago.

I also think you can ask time-related questions by inflecting the time noun in the interrogative

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MNr-BD	DC	m	0	bf-0	GJHG-p
day-INT	below	ADV	[you]	finish-A	task-3D

How many days ago did you finish that task?

As I mentioned in the last post regarding time phrases, inflecting the time noun phrase using proximal, medial, or distal endings indicates how long ago (or how long from now) the time span is in the judgement of the speaker.

[lurker]

Here's the Great Commandment written in the reverse abjad style. These breathing marks are starting to grow on me.

[Arayaz]

Here's the Great Commandment written in the reverse abjad style. These breathing marks are starting to grow on me.

That's really pretty!

[Visions1]

Honestly, this looks really nice. Massive potential for ligatures.

[DV82LECM]

Here's the Great Commandment written in the reverse abjad style. These breathing marks are starting to grow on me.

You really are one of the stars of this board, right now. I don't know how well other "animal-based" conlangs do, but yours is quite an exception, either way.

[lurker]

You really are one of the stars of this board, right now. I don't know how well other "animal-based" conlangs do, but yours is quite an exception, either way.

Thanks! My only regret is that I can't actually pronounce Commonthroat.

Edit: Part of me wonders whether I've been spending too much time on this project. It's basically all I've thought about for the past year. It started during a time of extreme stress in my life as a way for me to dissociate, and my ADHD hyperfocus/fleeting hobby obsession just took over from there.

I joke about the Lonely Galaxy being the result of maladaptive daydreaming but it really kind of is...

---

Here are a couple more dimensional words:

mn

/short rising weakening grunt/

Adjective

short, shallow, squat, vertically lacking, (of time) brief

nm

/short falling strengthening grunt/

Adjective

tall, deep, possessing ample vertical dimension, profound, (of time) long

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KJq	rkG	shkq	b	nmHG-g		sfcHG-Mr	b	qgKq-g
three	dozen	year	of	height-3I	puppyhood-3P	of	yinrih-3I

"A yinrih's puppyhood is three dozen years long."

or more literally

"The puppyhood of a yinrih is three dozen years of height."

That's Yih years, and converting that number to Earth years and from dozenal to decimal it becomes ~53 Earth years. Yinrih pups are just entering adulthood as humans become senior citizens, and they have six and a half (Earth) centuries of life ahead of them.

In some ways they develop more slowly than humans, with yinrih in their mid 20s (like the pups in this story) still acting like 8 or 9 year old kids. In other ways they're more advanced. They may know things that you'd expect a college grad to know, like calculus. In D&D terms they have higher intelligence but lower wisdom. Their longer lifespan also means that a single yinrih will know far more and have a much broader life experience compared to a human, which is how they can get away with clerics having to know theology as well as electrical engineering.

As stated before, yinrih view time as moving vertically upward, so the future is "above" and the past is "below".

[DV82LECM]

Oh, wow. I completely get your fixation. My current project was made in about the same way. I let go of it for six or seven months to readjust back into life, and came back better than ever. Maybe, give it a break, but know you'll come back to it. See, it's that it is such a thing. Conlanging is special. Yeah, there are thousands, but the depth that the true-to-it among us put into our most prized projects usually *are* something, not just a flight of fancy. Many have degrees in this stuff, and I imagine there are many, like myself and I envision you, who taught themselves what they know. And, sure, you can't pronounce it, but it's a freaking functional dog language. Are you making it, or are you really finding it?

Okay, not joking, just now, at 12:50am in Michigan, I just tried to do a vocal approximation of <mn>. It took a minute, but it set my four dogs off...

[Visions1]

Honestly, I've been thinking something similar.

Spoiler:

Honestly, sometimes I feel bad that I encourage you so much, because in essence, this hobby has taken up a lot of your time. It's very well for that reason you've been having such trouble with CISCO's tests, and I should have doubled down and told you to focus on them bar none, at the cost of this. It was and is selfish of me to have remained so silent. I am culpable, and if I try to look at it any other way, even if it's true, I feel I'm hiding from myself.
What value is truth if we make justifications? They may be good ones or bad ones, but what we did was done. A justification is almost no reply to a result. To my result.

Spoiler:

But. One good justification I can say. Your work has filled a massive gap that I feel was in the artform. It has such potential to be a positive influence on others.

Spoiler:

But at the cost of my friend's living?

As for myself - well, let's just say my previous job made me active here.

[WeepingElf]

Part of me wonders whether I've been spending too much time on this project. It's basically all I've thought about for the past year. It started during a time of extreme stress in my life as a way for me to dissociate, and my ADHD hyperfocus/fleeting hobby obsession just took over from there.

I joke about the Lonely Galaxy being the result of maladaptive daydreaming but it really kind of is...

I understand this well; in fact, I see some parallels to my Elvenpath project. I know and feel that there are more urgent matters to which I accordingly assign higher priorities. I feel that I ought to use my creative talents to help society overcome the current sustainability crisis (climate change and all that) by writing solarpunk stories, running a blog on which I present solutions, etc. But my heart yearns to explore the lost world of the Elves, and especially their language, Old Albic - but then, I can use those Elves to tell stories about a fairer livelihood. These imagined people are essentially solarpunks themselves! Hence, my conscience does not bite me if I digress into working on Old Albic - it is part of my personal way of letting people know what a fairer society may look like.

[lurker]

Okay, not joking, just now, at 12:50am in Michigan, I just tried to do a vocal approximation of <mn>. It took a minute, but it set my four dogs off...

You called them short

Maybe they were offended.

[lurker]

cBqDFg

/early low weakening whine, huff, long high strengthening whine, short low weak growl/

from cBq (outer, external) + -DF (augmentative suffix) literally "The Great Outside"

Noun

The Empyrean, the realm outside of spacetime where the saints bask in the Beatific Vision of The Light.

Sometimes disparagingly called "The Farm" in English.

Sometimes symbolically equated with the epistemic Realm of the Unknowable, with the universe being the Realm of the Knowable.

P cBqDF-p 0 qLPq-K
in Empyrean-3D {I} hear-DOG

"I shall hear in Heaven" (supposedly Beethoven's last words, too lazy to check that right now but I thought it sounded cool).

This sentence demonstrates another use of the dogmatic mood, to express confidence or trust.