答:
Depends on how you look at it; the Interslavic page does say (as you have noticed) that:

All three projects collaborated closely with each other from that time, and in 2011 Medžuslovjanski („Interslavic”) was chosen as a common name. Fruits of this cooperation were, among other things, a common dictionary, a common news portal and a common wiki.

-- History of Interslavic

Thus, historically speaking, they are two different projects (plus a third one) that have coalesced into one, and are now one project with some internal variation. The websites are continuations of their individual parent projects, as each team retained its independence from the new fused project.

Title: Are Interslavic and Neoslavonic the same conlang?

Body:
I read that Interslavic and Neoslavonic merged into a single language.

All three projects collaborated closely with each other from that time, and in 2011 Medžuslovjanski („Interslavic”) was chosen as a common name. Fruits of this cooperation were, among other things, a common dictionary, a common news portal and a common wiki.

I wonder why there are two websites:

Interslavic – Medžuslovjansky – Меджусловјанскы,

interslavic language tutorial with the domain name "neoslavonic.org".

Is there any difference in the grammar? If so, which one is the most popular?


问:
Language with nominal TAM and no verbs: Ergative or tripartite?
I'm working on a language with nominal tense–aspect–mood (TAM), i.e. inflecting nouns instead of verbs. So, a sentence like "the woman sees the man", could be roughly translated to something like "the womans see the man".

This type of sentence shows an ergative-absolutive morphosyntactic alignment: the subject of a transitive sentence is marked (ergative case), while the direct object is unmarked (absolutive case).

I also like the idea of removing verbs as a class (since tense, aspect and mood can be expressed by the subject) and "reclassify" those words as nouns. So "the womans see the man" could actually mean something like "the woman makes sight of the man", in the sense of "making eye contact". In other words, having ungrammaticalized verbs.

Then, the actual translation for "the woman sees the man" would be "the womans sight the man". And that's the problem: "sight" and "man" are both unmarked nouns, leading to misinterpretation.

So my question is: does the language need a marking for the direct object (accusative case), having then a tripartite alignment? Or can I simply get away with only TAM marking (absolutive case) and no markings for verbs or direct objects?

I have the feeling that I'm forgetting something. I think that the idea of "not having verbs" makes sense to me, since many languages like English, French or Spanish actually lack of inflections and employ only word order, but I might be wrong.

What do you think? Thanks!

答:
Maybe you're using nouns as instrumentals... so can you have noun cases, i.e. an instrumental case to distinguish whether a noun is the Object versus the Instrument?

And, I'm not sure that that necessarily makes the Instrumental Noun just a complicated verb.

Woman-SUBJ+TAM Man-OBJ Eye-INST

"Woman's (focus?) [is] on the Man via (her) Eye".

With a fixed word order, no case markings are needed.

Or TAM could potentially mark the subject.  Instrumentals could be chained after the object, making them feel just a bit like adjectives or adverbs or something.

ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0


问:
Good cultures to base a robotic language off of
I've created a race of nomadic robots, but am having trouble finding a culture to base their language off of. They're peripatetic nomads, meaning they travel around offering goods and services to any friendly people they come across, but most nomadic peoples of this style either use the languages of their country, or the language is too fluid and natural to be suited for machines. </p>

答:
How about Polynesian languages? The people travelled far distances, their culture was very spread out, and they don't really have a country that 'owns' the language.

A further positive aspect is that you can pick up basic Hawai'ian on Duolingo; this quickly gives you a feel for the language. It's VSO, so sounds unusual enough to Western cultures who are more used to SVO. It would also be very plausible for machines who might process knowledge in predicate calculus (as in eats(cow, grass)).

The vocabulary has a strong English influence, due to the colonialisation by the Americans, who made teaching the language illegal, but you will probably adapt that anyway to choose your own words.


答: Humans in such kind of situation devolop a Pidgin specifically for trade. It is arguably easy not only for humans but also for robots: no complicated ingredients in syntax nor morphology, and also usually a simple phonology.</p>

Title: Good cultures to base a robotic language off of

Body: I've created a race of nomadic robots, but am having trouble finding a culture to base their language off of. They're peripatetic nomads, meaning they travel around offering goods and services to any friendly people they come across, but most nomadic peoples of this style either use the languages of their country, or the language is too fluid and natural to be suited for machines. </p>


问:
Sciences in toki pona
I managed to translate a lot of things but I'm stuck on a word.
How to say "physics" (knowledge of the nature) in toki pona? A proposition for "nature" would also be appreciated.

linguistics: sona toki

geology: sona ma

medicine: sona pimejo

mechanics: sona wawa

quantum mechanics: sona lili

...

I did not find any solution on https://glosbe.com/en/mis_tok/.

答: It might be sona pi ijo tawa —knowledge of moving things— or sona pi ijo ante —knowledge of things that change.

Title: Sciences in toki pona


答: sijelo is "body, physical state", so you could use sona sijelo; physicists would probably like sona ale or sona ali, "knowledge of everything" :)

Title: Sciences in toki pona

Body:
I managed to translate a lot of things but I'm stuck on a word.
How to say "physics" (knowledge of the nature) in toki pona? A proposition for "nature" would also be appreciated.

linguistics: sona toki

geology: sona ma

medicine: sona pimejo

mechanics: sona wawa

quantum mechanics: sona lili

...

I did not find any solution on https://glosbe.com/en/mis_tok/.


问:
Does The Syntax Construction Kit cover any new material that isn't in the other conlanging books I've read?
I've got most of Mark Rosenfelder's books on conlanging except The Syntax Construction Kit (which I'm not sure I need).

The conlang I'm currently working on is a 'holy musical magic language' called Fae Spraesh which is developing differently than my other projects - it's Tolkienesque, while my other (mostly undeveloped) conlangs are mostly fictional blends of particular real-world languages and thus not Tolkienesque at all. I have no plans to study university linguistics, and I'm not looking to develop a Fae Spraesh writing system at this time.

Does The Syntax Construction Kit cover any new material that might be useful to my conlanging, or do Mark Rosenfelder's other books (Language Construction Kit, Advanced Language Construction Kit and The Conlanger's Lexipedia) and David J. Peterson‘s The Art of Language Invention suffice?

答:
I will attempt to answer this question, despite not having read the book, so please take my advice with caution.

Looking at the website of the book, zompist.com/syntax.html, you can see an outline of the contents. Rosenfelder describes the book as "a tour of modern syntax".

Being a linguist myself, it looks like the book I'd loved to have had while at university. It covers (English) syntactic theory in a way that looks interesting and not simply dry and theoretical -- he supplements the book by a set of interactive tools to develop your own grammars based on the theoretical ideas of Chomsky and others. He does follow a particular strand of syntactic theory, which is mainly common in the US, not so much in the UK, but he also covers some alternatives to the Chomskyan approach. Rosenfelder's own view of Chomsky is nuanced and somewhat sceptical: he has an essay on this on his website (which I wholeheartedly agree with). Note, however, that this is about English, and these formalisms have been developed by linguists working mostly with English, so if your conlang is very different, they might not easily apply to it.

Apart from Chomskyan Generative Grammar, he also talks about Markov text generators, which would be useful to generate (random) texts in a given language. This might be a useful tool to practically explore your conlang: generate some text, and try to translate it. Several other tools are also aimed at generating sentences, rather than just analysing them. The meaning is often a bit random (as it is not really controlled), but at least the grammar will be correct.

So this is basically a syntax textbook, which will introduce you to syntactic theories while playing around with the formalisms and actively doing syntax (which to me is the best way of learning about them!) If you are interested in grammar, and the formal properties of different types of grammars, this looks like an ideal book. In fact, I have put it on my wishlist with a well-known on-line book retailer.

However, if all you want to do is build a smallish conlang, which might not even have a very complicated grammar, then this book looks like overkill to me. On the site he mentions that there is "a chapter on how you can apply all this to your conlangs". So conlangs are not really the focus of the book, but more a possible application of the described syntactic apparatus to invented languages. I would assume -- from the description on the webpage -- that this is a fairly advanced book, which is great for linguistics students and  for serious conlangers who want to make use of sophisticated formalisms when describing their languages. In that sense it will not cover too much of the same ground as his more 'applied'/'practical' books about language creation. If the previous books have kindled an interest in linguistics, though, and you want to know more about approaches to syntactic description, then this might be the book for you.

OwnerDisplayName: Brendan


问:
What does xorlo do, and is it an official part of the Lojban language?
I've noticed that many speakers of Lojban use xorlo, which is a modification branching off the base language, but finding explicit information about it is difficult. What does it do?

I also know people are generally using it by consensus, but is xorlo an official part of the language? What happens to the original text, The Complete Lojban Language?

答:
xorlo is an official part of the Lojban Language. The Complete Lojban Language does not contain information about xorlo, and is no longer guaranteed to be entirely accurate. The Committee for Developing Lojban (BPFK) voted 11-0 to include xorlo in the official record as a part of the Lojban language. The proposal is not finalized until the BPFK declares their work finished, but it is extremely unlikely to change, as it has become an integral part of how the language works conversationally.

In essence, xorlo changes the meaning of two particle articles in lojban: lo, and le.

lo as an article used to indicate that you were talking about a set of objects which are truthfully what you claim they are. Nothing about them indicates that they would be anything else. For example, "lo jgena" meant "some things that are, to our best perceptions, knots."

Now, it doesn't say anything about perceptions, or the truthiness of what it is. It just means "any or some." It becomes the most generic article you can use in lojban, in place of anything else, because it is vague. "lo jgena" now means "any/some knot(s)," without qualification or ulterior statement about veracity.

le as an article used to mean "some things I have in mind, which I am describing." For example, "le jgena" meant that you had some knots in your head. The change to le is very minor in this context, and its pure meaning hasn't actually changed. The only difference is that it now exists only to be used when you have specific images of something in mind. Now, if I tell you "le jgena," you know I mean something more specific.

ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0


问:
How many unique sounds does the average conlang have?
At the moment I have 90 unique vowel/diphthong sounds that use tonal and length distinction in my conlang. In addition I've chosen 14 consonants, making my total of unique sounds 104.

I don't particularly want to drop any of them, but this seems a lot higher than the usual amount of unique sounds in a language. High enough to consider a more selective approach maybe.

I do want the language to have more vowel sounds than consonant, but how many unique vowel sounds does it have to have to be considered above average?

答:
Depends what you want to do. If you want to be able to emulate all the words of real languages, add the whole IPA system. If you want nice melodic options, add in accordance with your preferred music system (Asian 5 tone, Western 7 tone, Modern 12 tone, each with steps and variations, and repeating form 20 Hz up to 20 000 Hz) and for each possible sound humans can produce - different voiced and voiceless sounds, whispered (ha) or normal (a), and so on. If you want to actually use it and keep it independent of other languages, I suggest keeping it simple - a movie language, for instance, is more effectful if you only choose in-character sounds.

Btw, you get a lot more sounds even in English and Italian if you include unusual words, regional dialects and so on - a large part of the IPA phonemes can be used in either language, though people often don't notice.

Here a few different English vowels (all mainstream):

Hut
Hat
Heroic
Hellenic
Hmmmh
Hit
Here
Hot
Hotel
Herd
Hoover

Alpha
And
Entity
About
e-in-Garden
India
Equal
Oven
Organ
Earth
Ultra

Iron
Out
Able
Oil
Over

Hi
How
Hey
Hoist
Holy

That's 32 distinct sounds. Some might be debatable, they are also dependent on dialect - "and" and "entity" start with the same sound for some, but I hear a difference - at least in some regions. The e in "Garden" isn't a sound at all according to some. And so on. The version on Wikipedia (English phonology) is slightly different. "Ha" is even in IPA written as two sounds, though it clearly is one sound (a whispered "a"), as you can see when stretching it, with or without adding a letter afterwards. I even ommitted a few vowels only the British/Australian/Canadian people use. According to Google, US English has 14-16 vowel phonemes, Australian English 20-21. And the whispered variety isn't even included.

If you multiply by three for tonal (add Up like we do in questions and Down like we do in some forms of emphasis or sounding defeated), you get 96. Asia also has a wavering tonal, but that can be emulated with two letters imo.

If you multiply by two for 2 different lengths, you get 192. If we ignore the h-sounds, we are still at 96.

So what you have is not that much.

OwnerDisplayName: Wilko

OwnerDisplayName: Carl Dombrowski


答:
If you have ninety vowels (including diphthongs), I'd say your invented language is already above average. English is probably at the higher end of the vowel spectrum with twentyish; but there are plenty of languages with far fewer (as few as two or three!).

Since your title question references invented languages specifically, you might consider trawling the CALS to find an approximation. Not every invented language is listed, so naturally the data & results can not be seen as accurate.

Title: How many unique sounds does the average conlang have?

Body:
At the moment I have 90 unique vowel/diphthong sounds that use tonal and length distinction in my conlang. In addition I've chosen 14 consonants, making my total of unique sounds 104.

I don't particularly want to drop any of them, but this seems a lot higher than the usual amount of unique sounds in a language. High enough to consider a more selective approach maybe.

I do want the language to have more vowel sounds than consonant, but how many unique vowel sounds does it have to have to be considered above average?


答: I speak Finnish, which is one of the more vowel-oriented languages.  Considering the 8 vowels, diphthongs, double-vowel (long) sounds... there's probably 2-3 dozen vowel sounds.  90 not only feels like overkill, but I wonder how effectively anyone could distinguish that many sounds.  It's like asking someone to involve all the sounds in 5-6 U.S. dialects all at once.</p>


答:
90 different vowels sounds a lot, but you include tone as a distinguishing feature. I don't know how many tone/length distinctions you have, but some natural languages have 6 tones. This brings the number of different vowel qualities down to 15 which is still a large number, but in the range of natural languages (German and Norwegian are in that range).

14 consonants is a rather moderate size for a consonant system.

For more information on consonant and vowel inventories of natural languages you can consult the World Atlas of Linguistic Structures specially chapters 1 and 2.


问:
How could my to be constructed language reflect a culture of carefulness?
For a role-playing setting, I want to construct an elven language. The society of these elves strongly values being careful, thinking things through, taking one’s time and preventing mistakes. This is not a recent development but has been that way for centuries.

I feel that the language should somehow reflect their culture of being careful and preventing mistakes — somewhat like the Japanese language mirrors the importance of showing respect to the other party with a wide range of respectful address suffixes, respectful grammatical features and a respectful vocabulary.

In what way could I implement my elves’ carefulness and mistake-preventing ideal in their language?

As requested in the comments, here is some further elaboration of what I have in mind.

In cultures, certain behaviour is considered acceptable, certain behaviour is considered well-mannered and other behaviour is considered rude. For example, in Germany coming straight to the point is considered the normal, accepted behaviour while giving white lies is frowned upon to different degrees leading to Germans outright stating what they observe even in other languages in what is elsewhere considered an unfriendly manner.

On the other hand in China, not being able to provide an answer to a question is considered rude so accepted behaviour instead is to provide an answer even if one has no idea if it is true or not. (That is the impression I got from interaction with previous Chinese colleagues.)

In the culture of my elven society, it would be perfectly acceptable and even considered well-mannered to let a deadline pass or let somebody wait in order to perfection a good or a service. On the other hand, providing someone with a flawed product or a not fully thought-through piece of advice would considered disrespectful because one should have taken the time to ensure the error within does not exist. (Such behaviour would be entirely unacceptable in Germany where it is expected for the finished product to arrive five minutes before the deadline.)

A number of common — to them — proverbs would underline this expectation. Maybe something along the lines of ‘the time you lose from a bad result outweighs the gain from finishing quickly’ or ‘even the king will gladly wait for his crown’ etc.

I hope I have made the general idea more clear.

答:
Express probabilities

Instead of saying "It appears that…" or "I think that…" your elves could express how certain they are in exact numerical terms: "I believe with a 65±6% probability that…" By default, a sentence conveys a confidence level of 80%, let's say. If people want to express a greater level of confidence than that, they have to explicitly say it; we don't want it to be too easy for people to be overconfident. Of course, this is a pretty clunky statement in English; in your language it could be as simple as "65% that…".

Then, the speaker can state their evidence for their statement: "…based on the evidence of its physical appearance", "…based on the impression it gives me", etc. To be extra precise, the speaker could state their prior probability and go through their calculations for Bayes' theorem.

This is going beyond language and more about culture, but perhaps every elf could be scored on whether their stated probabilities turned out to be accurate, neither overconfident nor underconfident; e.g., 70% of their "it is 70% like that…" statements turned out to be true.

Clearly define words

Even a simple sentence like "The girl is good" is ambiguous. Does that mean she is morally good, and if so, is that according to the standard of virtue ethics (virtuous), deontology (follows all the rules), or consequentialism (has a positive impact on the word)? Does it mean that she is obedient, and if so, does that mean she obeys orders? What percent of the time does she obey orders? Does it mean that she ranks in the 80th percentile of children her age in terms of obedience?

These sorts of questions could be resolved by a standard prescriptive dictionary which everyone must read. Sentences should use words by their dictionary definition as literally as possible, and listeners should interpret it literally. If any speaker deviates from that dictionary definition, they should say so explicitly. You could have a prefix or suffix indicating that a word is being used inexactly or metaphorically.


问:
How could a conlang enforce subjective idealism in a constructed world
Subjective idealism is the monistic metaphysical doctrine that only minds and mental contents exist. It entails and is generally identified or associated with immaterialism, the doctrine that material things do not exist. Subjective idealism rejects dualism, neutral monism, and materialism.

How could my to be constructed language be restricted to such view of reality?

My guess is that its semantic primes should consist of:

qualia: individual instances of subjective, conscious experience such as  the redness of an evening sky, pain of a headache, the taste of wine, etc.

A pronoun like *I* to refer to one's self

Verbs such as *think*, *believe*, *know*

Adverbs such as: *now*, *before*, *after*

Objects (e.g. chair, table, etc.), other personal pronouns (you, he, etc.), matter and all the other things that do not really exist (in the view of subjective idealism) would be defined as paraphrases.

Edit: Note that this is not a question on subjective idealism in reality, but about subjective idealism in a constructed world. Therefore arguments against subjective idealism in reality are irrelevant.

答:
We can have two classes of nouns: souls, and the perceptions and ideas of souls. Ideas nouns must be inflected for who they are being perceived by: you, God, or whoever. This would have the effect of turning a sentence like "The dog is red" into "The dog seems red to me."

Secondly, instead of saying "The dog…" or "There is a dog…", you would say "I have the idea of a dog that…" Then to refer to that dog again, instead of using a pronoun like "it", you could say something like "my aforementioned dog idea". Idea nouns could exist only in a sort of object case, and not as a subject, to make speaking about it directly as if it really existed out there ungrammatical.


问:
How would having a logographic writing system work in a conlang?
Creating a logographic writing system for a language can quickly become overwhelming; having a different symbol/image for each word can quickly become overwhelming; it’s why Sequoyah switched to a syllabary instead of a logogram. The more words there are in a language the more symbols there have to be.

However, there are historically successful uses of logograms - for instance, Egyptian hieroglyphics and Chinese (when it first started). I’m not aware of any modern natural language that actually uses a logographic system as its primary writing system, though.

How would a conlang use a logographic writing system after the language grew to any extant? Would it be possible to create a conlang that actually uses a sustainable logographic system?

答:
The Tangut script is an example of a more pure logographic writing system, with only 10% of the characters having a phonetic component. The Tangut script was created in 1036 by one person, apparently a priori but inspired by Chinese, and used until to 1502. So far, 5863 characters are known, excluding variants.

Tangut characters are extremely complicated, but they're probably unnecessarily so. Blissymbolics, which is an ideographic writing system with much simpler characters, has over 5,000 official symbols.

After creating a couple hundred root characters, I feel like you create a character for a new word in a couple of seconds by combining the meaning of existing characters. If Toki Pona can build a full vocabulary with 120 morphemes, you should be able to do the same with a logographic writing system.


答: sona lon. science of existence

Title: Sciences in toki pona

Body: sona lon. science of existence


问:
What is the meaning of this Toki Pona sentence?
I found a sentence written in order to prove that Toki Pona is a complete language. As far as I know it is a foolish nominal sentence.

What is the English translation?

pona sona pi (wawa pi ma Lipija) poka toki lawa mute pi jan lawa nanpa tu pi ma Atilanisi.

答:
Well, it’s not a grammatical sentence and the context doesn’t provide any clue about how to fill it out if it’s an abbreviated one.  Not ure where “folklore” came from (well, ‘pona sona’ but how?) and the rest is is a single noun phrase that I cannot render into English in an intelligible way, though it does apparently belong to the assistant chief of Atlantis.
I have no suggestions about how to fix it. </p>


问:
Term for the converse of "instrumental"
We can make a noun for the instrument of an action, by taking the verb for the action and adding an instrumental marker.[1]

For instance, in English, we can add "-er",[2] like so:

I cut the box with a box-cutter.

Conversely, we can make a verb for an action, by taking the noun for the instrument and adding... what could you call it?

In English, we don't necessarily have an affix, since we can just verbalise the noun, like so:

I will knife you with my knife.

...but we might use "-ise" this way, at least jocularly:

I will hammerise him if he comes at me with that knife.

So is there a term for such a marker, indicating the use of an instrument? "Usive"? "Usual"?

[1] I was going to call this "instrumentive", on the pattern of "agentive" and "patientive", but the word doesn't appear in any dictionary I checked. It is used in some books on linguistics, though, per Google Books.

[2] This is also the agentive suffix in English, but I'm imagining a scenario where the agent and the instrument are clearly distinguished.

答:
I think you're conflating a/o confusing a couple different things here.

First, "cutter" is not "instrumental". (At least in English!) In English grammar, -er is (among zillions of other uses) the morpheme that indicates "agent noun"; so, cutter means "thing that cuts". It is the actual agent by which cutting happens.

The Instrumental Case is a grammatical function that indicates the means by which the agent or subject of the verb does the action:

I-subj cut-verb the.box-obj (with.a.box.cutter)-instr.

If English had case endings like Latin, you could see the difference easily:

Puer-NOM cistam-ACC cultello-ABL secavit-VERB

Latin uses the ablative case to denote the instrumental case, due to ancient case syncretism of the old ablative, locative and instrumental cases.

-ise / -ize, in English, is a grammatical morpheme that indicates the word is a denominal verb. This means that the verb in question is made from a noun. We already know that English weirds. It verbs nouns at the drop of a hat.

I will hammer him if he attacks me with the knife.

Your example, "I will hammerise him if he attacks me with a knife", doesn't actually make sense in context. This is because -ise doesn't mean "use something as an instrument", it means "turn something into something else".

Immigrants ought to be Americanised through educational programmes.

The machine pulverises large pieces of stone into gravel.

I think your best bet, as far as "converse" of or "opposite" of the instrumental case, would be the

noninstrumental case, which I just made up.  It does what the instrumental case does, only in the other direction. Essentially, the speaker denies the instrumentality of the named article.

Puer-NOM cistam-ACC cultellei-NONINST secavit-VERB

I considered "deinstrumental", but that's already a thing (a noun or verb made upon an instrumental form).

Title: Term for the converse of "instrumental"


问:
Can Root Words Be Derived From Other Root Words
If I said "I" was "Zha" would it be plausible to say "you" is "Zho" and from there naturally begin forming grammatical gender, or would that be too early in the language to add complexities? Also, could the word "we" not be a root word but instead be derived from "I" (Zha->Zhasa)?</p>

答:
Sure. And like always, real languages got there first.

In Quechua, for instance, fist person singular ("I/me") is Ñuqa. 1st person plural inclusive (we, all of us) is Ñuqanchik, and exclusive (us, but not you) is Ñuqayku.

Second person singular is Qam, plural Qamkuna. Third person singular is Pay, third person plural Paykuna. -kuna is simply the Quechuan plural suffix. "House" is wasi, "houses" wasikuna.

"You, the person I'm talking to" Qam, "You, the people I'm talking to" Qamkuna.

It's quite common in many languages that "I" and "you" are distinct; after all, I'm usually the most most important person in the universe, and you just live there. Third person pronouns seem to often be derived from pointing words: "that thing over there" becomes "that person over there".


问:
What symbols should I use for phonemes when I have many vowels?
Most conlang examples I find in tutorials use a small set of vowels, but the one I'm working on has 13 and I'm having trouble finding the simplest transliteration to work with. Here are the IPA symbols:

```<code>Front    | Back
---------|----------
[i]      | [u]
[y]      |
---------|---------
[e]      | [o]
[ø]      |
---------|---------
[aɛ̯]     |
[œ]      |
---------|---------
[a]      | [ɑ]
---------|---------
[œ̃]      | [õ]
[ã]      |
</code>```

My keyboard only allows me to type àâäùûüèêëéìîï but not œɛɑø or the diacritics used in the IPA for nasal vowels and diphthongs.

(EDIT: Note that my question really is all about the transliteration I'll be using for practical typing. Sure, I can just use fancy unicode symbols for my actual writing system in the end if I want to, but copypasting symbols isn't very practical for writing long texts.)

The language uses a (very simplified) subset of Quebec French for sound inventory, but I wanted to avoid using too many digraphs or diacritics which French relies on heavily. I know I can always come up with a custom font and writing system later on which brings in more glyphs for vowels, but I need something practical to use during conception.

I'd be interested if you have a generic answer as to what your own process is when you have a similar problem or a specific suggestion in my case.

My incomplete solution for now is this (updated to include jknappen's suggestion which I like for the German-style umlaut). I could add a macro to my text editor to allow for tildes, but I still need to figure out how I want to distinguish [œ] and [e] or [a] and [ɑ].

```<code>Front    | Back
---------|----------
[i]  /i/ | [u]  /u/
[y]  /ü/ |
---------|---------
[e]      | [o]  /o/
[ø]  /ö/ |
---------|---------
[aɛ̯] /ä/ |
[œ]      |
---------|---------
[a]  /a/ | [ɑ]
---------|---------
[œ̃]      | [õ]
[ã]      |
</code>```

答:
I ended up using the following:

```<code>  Front  |          |   Back
---------|----------|-----------
[i]  /i/ |          | [u]  /u/
[y]  /ü/ |          |
---------|----------|-----------
[e]  /e/ |          | [o]  /o/
[ø]  /ë/ |          | [õ]  /õ/
---------|----------|-----------
[aɛ̯] /á/ |          |
[œ]  /œ/ |          |
[œ̃]  /ĩ/ |          |
---------|----------|-----------
         | [a]  /a/ | [ɑː] /aa/
         | [ɑ̃]  /ã/ |
</code>```

Many vowel variants were written using something similar to the German umlaut following jknappen's recommendation.

ĩ, ã, õ and œ were chosen because they work in many fonts and are close to their IPA representation. I set up an AutoHotkey script to allow typing them easily.

I really didn't want to introduce a diacritic to represent [ɑ], so I just made that sound longer so it makes sense to represent it with /aa/. This will make it easier to tell apart too.

Update: After reading the beginning of Mark Rosenfelder's LCK again, his warning about the same diacritic having more than one meaning made me realize using an umlaut for the diphthong [aɛ̯] was not right, so I chose to replace that with á, which makes it much easier to remember.

Update: I decided to move the umlaut from ö to ë and to represent [œ̃] with ĩ. These are debatable choices, but I like how it means I now have only one possible diacritic for each glyph, except for  which can have either a tilde to indicate nasalization or an accent for the diphthong.

Body:
I ended up using the following:

  Front  |          |   Back
---------|----------|-----------
[i]  /i/ |          | [u]  /u/
[y]  /ü/ |          |
---------|----------|-----------
[e]  /e/ |          | [o]  /o/
[ø]  /ë/ |          | [õ]  /õ/
---------|----------|-----------
[aɛ̯] /á/ |          |
[œ]  /œ/ |          |
[œ̃]  /ĩ/ |          |
---------|----------|-----------
         | [a]  /a/ | [ɑː] /aa/
         | [ɑ̃]  /ã/ |

Many vowel variants were written using something similar to the German umlaut following jknappen's recommendation.

ĩ, ã, õ and œ were chosen because they work in many fonts and are close to their IPA representation. I set up an AutoHotkey script to allow typing them easily.

I really didn't want to introduce a diacritic to represent [ɑ], so I just made that sound longer so it makes sense to represent it with /aa/. This will make it easier to tell apart too.

Update: After reading the beginning of Mark Rosenfelder's LCK again, his warning about the same diacritic having more than one meaning made me realize using an umlaut for the diphthong [aɛ̯] was not right, so I chose to replace that with á, which makes it much easier to remember.

Update: I decided to move the umlaut from ö to ë and to represent [œ̃] with ĩ. These are debatable choices, but I like how it means I now have only one possible diacritic for each glyph, except for <a> which can have either a tilde to indicate nasalization or an accent for the diphthong.


问:
Structure only conlang? Nouns?
Are there examples of conlangs that are used by applying their structure such as grammar, sentence structure, intonation, means of combining words, etc… with other features of a given language or given member of a class of languages?

This has the disadvantage that for understanding one would have to know both the language in question, call this X, and the language it's adapting, call this Y.

For example and in particular I'm thinking that X could use the alphabet and all the single morpheme nouns and verbs of Y, but replace every other aspect of the language with its own.

A possible advantage could be in allowing the speaker more reachable access to an unfamiliar linguistic environment, be that a conlang or a natural language, where different modes of thought are the most natural.

答:
It happens with sign languages - often there are two "versions" of a sign language, the first one (less official, natural) is generally used by the community and has its own grammar, the second one (more official, heavily constructed) parallels grammar (syntax) of the corresponding spoken language.

E.g.there is the natural Polish Sign Language, and a rather artificial constructed Signed Polish, following closely the syntax of spoken Polish, so somewhat the opposite of the question, a natural language imposing its grammar over the conlang. But it could be said that the signing system (obviously) imposes its own "phonology" over the spoken language.

Title: Structure only conlang? Nouns?


答:
What you wrote made me think of a method called nonviolent communication, which argues for expressing yourself very clearly and straightforwardly with regards to your emotions and needs in order to be understood. It recommends phrasing things in such a way as to always be objectively true. That boils down to expressing observations without judgment (e.g. "the sky is blue") and substituting judgmental expressions with expressions of inner emotions, basic needs, and requests.

It's hard to capture the breadth of the theory behind it (I recommend this video if you're interested), so I'll give a few examples of what it argues for and against:

The violent way of putting things:

"You're an idiot" (judgment)

"I feel taken advantage of" (not an emotion, but rather a judgment)

"You make me angry" (it's one's own mind that creates anger, not a person)

"I need you to go away." ("you to go away" is not a basic need; needs in general should not involve specific people)

The nonviolent way of putting things:

"When you said 'You're an idiot', I felt angry." (expressing an observation and a past emotion)

"When I think about you saying 'You're an idiot', I feel angry." (expressing an observation and a current emotion)

"I feel angry, because I'm needing understanding" (expressing the need behind the emotion)

"I'm needing peace and quiet. Would you be willing to leave the room?" (expressing a basic need without referencing a specific person)

So how can this translate to a constructed language?

A few ideas:

Get rid of judgmental words. Get rid of words like "good", "bad", and "ugly".

Get rid of the word "feel", use verbs for emotions. That's to avoid using the word feel in cases where it's not an actual emotion that one's expressing (like feeling "taken advantage of"). The verbs should be intransitive, as to get rid of the idea that something external is responsible for a person's emotions.

Have a rich vocabulary of emotional words. Here's a list to get you started.

Center the language around basic needs. Here's a list of needs for reference. Remember that basic needs never involve specific people, actions or things. (Those should be included in observations and requests.)

Have most expressions stick to the four components of NVC: observations, emotions, basic needs, and specific requests. Sentences might be variations on the form "When I [see/hear/smell/...] [observation], I feel [emotion], because I'm needing [basic needs]. Would you be willing to [request]?" (All components are optional, one can use any subset.) See this page for details.

Title: How could my to be constructed language reflect a culture of carefulness?

Body:
For a role-playing setting, I want to construct an elven language. The society of these elves strongly values being careful, thinking things through, taking one’s time and preventing mistakes. This is not a recent development but has been that way for centuries.

I feel that the language should somehow reflect their culture of being careful and preventing mistakes — somewhat like the Japanese language mirrors the importance of showing respect to the other party with a wide range of respectful address suffixes, respectful grammatical features and a respectful vocabulary.

In what way could I implement my elves’ carefulness and mistake-preventing ideal in their language?

As requested in the comments, here is some further elaboration of what I have in mind.

In cultures, certain behaviour is considered acceptable, certain behaviour is considered well-mannered and other behaviour is considered rude. For example, in Germany coming straight to the point is considered the normal, accepted behaviour while giving white lies is frowned upon to different degrees leading to Germans outright stating what they observe even in other languages in what is elsewhere considered an unfriendly manner.

On the other hand in China, not being able to provide an answer to a question is considered rude so accepted behaviour instead is to provide an answer even if one has no idea if it is true or not. (That is the impression I got from interaction with previous Chinese colleagues.)

In the culture of my elven society, it would be perfectly acceptable and even considered well-mannered to let a deadline pass or let somebody wait in order to perfection a good or a service. On the other hand, providing someone with a flawed product or a not fully thought-through piece of advice would considered disrespectful because one should have taken the time to ensure the error within does not exist. (Such behaviour would be entirely unacceptable in Germany where it is expected for the finished product to arrive five minutes before the deadline.)

A number of common — to them — proverbs would underline this expectation. Maybe something along the lines of ‘the time you lose from a bad result outweighs the gain from finishing quickly’ or ‘even the king will gladly wait for his crown’ etc.

I hope I have made the general idea more clear.


问:
Famous a priori auxilary languages?
Most auxiliary languages I know of, especially Esperanto, are primarily a posteriori—that is, their vocabulary or grammar are derived from other existing languages, and most are fairly Eurocentric. While many might have a priori grammar, but not vocabulary, I have yet to see another language that is entirely a priori—not derived from other languages. Do any such languages exist? Note I am talking about languages designed to be an international auxiliary language.

答:
There are various "a priori" constructed languages, though they are not as successful as "a posteriori" languages have been.

They include:

Spokil

Ro

Kotava

Solresol

Babm

Blisssymbols (Written, ideographic language only)

Nal Bino (modification of Volapuk)

Sona

Title: Famous a priori auxilary languages?


答:
I've thought about re-purposing some letters which have vowel-like properties.  For example, the letter /w/ can sometimes be arm-wrestled into a vowel-like state.  Then there's /r/, which is almost like a schwa sometimes, and /n/, which sometimes sounds like... well, like a nasalized null vowel-like thing...

It's often not great, but it's okay.

I know you mentioned being constrained, but unicode has letters in other alphabets that could help.  Cyrillic for example has letters that might be re-useful.

Title: What symbols should I use for phonemes when I have many vowels?

Body:
Most conlang examples I find in tutorials use a small set of vowels, but the one I'm working on has 13 and I'm having trouble finding the simplest transliteration to work with. Here are the IPA symbols:

```<code>Front    | Back
---------|----------
[i]      | [u]
[y]      |
---------|---------
[e]      | [o]
[ø]      |
---------|---------
[aɛ̯]     |
[œ]      |
---------|---------
[a]      | [ɑ]
---------|---------
[œ̃]      | [õ]
[ã]      |
</code>```

My keyboard only allows me to type àâäùûüèêëéìîï but not œɛɑø or the diacritics used in the IPA for nasal vowels and diphthongs.

(EDIT: Note that my question really is all about the transliteration I'll be using for practical typing. Sure, I can just use fancy unicode symbols for my actual writing system in the end if I want to, but copypasting symbols isn't very practical for writing long texts.)

The language uses a (very simplified) subset of Quebec French for sound inventory, but I wanted to avoid using too many digraphs or diacritics which French relies on heavily. I know I can always come up with a custom font and writing system later on which brings in more glyphs for vowels, but I need something practical to use during conception.

I'd be interested if you have a generic answer as to what your own process is when you have a similar problem or a specific suggestion in my case.

My incomplete solution for now is this (updated to include jknappen's suggestion which I like for the German-style umlaut). I could add a macro to my text editor to allow for tildes, but I still need to figure out how I want to distinguish [œ] and [e] or [a] and [ɑ].

```<code>Front    | Back
---------|----------
[i]  /i/ | [u]  /u/
[y]  /ü/ |
---------|---------
[e]      | [o]  /o/
[ø]  /ö/ |
---------|---------
[aɛ̯] /ä/ |
[œ]      |
---------|---------
[a]  /a/ | [ɑ]
---------|---------
[œ̃]      | [õ]
[ã]      |
</code>```


答:
It looks to me that I, you, and he/she are typically not derived from one another.  So Zha "I" might typically be quite different from the word for "You". But beyond that, inflecting these base pronouns is certainly fair game.

English I and you, for example, are unique as far back as we can go (Proto Indo European).

Title: Can Root Words Be Derived From Other Root Words

Body: If I said "I" was "Zha" would it be plausible to say "you" is "Zho" and from there naturally begin forming grammatical gender, or would that be too early in the language to add complexities? Also, could the word "we" not be a root word but instead be derived from "I" (Zha->Zhasa)?</p>


问:
By what means might the roots "let" and "ly" mean the same thing in a naturalistic conlang?
I apologize for how this question may be perceived. I am casually learning linguistics with no curriculum. I can understand that this question may have many possible answers, but I am not quite sure how else to ask this question. I can also understand if all that may be provided to me is some resource on lists of natural ways languages evolve.

Basically, I've come up with two place names, "Yallet" and "Helverly". I'm trying to create enough of a naming language that would allow me to create names that seem to occur naturally in the setting.

Both Yallet and Helverly are locations, and so I was wondering if there was a way for the root "let", meaning town, to conceivably evolve to "ly".

Can this evolution happen naturally? If so, I would happily read on such transformations. If not, I would be very appreciative of an explanation as to why it would not be a natural evolution.

答:
It is a two-step process, and both steps are very natural and frequently encountered in natural languages. The steps may occur in the other order as well, but the order here deems more common to me.

Loss of the final stop let -> le. This occurs very often, French is a prominent example of this because the final stops are preserved in writing, but lost in pronunciation (with some exceptions when there is a following vowel).

A vowel shift le -> li, in this case a raising. Again, this step is very natural because /e/ and /i/ are neighbouring vowels in the vowel diagram.

These two steps use your assumption that let is the older form that evolves into ly. A more sophisticated construction could assume a common ancestor for both forms, e.g., lit that evolves to li by the loss of the final consonant and to let by lowering the vowel.

EDIT: As you are generally interested in sound laws, there is a resource named Index Diachronica that lists a lot of sound changes collected from many sources.


答:
In order to see whether -let and -ly are related, there are several options:

One of them is the 'original' morpheme indicating a settlement, and the other one is derived from it. Maybe the /e/ in /let/ was pronounced [i:] at some point, and then the /t/ dropped.

They both have a common ancestor, maybe /ley/. In distinct geographic regions it ended up being pronounced differently, and so it developed into distinct /let/ and /ly/. Or some clerk mis-spelled it /let/ by accident and it stuck.

They are unrelated, maybe coming from different languages historically.

You would be most interested in 1 or 2. Language often changes to make things easier to pronounce, so think about how you would pronounce a word in a lazy or sloppy way, slurring the sounds, so that it is still intelligible, but not exactly as it was spelled. And then think how you would write it down.

In the past, spelling was not normalised, so differences like you describe can easily crop up. It was only (in the West) with the emergence of dictionaries and printing presses that spelling really mattered.

Title: By what means might the roots "let" and "ly" mean the same thing in a naturalistic conlang?

Body:
I apologize for how this question may be perceived. I am casually learning linguistics with no curriculum. I can understand that this question may have many possible answers, but I am not quite sure how else to ask this question. I can also understand if all that may be provided to me is some resource on lists of natural ways languages evolve.

Basically, I've come up with two place names, "Yallet" and "Helverly". I'm trying to create enough of a naming language that would allow me to create names that seem to occur naturally in the setting.

Both Yallet and Helverly are locations, and so I was wondering if there was a way for the root "let", meaning town, to conceivably evolve to "ly".

Can this evolution happen naturally? If so, I would happily read on such transformations. If not, I would be very appreciative of an explanation as to why it would not be a natural evolution.


问:
How to describe a purely symbolic writing system?
Before I jump headlong into constructing a language, I'd like to do some research and see what others have done before me and learn from their experiences/mistakes.  The keywords I'm currently using are sub-optimal, so I need help tightening them up.

The "communication method" I am thinking of:

is purely for reading and writing

has no need to be spoken and is thus not based upon letters/phonemes

uses symbols to represent concepts

each symbol/concept corresponds to something like an English word or sentence (e.g. 'a cat', 'the sound made by flying bees', 'the feeling that results from being beaten by a lesser foe', 'move quickly', 'why?')

symbols are arranged relative to each other (in 2D space) to communicate more complex concepts and provide context

symbols are highly domain-specific and exclusive — mining, carpentry, fishing, etc. would have exclusive symbols that only have meaning in their contexts

is not meant to be signed, hummed, whistled, grunted, tapped or transmitted in any other way except for being printed on, and read from, a two-dimensional surface

is not based on any existing language

would permit deaf people, and people with no common language, to collaborate on very specific tasks

Wikipedia defines pasigraphy as 'a writing system where each written symbol represents a concept (rather than a word or sound or series of sounds in a spoken language)' but also defines a writing system as "any conventional method of visually representing verbal communication".  That seems a bit contradictory and confusing.

What are some good/accurate keywords that describe this 'thing' I am trying to develop?

答:
I think you're overthinking this a little. While what you're considering is unusual, I can't see any reason why it wouldn't just be a written language in a logographic script.

is purely for reading and writing

has no need to be spoken and is thus not based upon letters/phonemes

is not meant to be signed, hummed, whistled, grunted, tapped or transmitted in any other way except for being printed on, and read from, a two-dimensional surface

It has no need to be, sure. But if humans or human-like beings are there they would most likely develop an oral way of "reading" it eventually.

uses symbols to represent concepts

each symbol/concept corresponds to something like an English word or sentence (e.g. 'a cat', 'the sound made by flying bees', 'the feeling that results from being beaten by a lesser foe', 'move quickly', 'why?')

symbols are highly domain-specific and exclusive — mining, carpentry, fishing, etc. would have exclusive symbols that only have meaning in their contexts

Sounds like a logographic writing system. Now it's not clear if the symbols for phrases are made up of component symbols for the things they represent or are unique singular symbols. Building symbols from other symbols would make sense, otherwise the number of symbols would grow exponentially.

symbols are arranged relative to each other (in 2D space) to communicate more complex concepts and provide context

This is on the surface the biggest difference between your proposal and human languages, which for both spoken and written language are linear.

However consider that some branches of linguistics believe that all language is representable by binary trees alone. If your language has a syntax (and if it doesn't it really couldn't be considered language) then we'd expect that it would be possible to develop a tree-based representation of it, perhaps using multiple levels of deep structure below the surface. And a non-binary tree could be converted to a binary tree.

I just spent some time looking at 2D languages, both conlangs and programming languages, and all the ones I found consisted of linear paths to follow or a tree structure. Conlangger Sai has explained their ideas for a non-linear fully 2D writing system, but they don't give an example of such a writing system. But they do say that their version of non-linearity is distinguished from linear design systems only by inelegance or convolution. I'd take this to mean that actually it is serialisable (and therefore could in theory be spoken) if not by humans then by some being of great intelligence. The essay is worth reading anyway if this topic continues to interest you.

In fact, I believe I can say that it is not possible, short of crippled or very simple specialty cases, to directly convert a linear writing to a non-linear one without either loosing a lot of meaning (NLàL), being extremely inelegant by virtue of failing to take advantage of better design (LàNL), or becoming functionally incomprehensible (e.g. the list format in which an Nth-degree array is stored in the C programming language).

So, what is non-linearity?

At its core, NL has to do with how concepts are arranged, both on physical paper and in their more abstract form. A NL system is a multigraph; its components are, or can be, extremely interconnected. There is no single traversal method, though there may be some conventional ones. There may not be a ‘traversal’ method at all, as such;


问:
Is latino sine flexione dead?
Latino sine flexione is a variant of Latin created by Peano in 1903. As far as I know it was used in scientific literature but since forgotten.

I found this site and a few discussions on Duolingo but not a single speaker.
A quite complete grammar can be found here.

Is this wonderful project dead?

Note: I posted the same question here and was suggested to "address a different community".

答:
It is obviously not completely dead, there is at least one blogger posting short news items in Latino Sine Flexione here http://nuntios.blogspot.com/search/label/Latino%20sine%20Flexione

I don't know whether there is a functional speech community for this language left.

EDIT: There is another life sign of Latino sine flexione: Someone created a LaTeX package for it!

Title: Is latino sine flexione dead?


答:
There is such a natural written language. Chinese. One reason that Chinese is not based on pronunciation is that there are a lot of local dialects that sounds very different from the official mandarin. The Chinese characters are pronounced in a certain way in mandardin but totally different in say cantonese.

Complex characters are built from smaller radicals, and make use of 2d arrangements. (Forest = three tree radicals spread out).

Written Chinese fulfills basically all your points, except perhaps that it is based on an existing language (mandardin, but perhaps one might say that mandarin is based on the written language, or that these co-evolved).

Title: How to describe a purely symbolic writing system?

Body:
Before I jump headlong into constructing a language, I'd like to do some research and see what others have done before me and learn from their experiences/mistakes.  The keywords I'm currently using are sub-optimal, so I need help tightening them up.

The "communication method" I am thinking of:

is purely for reading and writing

has no need to be spoken and is thus not based upon letters/phonemes

uses symbols to represent concepts

each symbol/concept corresponds to something like an English word or sentence (e.g. 'a cat', 'the sound made by flying bees', 'the feeling that results from being beaten by a lesser foe', 'move quickly', 'why?')

symbols are arranged relative to each other (in 2D space) to communicate more complex concepts and provide context

symbols are highly domain-specific and exclusive — mining, carpentry, fishing, etc. would have exclusive symbols that only have meaning in their contexts

is not meant to be signed, hummed, whistled, grunted, tapped or transmitted in any other way except for being printed on, and read from, a two-dimensional surface

is not based on any existing language

would permit deaf people, and people with no common language, to collaborate on very specific tasks

Wikipedia defines pasigraphy as 'a writing system where each written symbol represents a concept (rather than a word or sound or series of sounds in a spoken language)' but also defines a writing system as "any conventional method of visually representing verbal communication".  That seems a bit contradictory and confusing.

What are some good/accurate keywords that describe this 'thing' I am trying to develop?


答:
Perhaps you are looking for Blissymbols. According to Wikipedia:

Blissymbols or Blissymbolics was conceived as an ideographic writing system called Semantography consisting of several hundred basic symbols, each representing a concept, which can be composed together to generate new symbols that represent new concepts. Blissymbols differ from most of the world's major writing systems in that the characters do not correspond at all to the sounds of any spoken language.

Blissymbols was invented by Charles K. Bliss (1897–1985) ... [who] wanted to create an easy-to-learn international auxiliary language to allow communication between different linguistic communities. He was inspired by Chinese characters, with which he became familiar at Shanghai.


问:
What makes lojban such a "logical" language?
The title says it all. While I have not studied it, I have repeatedly heard that lojban is an especially "logical" language, one that could even be a way to speak a "natural" language to the computer that it can understand.

What feature of lojban (or features) makes this so? Is it just that humans haven't gotten to it yet?

答:
Lojban was designed with a few key features in mind, which are ultimately why it claims the title of "logical" language.

First it's good to know that a logical language actually means something pretty specific. It's usually built on predicate logic, and a desire to express any logically-expressible statement unambiguously. No two statements are allowed to mean the same thing, and no statement is allowed to mean two things.

In this sense, Lojban fulfills the literal criteria for what counts as a logical language. There's also the colloquial sense, though - the way people think about it, when someone says "logical language."

It is designed to be a regular language. This gives it a few key properties that make it easier for computers to process (though it's still an immensely complicated task to implement). Most of these properties are mathematical, and you can read them on the Wikipedia page. However, what it means in an intuitive way is that no word or word phrase's meaning changes based on words it's not adjacent to. That's a nice property when you're a computer and have a hard time maintaining a sense of context.

Lojban also has no irregular forms or rule exceptions whatsoever. All words are constructed based on specific properties that are clearly delineated, using roots that are unique and are intended to mesh with each other as-is.

This means that any construction which can be built in a logical form can be written completely and uniquely in Lojban. There are no ambiguities between forms. Note, though, that this is commonly confused with "the language has no ambiguity." It's possible to be ambiguous in Lojban, but only intentionally, and that ambiguity is unique to the way you wrote it.

It also allows for systematic, structured learning and use. New words fit into the existing grammar and structure without any other prompting, once you know what they mean and how they're used. No additional grammatical structures are needed to use any words, once you know them.


答:
To add a completely different answer, which certainly is constructed, but might not really be classified as a language as such, but it still conveys meaning in a non-verbal fashion: formulas in mathematics.

Equations, and logical statements can be conveyed in this fashion.
I think for example proofs in Euclidean geometry can be presented entirely without English words, and be perfectly understandable by a mathematician. Proofs are "pictorial" (using symbols for rather abstract concepts), and the figures used to present related ideas are 2-dimensional.


答:
I have a lot to say on this subject, as I've been working on such a project for 30 years.

The terms vary, but "pasigraphy" is one of the terms, as you mentioned.  "Ideographic writing" or "ideography" is another term; and "realle carracter" (various spellings) is a 1600's term.  LaVan Martineau claimed that Native American rock-writing was a non-sound-based writing; he used the term "pictography" for this.  And don't forget "hieroglyphic writing".

I was initially inspired by Francis Lodwick's (various spellings) A Common Writing..." of 1647.  Blissymbols (mentioned above) is one of the more fleshed-out projects; but there are others.  John Wilkins' Essay Towards a Real Character... was a classificatory system, similar to the Dewey Decimal System, with abstract symbols assigned to the classifiers.  Other projects: Pictopen by Juan Garay, Locos by Yukio Ota, Unideo by Eric Cattelain, Book from the Ground by Bing Xu, IRC (International Realle Carracter) by me.


问:
Creating Fictional Slavic Place Names
I have a very simple question regarding a small problem I cannot find a single satisfying answer to. I am trying to create a country with a prominent Slavic culture. In my story, an alien world has been colonized by the nations of Earth. Respectively, each name their lands and territories how they see fit and in their own language. As for this country, it was colonized by the Slavic nations and is rightly given a Slavic sounding name. In fact, the entire continent it exists on shares the same name.

Now, my problem rests in the fact that I'm American and know little Russian except simple greetings. I want to create a genuine sounding Slavic name for the land but do not know where to start. Honestly, I do not understand the Slavic tongues' structures and vocabularies. I'm not entirely sure how to phrase this question so I'll be blunt. Simply, I want to know how to create a genuine sounding Slavic place name. Particularly, I want a name that describes the land itself (just as Belarus means "White Russia") or named after an important figure (just like how the U.S. state Pennsylvania is named after William Penn).

答:
Unfortunately, the English Wikipedia does not have an article on Slavic toponymy yet, the best attempt I am able to find is Bulgarian placename etymology giving at least some hints. You can find interesting Slavic roots to play with in the article on Slavic given names.

Additionally, there are some Slavic based conlangs out there, you can honour one of them by employing it in your fictional world, to drop just names Slovio, Interslavic, see also Pan-Slavic language for an overview.

Title: Creating Fictional Slavic Place Names


问:
Is Toki Pona a fast language?
There are well-known and notable differences in speed for natural languages: While a fast language like Spanish is spoken at a speed of about 6–7 syllables per second, a slow language like German, English, or Mandarin is spoken with 3–4 syllables per second. Language speed correlates with the amount of information carried by a syllable: The more information in the syllable, the slower the language speed.

Since Toki Pona has only a limited number of very simple syllables, limiting the amount of information that they can carry, and it seems to have a speech community as well: Is it spoken at a fast pace like Spanish (or even faster) in real life? Or is it spoken at a slow pace like English?

答:
Based off the audio file from this website, and the audio files from this website, we can infer that Toki Pona is a "fast" language. It uses 6 - 8 syllables / second, except with punctuation, where you delay for the same time as English.

Some Youtube videos stick to the contrary, but their speed is slow to make it easier for nonexperienced Toki Pona speakers.

Title: Is Toki Pona a fast language?


问:
what kinds of vocal sounds echo less?
Please bear with me as I elaborate.
I'm looking to create a language for humanoids that live in a set of cave systems and tunnels. While their language may have been 'born' on the surface, they have moved under the ground ages ago. The Ecosystem under the ground is very hostile, and so they had to adapt their language to carry less when spoken.
For this purpose, I'm trying to find out which of the known vocal sounds would be more prevalent in such a language.
(I am a true novice in the field, mind you, so I'm, reading several language construction guides to help in this endeavor)
So, what I'm asking, essentially, is which of the vocal sounds (labial, dental, palatal etc etc) would echo more, and which would echo less. I've searched in vain for an answer, and I don't have a convenient cave to test that in.
Thank you!</p>

答:
It would probably be a question of volume and frequency pattern. Loud sounds would travel further (and thus have more potential for echo). I would like to stress that I too have no cave to try this out, so there is a certain speculative aspect to this answer.

So, avoid vowels (obviously), and voiced sounds (prefer /p/, /t/, /k/, /f/, /s/ over /b/, /d/, /g/, /v/, /z/).

However, such a language would be pretty hard to use, so you'd need to compromise. Assuming low frequency sounds have less energy, the vowels /u/ and /o/ might be suitable, and perhaps the schwa.

Plosives (/p/, /b/, /t/) feature a burst as the air is released, which might also not work well, so you're probably better off using fricatives.

That leaves you with voiceless fricatives: /f/, /th/, /s/, /S/, /h/. Though voiced, nasals might also be suitable, as the mouth is closed during the articulation and thus it is possible to pronounce them without releasing too much acoustic energy.

Title: what kinds of vocal sounds echo less?


问:
Has anyone analysed the invented languages in the Earthsea books?
Ursula K Le Guin's Earthsea stories contain vocabulary and utterances from three invented languages. The first step to fleshing these out into fully developed conlangs would be to list all the examples from the books and make some notes on any regularities or inconsistencies. Has anyone done this and put it up online?</p>

答: There is some information on one of them, Hardic, and a fragmentary word list.


问:
Is there a toki pona hieroglyphics font?
For the toki pona language there is a writing system where each word is replaced by a single logogram or hieroglyph. There is also a web-based converter which allows you to enter a text in toki pona and converts it into a single PNG rendering in said hieroglyphs.

However, I was wondering if there was a way to directly produce texts in hieroglyphs, either as a font, or as a set of individual image files (ie one per word/hieroglyph), which could be used to render texts on webpages etc.

答:
toki!

a, mi jo e sitelen tawa toki pona. nimi ona li linja pona. sina ken anpa e ona kepeken nimi tawa ni.

Hi! Yes, I have a script for toki pona. Its name is linja pona. You can download it by using this link.


答:
If I were to translate, I'd say

The intellect of (the strength of Libya) the many head advisers of the second director of Atlantis...

Reasoning:

"pona sona" - goodness of knowledge (intellect/sensibleness), good knowledge-wise (the intellectually adept)

jan ni li pona sona - this person is intellectually adept (brilliant / intellectual)

"wawa pi ma Lipija" - power/strength of Libya

"poka toki lawa mute" - many head/main talking sides/companions (the many head advisers)

"jan lawa nanpa tu" - second head person (second director/ruler/president)

Some issues I have with the phrase:

Incomplete

The phrase doesn't have a "li" phrase, or verb phrase, as was mentioned, making it, as far as sentences go, incomplete, which doesn't give much any clues for context. Personally, I generally parse sentences like this as a reduced form of "ni li ...", but that's also given conversational context (really "conversational subject li...").

E.g

jan Sanato: "jan o! jan sina li kama anu seme? ike a!"

jan Mikanle: "o awen! o!... a, kama!"

.

Johnatho: "hey! Is your guy coming or what? He's terrible, eh!"

Mickanley: "Just wait!... oh look, here he comes!"

Of course, either way, I can't say if there is any official basis for such a parsing.

Addressing other suggestions:

It was suggested that the parenthesis are to ensure the "wawa pi ma Lipija" isn't mis-parsed separately, however, I don't think this is the case for two reasons:

Unconventional

I have never come across round brackets being used in this manner in toki pona, and it doesn't seem likely since, it would be too confused with the more standard use of round brackets (holding a phrase that isn't part of the sentence, but clarifies it in some way). More likely if this were the case, square brackets or commas would be employed.

Unnecessary

Brackets wouldn't be needed for this purpose since one could not parse "pi wawa" seperately from the subsequent "pi ma Lipija". The reason for this is that "pi" cannot be followed by a lone word, in this case "wawa".

[ pona sona pi [ wawa pi [ma Lipija ] ] ] - The intellect of the power of Libya

[ [ pona sona wawa ] pi [ ma Lipija ] ] - The strong intellect of Libya

To say "Libya's something of/concerning strength", it would likely be structured "pona sona pi ma Lipija pi ijo wawa" or "pona sona pi ma Lipija pi wawa ijo", the second being a bit more on the mark ("concerning strong things" vs. "concerning the strength of things"). Although we translate "pi" as "of", "pi wawa" cannot be used to mean "of strength", and would rather be grammatically incorrect.

The previous translation translates "pona sona" as "the good folklore" and "pi poka" as "near".

Like jan Kipo, I can't quite see where "good folklore" came from, given the basic definition of the words as well as their structure in the sentence, but I can't say if it would really be accepted I guess (*tilts head 90°). For "good folklore", I'd probably use something along the lines of "sona kulupu pona", or perhaps even "sona mama pona".

As for "pi poka", it is conventional to translate it to "near", though, I would shy away from that translation in favor of "of a side(noun)" since I would more use "pi poka pi" for near, though I'm again unsure if it'd be acceptable. If so, in this case though, it's a bit 50/50, since there's no other head noun besides "poka" to clarify. If you wanted "side person (adviser/companion)", you'd more likely say "jan poka".

Title: What is the meaning of this Toki Pona sentence?

Body:
I found a sentence written in order to prove that Toki Pona is a complete language. As far as I know it is a foolish nominal sentence.

What is the English translation?

pona sona pi (wawa pi ma Lipija) poka toki lawa mute pi jan lawa nanpa tu pi ma Atilanisi.


问:
Sciences in toki pona
I managed to translate a lot of things but I'm stuck on a word.
How to say "physics" (knowledge of the nature) in toki pona? A proposition for "nature" would also be appreciated.

linguistics: sona toki

geology: sona ma

medicine: sona pimejo

mechanics: sona wawa

quantum mechanics: sona lili

...

I did not find any solution on https://glosbe.com/en/mis_tok/.

答:
To capture all of physics, perhaps "sona pi pali ijo" or simply "sona pali" (a knowledge of action). I prefer the former, since persons may tend to think only of human action with the latter, which may translate to "behavioral science", whereas the former is a bit more precise. </p>

<p>Physics is a general field that focuses on the behavior of things in our universe, finding explanations for their actions and the interactions that occur between things. The term is also a little more precise than "sona ijo", since Physics doesn't (correct me if I'm wrong) really answer questions like 'what structure a thing has', but would rather more specifically answer 'how did the thing's structure come to be'.    </p>

Title: Sciences in toki pona

Body:
To capture all of physics, perhaps "sona pi pali ijo" or simply "sona pali" (a knowledge of action). I prefer the former, since persons may tend to think only of human action with the latter, which may translate to "behavioral science", whereas the former is a bit more precise.

Physics is a general field that focuses on the behavior of things in our universe, finding explanations for their actions and the interactions that occur between things. The term is also a little more precise than "sona ijo", since Physics doesn't (correct me if I'm wrong) really answer questions like 'what structure a thing has', but would rather more specifically answer 'how did the thing's structure come to be'.


问:
Do toki pona speakers, in practice, permit compounding more than three words?
In toki pona, compounding multiple words together is possible. For example:

tomo: room/box/structure/home

  telo: water/fluid

  tomo telo: bathroom

It also allows compounding three words together:

tomo pi telo nasa: a bar

  kiwen mun laso: blue moon rocks

This is where the official grammar stops, and the official stance is that larger statements are ungrammatical. However, I am wondering if it is common in practice for people to compound more than three words.

Suppose I wanted to say “the broken yellow dome hut.” The official grammar would have me say something in a full sentence:

tomo sike pakala li jelo.

However, despite the rules of grammar, do people ever say:

tomo sike pakala jelo.

Or include other compounds of many words with pi?

(Note: I am not asking whether this is grammatical according to official rules. I am asking whether colloquial toki pona permits this.)

答:
(I do think this would be more appropriate as a comment somewhere, but sigh)

As the others have pointed out, the primary reason for a rarity of noun phrases beyond three words is due to an increasing difficulty to understand the phrase with each added modifier, however it is my hypothesis at least that this may only truly apply to written communication as opposed to verbal.

Though I have little experience verbally communicating with toki pona (I can't find much anyone who wants to learn in my vicinity TT^TT), it isn't hard to imagine that the aid of body language, and vocalization, perhaps among other things, could make longer strings possible, without being too difficult to grasp.

The only thing beyond that is how reasonable the phrase is. I think in jan Masiju's example, whether using verbal or written communication, my brain would always break at "waso".


问:
Can Kēlen truly be considered verb-free?
It has been claimed that the conlang Kēlen, winner of the 2009 Smiley award, is supposed to challenge Greenberg's universal of always having a noun-verb distinction by eliminating verbs. In light of the fact that Kēlen has a special word-class called relationals, which are four predicating words that take noun phrase arguments, is it not more factual to analyse the relationals of Kēlen as a very limited and closed class of verbs? They do seem to fulfill the same function words called "verbs" do in other languages, and are necessary for predication — another domain typically reserved for verbs (even if we assume zero-copula).</p>

答:
Using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage as a good baseline of what a human language can communicate, there are several core verbs:

Mental predicates: THINK, KNOW, WANT, FEEL, SEE, HEAR

Speech: SAY

Actions, events, movement: DO, HAPPEN, MOVE

Location, existence, specification: BE (SOMEWHERE), THERE IS, BE (SOMEONE/SOMETHING)

LA is clearly polysemous for THERE IS, BE (SOMEWHERE), BE (SOMEONE/SOMETHING), and probably also marks PART in reverse.

NI probably covers DO and MOVE.

SE is even higher level, expressing the verb of give, as well as primes like FEEL and SAY.

So the claim that Kēlen does not have verbs is patently false.

There are in fact natural languages with even more restricted verb inventories than Kēlen, such as Jingulu, which has been analysed as only have verbs for go, come, and do. (I haven't seen an NSM style analysis of Jingulu, I wonder how they would see the verbs like THINK etc being expressed in Jingulu?)


问:
IPA for Voiced Velopharyngeal Stop?
A conlang I am working on contains the nasal syllabic consonants [m̩] and [n̩] fairly frequently.  It seems like it would be a natural step for the language to develop what I would call a voiced velopharyngeal stop occurring before those syllabic consonants are used some of the time, to add emphasis.  This stop is formed by stopping air from flowing into the nasal cavity with the velum while the mouth is in position to form the following consonant, and then releasing it into the nasal cavity.  Think of it as trying to make a “g” sound through your nose only.

Ex:  [ĩɲ'tⁿn̩] => [ĩɲ't̚?ⁿn̩], where the ? represents the consonant in question.

Note:  This is not a glottal stop, though that sound can occur as well in this language.

I have been trying to transcribe the language with the IPA since it helps specify pronunciation of the weird vocabulary of sounds, but I cannot find a symbol in the IPA that represents this sound, even though it seems to me fairly plausible for a language of this type.

The closest I have found is the symbol for a velopharyngeal fricative [ʩ] in extensions to the IPA.  However this still is clearly distinct from the sound I am describing.  Additionally, it appears to only occur as a speech defect and never as a proper consonant in a language.

What is the best way to transcribe this specific sound using the IPA?  Is there an allotted symbol that I just could not find?  What would be the best way to go about phonetically transcribing the sound if there is no exact symbol in the IPA?  Is there a better approximation than [ʩ]?  Additionally, what about the unvoiced counterpart?

I apologize for any mistakes in my use of the IPA, I am still learning.

答:
What I think you meant to ask is to create a stop consonant by stopping air flowing through the nasal cavity while the mouth is open, then releasing it only through the nose while the mouth is closed.

The problem is that having no airstream block in the mouth can mean one of two things: producing an oral vowel, such as /a/, or making no sound at all. There isn't a plosive-like sound for stopping air flowing through the nose, as there is with the mouth (in multiple places). The way you can test this is by producing a sound like /aãaãaãa/, in which you are repeatedly stopping the nasal airflow, and yet the vowel sound remains continuous because there is no stop of air in the mouth. So a stop created solely by blocking the nasal passage is impossible.

The example you give for this sound is [ĩɲ't̚?ⁿn̩], where the [?] is supposed to represent the unknown sound. This has a [t̚] with the diacritic for no release after the consonant, and a nasal release [ⁿ] after it. However, there can't possibly be anything between [t̚] and [ⁿ]. The [t̚] means that when the consonant ends, you are still blocking both oral and nasal airflow, and the [ⁿ] means that you are releasing nasal airflow while keeping oral airflow closed. There is no articulation possible in between these: if there were an oral release, the diacritic on [t̚] would have no meaning, and there could no longer be a nasal release [ⁿ] after it. The only possibility is to add another consonant, or extend the [t] as a long consonant [tː], which continues to block all airflow.

Going through your definition, nasal release seems to fit (another possibility that fits just as well is a pre-stopped nasal, if the nasal consonant is supposed to be more prominent than the stop):

This stop is formed by stopping air from flowing into the nasal cavity with the velum

Stopping airflow is a property of a stop consonant. A stop consonant stops the airflow in the mouth as well as the airflow in the nasal cavity. (Stopping only the airflow in the nasal cavity is impossible here, as explained above.)

while the mouth is in position to form the following consonant

Simultaneous articulation is possible, but it depends on what the following consonant is. If the following consonant is in the same place of articulation, that means there's no change.

and then releasing it into the nasal cavity.

Releasing the stop only in the nasal cavity means producing a nasal sound. Nasal release (and nasals in general) would continue to block the airflow in the mouth, but allow it to pass through the nose.

Title: IPA for Voiced Velopharyngeal Stop?


问:
Constructing a language based on existing languages from different families
I wonder how it is possible to construct a language based on the existing languages. My country has Indo-European, Altaic, Semitic, and a small portion of Dravidian and Caucasic languages. I am thinking of a constructed language based on all these languages.</p>

答:
There should be no problem in doing so -- mix and match features from the various source languages. A precedent for this, for example, is English:

The syntax/grammar is mainly Germanic, including many function words

The vocabulary is mixed (Latin, Norse, Anglo-Saxon, Norman French, Indian, etc.)

I would choose one language as the "base" (in the English case, it's Old English/Anglo-Saxon) and then modify it by replacing/adding some of the vocabulary from the different languages. Also, some grammatical features (morphological endings, etc.) could be mixed up.

If you do it iteratively (i.e., revising the language multiple times, simulating contact between the current version and another influencing language), you can also take into account other types of changes, such as dropping endings that are harder to pronounce or making higher frequent words shorter and less regular.

What you do exactly is up to you, but there shouldn't be any problem from a linguistic point of view.


答:
Possible? Definitely yes!

But I want to give you some more hints on how to do it:

Based on common features: When choosing the sounds for your conlang, prefer those that have broad coverage in your language base, and avoid those that are specific to only one. Do the same for syllable structure; look at what consonants can cluster with each other in a lot of your base languages.

Select common words: Look what words already have crossed the language boundaries and appear as loan words in other languages. These words are hot candidates for inclusion in your conlang. Note also that the process of loaning words tends to result in phonological and morphological simplifications; consider adopting these simplifications as well.

Morphology: Look for common categories expressed by morphology in the base languages and use a simplified system. While Arabic morphology (inflectional and derivational) is elegant and impressive, it does not carry well over to languages with a different structure (no triconsonantal roots). But you still can borrow some elements from it (e.g., prefixes and suffixes). Make sure to create at least some derivational morphology; it will simplify the language and the process of creating the vocab.

Syntax: Check out the basic word order and how to form relative and subordinate clauses in your base language and create a syntax from this information. Also, look for word order phenomena (adjectives before or after the noun, prepositions or postpositions, genitives before or after the noun) and decide how to do them.

Title: Constructing a language based on existing languages from different families

Body: I wonder how it is possible to construct a language based on the existing languages. My country has Indo-European, Altaic, Semitic, and a small portion of Dravidian and Caucasic languages. I am thinking of a constructed language based on all these languages.</p>


问:
Is this sonority hierarchy correct?

I need to sort these phonemes properly before I get into clusters and making syllables, but I'm not sure I did it right.

答:
Sonority refers to the amplitude of the sound signal; ie the louder a sound is, the higher it ranks. Vowels are loudest, as they are voiced and generally less constricted than most consonants. Within the vowels, the open ones (eg /a/),  are louder than the closed ones (/i/, /u/). Then laterals, nasals, fricatives, and finally plosives. Within each of these groups (where applicable) the voiced variant is higher than the voiceless one (eg /g/ > /k/, and /d/ > /t/).

This matches the ranking in your image, so I would say it is correct.

Title: Is this sonority hierarchy correct?


问:
Are there any constructed languages designed with a constructed script, both aiming to be international and auxiliary?
Hangul is a beautiful constructed script, used to write the natural languages of Korean, Jeju, Hokkien, and Cia-Cia, perhaps others.  The shape of the letters mimic the shape of the mouth, and a letter for a voiceless consonant is directly related to the letter for its voiced counterpart.  Personally, I think it's brilliant and should be adopted worldwide, perhaps with some additions to consider sounds that do not exist in Korean (by far the most dominant language using it).

One idea of constructed international auxiliary languages is that those languages should have a simple and logical grammar to be easy to learn.  But it appears most of those languages are still written with the Latin alphabet, which doesn't have much or any connection between the look of a letter and its pronunciation — this still needs to be learned by heart.  A learner cannot derive the pronunciation of a previously unknown letter from its shape.

Have there been any designs of constructed languages, aiming to be international auxiliary languages (thus not counting fictional alien/fantasy languages), which from the start had a dedicated constructed script designed to be as simple as possible, yet universally applicable?

答:
I found one language called Bliss Symbolics that is

It is an International Auxiliary Language

It has its own character set, not based on Latin characters or any other character set.

I also found another IAL that doesn't use latin characters called Temenia that uses Greek characters instead of Latin.  While this language doesn't apply exactly to your question, you seem to be interested in NON-Latin based character IAL's.


问:
What is the word “li” in Toki pona, grammatically?
In Toki pona, words are never inflected, and many words can act as a noun, verb or adjective in different contexts. The word "li" usually separates the subject from a predicate, and “e” goes before the object (in SVO order). With soweli (animal), moku (eat, food) and kili (fruit), one can say:

soweli li moku e kili

The animal eats the fruit.

This is the usage listed in the dictionary section of the official book, Toki Pona: the Language of Good:

li. PARTICLE (between any subject except mi alone or sina alone and its verb; also to introduce a new verb for the same subject)

But there is another usage, as seen in phrase:

soweli li ijo

Animals are things (ijo means thing).

It seems that this usage increases the ambiguity, because

soweli li moku

can mean both ”The animal is eating” (with moku as an intransitive verb), or ”animals are food”.

What role does the li actually have in this phrase?

答:
Calling li a particle or predicate marker is correct and not misleading. A Toki Pona clause can have more than one predicate. li never marks a non-predicate. It also appears on every predicate except when that predicate is the first one in the clause and the subject is exactly mi or exactly sina (101) or when preceded by the vocative/imperative particle o (102).

I think a good way to analyze this would be to say that every indicative predicate obligatorily has a predicate marker, but sometimes it's null.

```<code>mi  moku  li   pakala. (101)
I   food  LI  mistake.
I eat and destroy.

o   lukin     e    ni. (102)
IMP   see  DObj  that.
watch this.
</code>```

Here's a fragment of (my best guess of) the Toki Pona grammar. I haven't seen any examples of stacking imperative phrases, so I don't know whether look and say would be o lukin li toki or o lukin o toki.

Also, in Toki Pona verb phrases and noun phrases are different syntactically. For instance, *sina moku e soweli ala soweli. cannot be used to mean are you a vegetarian.

```<code>LI        := 0 | "li"
PredInd   := LI VP {PP} | LI NP
ClauseInd := NP [PredInd]
PredImp   := "o" VP {PP} | "o" NP
ClauseImp := NP PredImp | PredImp
</code>```

I'm not thrilled with this analysis because of the asymmetry between indicative and imperative clauses. Unifying the clause types, however, would predict that *li moku. is valid. As far as I can tell, Toki Pona does not permit null subjects in indicative clauses.

I can think of two potential alternative analyses for li: A) it's a pronoun (like in Example 4 Longgu on this WALS article or B) it's a preposition.  I'll try to show that both of those analyses lead to bad predictions.

A) li as pronoun.

This falls apart for a couple of reasons. It predicts that mi moku li pakala would be invalid and that the correct form would be mi moku mi pakala. In reality, both forms are fine.

li as a pronoun also predicts that *li moku would be valid since it would contain an explicit subject under that analysis.

Also, *mi moku li. cannot be used to mean I eat it.

B) li as preposition.

If li were a preposition, (103) and (104) would both be valid.

```<code>Mi pakala e moku. (103)
I ruin the food.

*Mi e moku li pakala. (104)
*I ruin the food.
</code>```

If li were a preposition, the following would be invalid.

```<code>Ona mute li toki ala toki? (105)
Are they speaking?
</code>```

Body:
Calling li a particle or predicate marker is correct and not misleading. A Toki Pona clause can have more than one predicate. li never marks a non-predicate. It also appears on every predicate except when that predicate is the first one in the clause and the subject is exactly mi or exactly sina (101) or when preceded by the vocative/imperative particle o (102).

I think a good way to analyze this would be to say that every indicative predicate obligatorily has a predicate marker, but sometimes it's null.

mi  moku  li   pakala. (101)
I   food  LI  mistake.
I eat and destroy.

o   lukin     e    ni. (102)
IMP   see  DObj  that.
watch this.

Here's a fragment of (my best guess of) the Toki Pona grammar. I haven't seen any examples of stacking imperative phrases, so I don't know whether look and say would be o lukin li toki or o lukin o toki.

Also, in Toki Pona verb phrases and noun phrases are different syntactically. For instance, *sina moku e soweli ala soweli. cannot be used to mean are you a vegetarian.

LI        := 0 | "li"
PredInd   := LI VP {PP} | LI NP
ClauseInd := NP [PredInd]
PredImp   := "o" VP {PP} | "o" NP
ClauseImp := NP PredImp | PredImp

I'm not thrilled with this analysis because of the asymmetry between indicative and imperative clauses. Unifying the clause types, however, would predict that *li moku. is valid. As far as I can tell, Toki Pona does not permit null subjects in indicative clauses.

I can think of two potential alternative analyses for li: A) it's a pronoun (like in Example 4 Longgu on this WALS article or B) it's a preposition.  I'll try to show that both of those analyses lead to bad predictions.

A) li as pronoun.

This falls apart for a couple of reasons. It predicts that mi moku li pakala would be invalid and that the correct form would be mi moku mi pakala. In reality, both forms are fine.

li as a pronoun also predicts that *li moku would be valid since it would contain an explicit subject under that analysis.

Also, *mi moku li. cannot be used to mean I eat it.

B) li as preposition.

If li were a preposition, (103) and (104) would both be valid.

Mi pakala e moku. (103)
I ruin the food.

*Mi e moku li pakala. (104)
*I ruin the food.

If li were a preposition, the following would be invalid.

Ona mute li toki ala toki? (105)
Are they speaking?


问:
How can syntactic ambiguity with pronouns be avoided?
Due to the way pronouns work in place of any particular noun (subject or object) in the sentence, this often leads to ambiguous grammatical constructions.

Take this phrase in English for example:

Adam sent the essay to James to help him with his writing

Do him and his refer to Adam (where James will help edit Adam's essay or give him suggestions) or James (where Adam is sending James an exemplar to help James see examples of good writing)?

How would ambiguities like this be avoided in constructed languages? I know a simple solution is to just eliminate pronouns from the language but is there an alternative solution to allow pronouns to be used unambiguously?

答:
In addition to Adarain’s answer, the ambiguity can also be resolved in an out-of-the-box way. For example, English can use the former or the latter in place of an inflected form of he to distinguish between the two cases. Languages like German go a step further and would just use this instead of the latter in most cases. These words do not replace pronouns, they just complement them. This gives the nice feature of preserving a possible ambiguity where it is intended for poetic or dramatic purposes while removing it entirely where clarity is desired.

Another out-of-the-box way is to restrict the way in which such constructions can be constructed. Trying to think of how German handles the situation I realised that the sentence translated directly is unambiguous in German:

Adam hat James seinen Aufsatz geschickt, um ihm beim Schreiben zu helfen.

The only way this can be interpreted is Adam helping James just by the way the grammar works. Adam is the sentence’s subject and the infinitive construction can only be tied to the subject. If you wanted James helping Adam, you need to work around by using a subordinate clause:

Adam hat James seinen Aufsatz geschickt, damit er ihm beim schreiben hilft.


问:
How does one express "want to want" in toki pona?
For example, "I do not want to want opium"

For example, this doesn't work, it is a yes-no question!

mi wile ala wile e ijo nasa

     Do I want a drug?

      ? Do I want not-want a drug?

The positive doesn't seem to work either

mi wile wile e ijo nasa

      * I want [in a wanting manner?] a drug.

答:
I think you can express something like this as (101). If we imagine a speaker addicted to using their smartphone, they might say something like this.

```<code>Mi  wile ike    e  ilo  toki. (101)
1sg want bad D.O. tool speak
</code>```

I think to want badly in English would map to wile mute, since you're talking about extent rather than making a value judgment.

Making a value judgment and describing wanting something as egodystonic are not exactly the same thing, but they are similar, at least when talking about oneself.

Body:
I think you can express something like this as (101). If we imagine a speaker addicted to using their smartphone, they might say something like this.

Mi  wile ike    e  ilo  toki. (101)
1sg want bad D.O. tool speak

I think to want badly in English would map to wile mute, since you're talking about extent rather than making a value judgment.

Making a value judgment and describing wanting something as egodystonic are not exactly the same thing, but they are similar, at least when talking about oneself.


问:
What decides where is the break between syllables?
I'm getting started with creating a language and I run into trouble when I started using rules I devised for protolanguage (e.g. only open syllables).

However I run into trouble when I tried to apply it to string [epse] which I'd syllabilized as [ep.se] rather than [e.pse]. I'm assuming I did something wrong with sonority hierarchy but I failed to find resources about what exactly.

EDIT: I would prefer generic rules for syllabication but for the Y problem - the rules I set so far is (C)CV syllable where:

If there are two consonants exactly one of them is a fricative (s, x or ʂ)

Fricative must follow plosives, nasals and trills but must precede lateral approximants (l)

答: You are the conlang designer, and you are in power to decide that epse is syllabified as e.pse by design of the language. This is not as unnatural as it might look at first sight for a native speaker of English, in Classical Greek, the letter Ψ (psi) can occur word-initially and is always considered a unit for syllabification.