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1709 | How to structure verb phrases (as opposed to noun phrases)?
In my question about formal vs. casual noun phrases, I got to the point of distinguishing between causal and formal nouns.
Notice that the noun phrases all end with -a, the noun-creator affix. That is because in English at least, to my understanding, noun phrases have the form:
[preceding stuff] [trailing noun]
So we can get by with always appending -a to the last word, making the whole thing a noun phrase.
But I'm not sure it works the same with "verb phrases" in English.
grow up
wake up
burn bridge
raise a glass
make a toast
...
I can only think of 2-word examples, but in these examples, the verb is first, not last. These are what I would call "formal" verb phrases, because they are basically standardized idioms or something like that. They go together. But you can extend the verb with modifiers/adverbs, like:
eventually quickly wake up
[preceding casual modifiers] [verb] [following formal modifiers]
Do I have this correct?
Are there languages which are more strict and make it so all "verb phrases" and noun phrases have the same general form?
[preceding formal modifiers] [verb/noun]
If that would be the case, then I would say (in the conlang), something like:
When I was young I wanted to up grow
I just up wake
Please don't bridge burn
That would greatly simplify the system, because you could join words in a formal chain with a simple suffix on each preceding word, like -o or -e in the image above, and then the final word in the verb phrase would end in -i. But if I have to allow for putting things on either side, then I might need to have prefixes in addition to suffixes, and it might get more complex. So looking for inspiration how other languages have handled this.
If I allowed having it after the verb, "kick it up a notch." -> "kiki eriq eyap enav enatxa"
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/grammar/british-grammar/phrasal-verbs-and-multi-word-verbs
It appears German has this form, where the verb goes last.
What became phrasal verbs (the technical term for what you have noticed) in English are descended from what became separable prefix verbs in German. In most simple sentences, the prefix separates (hence the name) from the verb and goes at the end of the clause; it's only when the verb itself is at the end of the clause that the separable prefix comes before it.
that said, phrasal verb particles and separable prefixes are mostly descended from prepositions - meaning they used to go before nouns that are no longer expressed. That's why they go where they go, they are etymologically verb complements, which go after the verb. If you want them to come before the verb, you need SOV word order.
In Japanese, the head of either a noun-phrase or a verb-phrase comes last. — Could you maybe not put the content in dim-on-black?
Verbs like "wake up" and "turn on" are known as phrasal verbs in English, and they have some very interesting syntactic properties. For example, "turn on" (phrasal, meaning "betray") acts differently from "turn on" (not phrasal, meaning "activate"): "she turned on him" versus "she turned him on".
For the most part, these are a peculiarity of English syntax. German has its own version, known as the separable prefix verbs, since a piece of them sometimes detaches and moves to the end of the sentence (aufgehen "to get up" → ich gehe auf "I get up").
But most other Indo-European languages just represent them by adding a morpheme to the verb, like Latin gradior "walk", ingredior "go in", ēgredior "go out", transgredior "go across", regredior "go back", dīgredior "go away", and so on. Pretty much any English word ending in -gress was formed this way: ingress, egress, transgress, regress, digress, etc.
Another option, more common in East Asia, is known as serial verbs. You put multiple verbs together in a row to form a more complex meaning. Here's an example from Maonan (taken from Wikipedia which cites Lu Tian Qiao 2008):
ɦe2 sə:ŋ3 lət8 pa:i1 dzau4 van6 ma1 ɕa5 vɛ4 kau5 fin1 kam5
I want walk go take return come try do look accomplish ?
Very literally, "I want to walk, go, take, return, come, try, do, look, and accomplish. Okay?" More idiomatically, "Could I walk over, bring it back, and try it out?" Those more elaborate verbs are formed from several simpler verbs strung together without any nouns or other elements in between.
Phrases like "make a toast" are just idioms, and they act like any other verb and object in English. You can "make a quick toast" or "make another toast", for example. There's nothing special about them syntactically.
Are there examples of phrasal verbs in English which are 3, 4+ words long? I can't think of any that are that long, and how you would translate the longest of them into a prefix like in Latin. Would be great to see an example of that.
@Lance As a rule, phrasal verbs in English consist of a verb and a preposition, so two words.
Interesting and related note, in Chinese there are often 2 or 3 word serial-verb constructions (SVC), like those found in The Linguistic Encoding of Motion Events in Chinese "Ma Qing pay-finish fee,last one CL from car-inside stride-exit-go".
@Lance Yep, one of the key features of serial verbs is that you can usually chain them together. The Maonan example above consists of ten verb words in a row!
Interesting, reading that many verbs in a row it's hard to make sense of it, so maybe I just need to learn the language :]
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1708 | Technique to use lots of homonyms and not make things confusing in a conlang?
I just learned today really how prevalent homophones are in Chinese, some of which are listed here. I asked a similar question about how to say Chinese sentences using all the variations of meaning of a homophone here.
We dried the sweet smelling anhydride into a liver powder.
It would be like:
We gān the gān smelling gān into a gān powder.
Now I'm curious. If there are only 400-something Chinese syllables, times 4 tones, so about 1600 possible 1-syllable words. Yet there are at least 10k characters in use, meaning roughly 5 meanings are possible per phonetic syllable. I am not sure I am doing calculations right, but that is at least true for gān from my other post, which has at least 5 unrelated meanings.
My question is, how far can you take this? What other languages have such a high degree of reuse of phonetic words? Natural or constructed languages. English has some, but IMO to a much lesser extent (I know of a handful of words with 2 distinct meanings, like "bear" the animal vs. "to carry", but 99% of words have 1 general meaning, as opposed to Chinese which has way way more homophones). How do you not create confusion when devising a system like this?
English avoids confusion when using the multiple meanings of a single homophone by the use of affixes, as in:
The bear beared the bear bearing bears.
But if there were 5 unrelated meanings of the word "bear", then I don't see how it could not create confusion.
I have ported 4,000 words to the conlang I'm working on so far, but they are all highly generic words, plus animal names (so far). In Chinese, they have about 100 1-character animal names, then the rest of the animals are derived from these 100 combining them together or with adjectives (hippo = river horse, panda = cat bear, etc.). But now I am thinking of how to port things from these categories, each which have thousands if not way more "types" of things:
body parts (tongue, bones, muscles), diseases (malaria), rocks (emerald), occupations (ballet), material (cotton), food (vegetable, bread, etc.), building type, land forms, flowers, trees, fish, molecules, etc..
I was also looking at the Organic Chemistry nomenclature in Chinese, which has seemingly random and meaningless names for various organic compounds, with barely any phonetic resemblance. In essence, they are just reusing existing sounds/homophones, adding one more meaning to the sound/word. If I could do this, and do it well, then I could basically pick a word like "wolf" and call a specific animal a "wolf", a molecule a "wolf molecule", and a building a "wolf building", basically creating new unrelated meanings for the same underlying word, and theoretically there would be no confusion. But this is a very foreign concept to me, so (a) I'm not sure it would even work out in the end, or (b) how confusing it could be come, and (c) how to proactively avoid creating confusing scenarios.
How did Chinese not make things confusing when creating these homophones? Coming from a programming/software background, the only way I could see this reliably being done is to have millions of sentences in a database, and every time you add a new homophone, you would check if it would create confusion against the millions of sentences. Even that wouldn't be enough, you would have to try and construct sentences from each homophone to make sure no confusion would take place. But that seems like an insurmountable challenge, so curious how a natural language like Chinese has accomplished this. And also curious if there are other constructed languages that have created a high degree of homophones like this. But more generally, wondering how I could take advantage of this sort of high-homophone-density system in the conlang I'm working on.
"...have millions of sentences in a database, and every time you add a new homophone, you would check if it would create confusion against the millions of sentences." This is basically what natural languages do. A word is missing and someone starts saying X to represent it. If it creates confusion in to many or too important contexts it's less likely to catch on.
Coming from a programming/software background, the only way I could see this reliably being done is to have millions of sentences in a database, and every time you add a new homophone, you would check if it would create confusion against the millions of sentences.
That's basically how it works. Remember that the purpose of every natural language is to communicate, and every natural language is under enormous evolutionary pressure to fulfill this purpose.
Suppose I want to bring a new word into English; perhaps I want to talk about the purviews of ancient Sumerian deities, so I borrow the Sumerian word me. It turns out that the purviews of ancient Sumerian deities are very cool and come up in conversation all the time, and soon everyone in my social circle wants to talk about them.
Will the borrowed word me catch on, or will the homophone with "may" (or the homograph with "me") be too confusing? Well, speakers will find out pretty quickly. If it's causing problems and impeding communication, they'll switch to "purview" or "domain" or borrow another word like partzum that's less ambiguous. After all, their goal is to convey some particular meaning, and they'll choose their words to achieve this goal. If a word doesn't help with this purpose, it won't be used.
We see this happen all the time in language evolution. If a word is too ambiguous to be useful, it will be replaced. In most varieties of Occitan, the word for "rooster" is a descendant of Latin gallum—except in Gascony, where it's been replaced by a word for "vicar". Why? Because sound changes in Gascon caused the descendant of gallum "rooster" to sound the same as the descendant of cattum "cat" (compare castellum > Gascon castet). This ambiguity was apparently unacceptable to the Gascon farmers, who started calling their roosters "vicars" instead; the context makes it clear enough if you're talking about a farm animal or a priest, so this homophone wasn't an issue.
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1680 | How to decide if you should create complex words, or multiple words?
I am thinking of examples like these (in English and Vietnamese from Google Translate):
creationism: thuyết sáng tạo
create: tạo
creatable
creatively
When do you make it one word, and when do you make it many words? Is it the particular language style (agglutinative vs. isolating, etc.)? What about when you combine those words with other words:
creationist people
It seems to me that "concepts" broadly defined don't always map to one word. Only a few concepts map to one word, and it depends on the language. Concepts can be many words, and somehow by saying when to make it one word vs. many words, we can aid in the memorization process of mapping new concepts to sequences of (fuzzily-defined) "words".
In my conlang, I am thinking (initially) about making it so you can do like English and create a single word for "creationism" by combining:
bam: create
yan: -tion
yog: -ism
And maybe connect them with an -e-, like:
bameyaneyoga
But then why not make "creationism team" one word too:
bameyaneyogetima
In fact, why not make all noun phrases one word? Are there languages like this?
Or the reverse, why not make all noun phrases be composed of separate words/atoms?
bam yan yog tima
Side note: Is there any research outlining the mental toll either approach takes, or the benefits it provides to learning, memorization, or speaking?
I am having a hard time deciding, from a purity standpoint, what would be better for a minimal language, something like English where we have a mixture of separate words and complex-multi-part-words, or something like Vietnamese (or something even more atomic) where everything is composed of individual words (even all just one syllable each).
My question is, what factors should be weighed when making this decision on how to structure more complex concepts?
As a rule of thumb, when the combined words become something more than their concepts combines. e.g. waist coat --> waistcoat. A waistcoat is more than a garment; it's a statement of social status.
This is mostly about the 'look and feel' of your language.
Some languages (eg Japanese) are 'analytic', where you have many different words/particles to express grammatical relationships. So you will have texts containing lots of short words. Other languages (eg Finnish) are 'synthetic', ie you express grammatical relationships by adding affixes to the word stem. Here you get fewer but longer words in your texts. This applies to a certain degree to all languages.
It is the same with compound nouns. In English you can say bottle of beer, using of to express the relation between beer and bottle, whereas in German you simply say Bierflasche, where the ordering of the morphemes within the word determines their relationship. So in English you have on average shorter words, in German longer.
As for cognitive effort: I have not seen any research, but I would assume the difference must be negligible, otherwise on type of language would have died out in favour of the other -- either you learn more words, or you learn rules that form more words (and the frequent ones you'd memorise anyway).
So think about how you want your texts to look like: few long words -- favour complex and compound words; many shorter words -- use particles to bind the items together. Also, you could bake in some cultural associations: many Asian languages are analytic, so having short words might evoke associations with Asian cultures with your target audience. This is something to bear in mind when using your conlang.
As an aside: depending on how you define "word", this is one of the reasons for the eskimo-words-for-snow myth: as far as I know, Inuit is very synthetic, so phrases ("the snow that falls in the morning and is powder dry") would be expressed in a single "word", where English uses a whole phrase instead. And thus it appears that there are many words meaning "snow", when it's really only "many phrases that describe different kinds of snow".
Aren't synthetic and analytic the other way around? In particular, I distinctly remember Inuktitut being specifically called out as "polysynthetic"
@NoName You are correct, my apologies! I have corrected the answer.
The difference really comes down to how you define a "word".
You've got a lot of units that you're combining together to convey more elaborate concepts. Are you putting "words" together to make "phrases", or are you putting "morphemes" together to make "words"?
One common definition is that, the separations between words are the boundaries phonological processes can't cross. Under this analysis, French noun phrases are actually just words with some spaces inside them.
Another common definition is that, the separations between words are wherever people write a space. But this depends on the writing system, not on the language itself.
A third is, words are put together by one set of rules (morphology) and phrases are put together by a different set of rules (syntax). But there are definitely commonalities between how these two sets of rules work; how do you decide which group to categorize a certain rule into?
Fundamentally, the definition of a word is "whatever is the most useful for explaining the data". And since you're inventing the data, you can have it be whatever you want it to be.
Have you got any references/sources for those definitions? Despite having a PhD in linguistics I haven't come across any of them...
@OliverMason They're definitions I've presented in intro linguistics classes, but my experience is that professional linguists don't tend to focus on defining "words" except insofar as it's useful for a particular application. I've seen the first one used in discussions of phonology, the second one used in corpus linguistics, and the third one used in discussions of syntax; I'll see if I can find examples.
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1678 | How to tell if having trailing noun/verb/adjective modifiers will work?
I have basically landed on the desire to create a conlang with the following features (for now):
Only one syllable base words, which have the form cvc ccvc or cvcc (consonant and vowel). There are only about 1k-2k possibilities based on my phonology.
All other words are derived from these base words.
I might add cvcvc words, of which there are at least 50k possibilities.
But in essence, words never end in a vowel.
These "base" words symbolize the union of the 3:
Verb: i (action)
Noun: a (object)
Adjective: u (feature)
So to make it into one of these 3 forms, this is what my question is. On one side, looking at Mini lang, adding a leading standalone vowel makes it so it clearly says "what comes next is a noun/verb/adjective phrase". However, I don't really like the sound of it given all my words end in consonants, it sounds too choppy. I much more like the sound of languages like italian or spanish, which mix ending in vowels with ending in consonants. The vowel-ending makes it seemingly more fluid.
So instead of doing it exactly like Mini lang, I was thinking of have a trailing joined vowel, at the last word of the noun/verb/adjective phrase.
So take this English sentence:
I quickly walked with the big gray wolf.
So while in Mini lang, (I think) you would write it sort of like this (I don't know Mini lang, so this just uses the standalon vowel letters and makes up the remaining words according to my patterns):
a mim u kwik i wak u kon dan big a gris wolf.
([object] I [feature] quick [action] walk [feature] with the big [object] gray wolf)
So it's choppy sounding. But prefixing with the standalone vowel makes it clear that what follows fits a certain pattern.
However, change it up and make the vowel joined to the end of the last word in the pattern, and it sounds smoother:
mima kwiku waki kon dan bigu gris wolfa.
But my question is, will this work out? Will it create confusion? I don't know how to reason about this and tell if it would work in the end for an SVO language. What should I learn to figure this out ,or if you know if it will work or not, what is your thinking?
Basically this is a question about the viability of two similar approaches:
Prefixing a phrase with a standalone vowel.
Suffixing the last word of a phrase with a joined vowel.
You're already inflecting, why not double down? Go ahead and put the noun/verb/adjective marker on one end, and some sort of PNG or TAM or other agreement marker on the other end. The simplest one would be to just mark the modifier for the type of word it modifies. And you don't have to limit yourself to adjective modifying noun or verb: your own sentence has a prepositional phrase that could be parsed as a noun (wolf) modifying an adjective (kon)
Putting a marker onto an entire phrase to indicate its role in the sentence is fairly common. We see it in English for example, where we stick 's onto a noun phrase to indicate it's the possessor of something else. In English, we specifically put this marker on a phrase, not a word, unlike in Latin:
The (king of England)'s name
*The king's of England name
The main thing to watch out for is that you can end up with a lot of these markers piling up. In English, we avoid this by always putting the marker after the phrase, and the marked phrase before its head (the thing it's attached to), which means the markers always end up inside the phrase. Sumerian puts the marker after the phrase, but puts the phrase after its head, so the markers end up on the edge of the phrase and can pile up:
mu ensik ŋirsu=ak=ak=še
mu (ensik (ŋirsu=ak )=ak )=še
name (ruler (Girsu=of )=of )=for
"for the name of the ruler of Girsu"
But this isn't necessarily a problem. Sumerian did just fine with these stacks.
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1687 | Why does English have the word "say", "talk", and "tell", on what to create words for in a conlang?
I am going through word lists in a few different languages and am noticing what they make into words. In Hebrew, for example, they have words both for to x and to be x-ed, like "to merge" and "to be merged". So that could in theory double the vocabulary count. Those revolve around the same base concept and could be done by adding the equivalent of be to the base word.
In English, similarly, we have words like "to say", "to talk", and "to tell". I am getting the sense that synonyms (while these may not be synonyms they are close) are basically words which have the same base concept underlying them, but have a different history associated with them which they mentally invoke (like what I said here about "calculus" vs. "logic" vs. "algebra"). That is, they invoke a slightly different set of mental imagery, even if the base concept they are representing is the same.
So "say" to me means "express words", "talk" means "create words", and "tell" means "inform with words". Something like that, that's at least my initial impression.
So my question is, why do languages have words which can easily be expressed by 2 or 3 other words (and then some other languages do have those concepts expressed in 2 or 3 other words)? I'm not really talking about agglutinative languages, but analytic languages or even fusional languages with inflections, but still they have base verbs.
Is it simply because they are so common that distilling it to 1 word was advantageous? Is it just random evolutionary chance? Or is it something central to certain concepts which make it more natural to encapsulate into a single word?
In going through a Hebrew word list, here are some which were 1-word verbs (and sometimes also 1-word verbs in English), which for a conlang I think could be 2 words:
to strike fight work
to illuminate to light up / be lit up
to honk make horn sound / sound horn
to murder kill person
to bake oven cook
to mock make fun of
to raise make high
to reduce make less
to snatch evil take
to blind not see
to flatten make flat
to disfigure
to unpack
to incense scent stick
to enact make active
to urinate drop liquid
to fatten
to enjoy feel joy
to deport send away
So I'm wondering why languages don't do this, just having the base concepts represented as solo words, and then the derived concepts using multiple words (for the non-agglutinative languages)?
This is not even to address the fact that words only cover a fraction of the "base concepts" that we know about as human beings. By that I mean, there are certain concepts which we isolate as distinct "things" philosophically, which are usually described as multiple words for whatever reason. This is things like "to dry out", "to open a door" (create opportunity), "to tone down", "to cast a spell", "to deal with", "to hop over", "to put away", "to block someone's view", "to get up early (לְהַשְׁכִּים)", "to wake up", "to take a risk", "to slow down", and many things which I can't think of off the top of my head. If there are 100k words roughly speaking in a language, then there are at least 10m "terms" (multi-word concepts) I would say, if not way more.
And also not to even address the fact that in some/many languages, we have words for things which are highly specific (like "samsara" in Sanskrit, meaning "the cycle of birth and death", and a lot of other intricate meaning in there).
But so my question is, why would a language have many different words for roughly the same concept coming at it from a very slightly different angle (say, speak, talk, tell)? Why not just use multiple words? And do languages sometimes do these sorts of things in multiple words? It would just help show, yes, it's arbitrary and you can go either way, or no, there is some rhyme/reason making words for certain things. I can't tell how language works in this sense.
Your question touches two themes in linguistics.
1. Zipf's law
The law states (in some mathematical language) that more frequent words are shorter and less frequent words are longer. A language has a single short word for a concept that is needed frequently. This is culture dependent: In a Christian country, there is a short word church while in a polytheistic country the same concept may be expressed as praying place for Christians or even as praying place for adherents of Christianism. Short words that are rarely used get archaic and forgotten (by playing wordle and quordle I discovered how many 5-letter-words exist in the English language that I never encountered consciously until I saw them there) and are replaced by a circumlocution or a transparent compound word.
2. Style
The many English words for to say are in fact a consequence of an ancient style dictate (in classical terms variatio delectat: variation enjoys the listener/reader). Semitic languages are different is this respect, Arabic goes mainly with only one word for to say and there is nothing wrong with that.
It's a matter of frequency and language contact I would think. Obviously this is speculative, as we can't know how these issues developed.
However, I would guess that the reason is that individual words are more precise and concise. To tell includes aspects that say doesn't cover, for example that it is directed towards another person, and it would be a longer utterance. And speak is different again. If you wanted to express all these nuances using just a basic common word (or morpheme) for 'utter', you'd have to be very long-winded. Just have a look at toki pona, which has exactly one word for all this (toki), and try to express "I told him about my new car", "I said that I was going home", "I speak Spanish". It is possible, but it is not very efficient.
Similarly, an English person goes to France, and sees their various types of bread. Of course you can call them all bread, but that is a very broad term. So you call the long thin one a baguette, and that saves you saying long thin French bread that you eat in the morning because it is stale by lunchtime all the time when you label your Instagram holiday breakfast photos.
It seems that humans can cope more easily with having a multitude of similar yet subtly different terms to express nuances of meaning than with being long-winded with a set of basic words that need to combined to express the same meaning. I guess long sentences are harder to keep track of (see the concept of the seven items in short term memory), so you compress these long-winded descriptions by having a single short-hand word for it.
Of course there are no true synonyms, as that would be wasteful. Words that mean the same differ either in their pragmatic use (eat vs wolf down), or their regional distribution (cob vs roll and a multitude of other terms for small baked goods), or nuances of meaning.
What does that mean for a conlang? I think it makes it more natural if there are near-synonyms. Having just one word per broad concept makes it look very planned and artificial. Unless, of course, you want to achieve that; it'd be easier to deal with for learners (initially) and also machines. Having a more complex vocabulary with multiple words for similar concepts makes the language more sophisticated and natural.
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1690 | What is the difference between city, county, state, and nation (and others)?
This is kind of along the lines of my last question on why words for "say", "tell", and "talk", etc.. But it is more philosophical, not sure if it's better for the world-building community.
I am working on a conlang for a world, and am wondering if I should include these listed words (city, county, state, country/nation). Zipcode is a clear physical boundary with a number. City, county, state, and nation seem simply like "government boundary" or "administrative boundary". I know Google Places API supports these:
administrative_area_level_1
administrative_area_level_2
administrative_area_level_3 (also possibly city)
administrative_area_level_4
administrative_area_level_5
administrative_area_level_6
administrative_area_level_7
continent
country
locality (city when supported)
sublocality
sublocality_level_1
sublocality_level_2
sublocality_level_3
sublocality_level_4
sublocality_level_5
So to me that tells me these names for these administrative areas are legacy, based on an evolutionary vocabulary talking about the size of the place and how the rules get structured. For a nation, it controls states. A state controls counties, counties control cities. But why did we call them these names? Why not just have "admin level 1" and "admin level 4", etc.? And also, the first civilization (like Sumer) were city-states? Or cities, within an empire? It is so convoluted and confusing.
"Neighborhood" makes sense, because that is what surrounds your house (like mathematical neighborhood). But there are two uses of neighborhood, that mathematical definition, and admin level 5 or whatever boundaries (sub-city casual boundaries).
Must these terms be defined? How can I avoid defining them?
My conlang is an auxlang, but I don't want a 1-to-1 mapping from English/US to the conlang. I would like to "clean up" some of the legacy terms, like this case, if necessary. City seems like an arbitrary boundary which is extremely hard to define. And like Google Maps shows, it doesn't work in all places. So having it be a tree of nested administrative boundaries makes more sense. Do any languages do it like that?
I am thinking for equivalent conlang words:
globe
globe-government-1 (nation)
globe-gov-2 (state in some cases, county or province or city in others)
globe-gov-3 (city, or county or province).
This doesn't make it clear that in China "city" is level 4 or level 5, while in the US it is level 3 or whatever. But I don't think you really need that distinction, do you? Not sure what to make of this complicated situation, how to simplify it.
Can you confidently predict that no level will ever be inserted?
The simple answer is we have these words because they're useful. People find it easier to talk about state government vs city government, rather than talking about level two government vs level four government. And governments are not all alike! In America, a "state" and a "territory" are both administrative units smaller than a "nation", but the difference between them is very politically important—states get representation in Congress, territories don't. Or, English has borrowed the word "satrapy" to describe a certain level of ancient Persian administration, simply because they functioned differently enough from "states" or "counties" that it's easier to use a different name for them.
The specific words we use exist for historical reasons, such as a "county" being the region governed by a count. But the existence of different words for these different levels is simply something that speakers have found useful. It's often important to be able to distinguish between a state, a territory, a province, and a region, and these words have specific implications (and sometimes specific political meanings) that "hierarchy level 3" does not.
But what about weekdays, in some languages they are called "day 1, day 2", etc., I don't see why we couldn't name the levels.
@Lance The difference between states, provinces, and territories is generally much greater than the difference between one culture's conception of Tuesday and another's.
@Draconis Further, the differences between tiers of administration are not merely quantitative. (Also there are differences within tiers.)
The first word of the set to exist was likely some form of city or village, since that was where humans lived permanently. Most cities have pretty clear, if not sharp, unofficial borders. Where they don't, it's often because they've grown together. Note also that cities aren't a subset of any of the above, except in a purely administrative sense; Kansas City is in Kansas and Missouri, Sault Ste. Marie is in the US and Canada, and Baarle is in Belgium and the Netherlands.
Some sort of word for kingdom probably came next. Note that this doesn't map directly to the modern idea of nation, as kings were often the subjects of emperors and thus the kingdom part of an empire. The concept of empire changed between the Roman Era and the Victorian Era, but the resulting entities were both called empires.
In the modern day, nations have started forming unions, like the Commonwealth of Independent States and European Union. Will this congeal into another administrative block? If so, a simple numeric tower doesn't have space for it. One could tag it an empire, but there's strong social reasons they aren't using the word "empire".
I don't know your goals. This would give an auxlang a very "a priori" feel. For a bureaucratic race, I can see them obliviating all previous distinctions. (I would think city would exist, though, since most places aren't tiled into cities; there's still a lot of farms and wilderness out there.) For a real-world language, there's no way it could match reality, which is more complex than even the current vocabulary. Puerto Rico is a territory, not a state (which is a big difference in the US), and a lot of times gets its own entry in lists of nations. Hong Kong is a SAR (special administrative region), not province. Flattening everything is easy but problematic.
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1692 | Can you reuse the same word (sound) in multiple unrelated contexts?
Starting to get a word list together for Tune. As described, words can be either one or two syllables, starting and ending with a consonant, and with simple vowels in between. Words are then sometimes suffixed to disambiguate their POS. I am introducing the idea of saying a word to distinguish between a "formal" name, and an arbitrary descriptive phrase. The descriptive phrase is casual, doesn't need the prefix term ("gray wolf"), but a formal name is prefixed with a word like "form" ("Gray Wolf", so "form Gray Wolf").
That word list is coming up on 3000 words, I imagine there will be another 1000 necessary foundational words, which are just super abstract and generic words (mostly conceptual words, as opposed to animal names like "rabbit", though I have a few animal names which I need to probably delete). What I was thinking is, allocate some number of words (say 4000 additional words, so the total is <= 10k, so it would be possible to learn them all), and use those words for proper names. Sort of like how "Brian" and "Paul" (in today's world) don't meaning anything, likewise "foo" and "bar" might be "names" which can be applied to say, the gray wolf. So the gray wolf would just be called "foo", let's say. And a rabbit would be called "bar".
Well what I'm wondering is, what if you reused these names, in unrelated contexts. Like calling an oak tree "foo" as well, and calling a granite rock "foo" as well. Well maybe, "foo rock", "foo tree", and "foo animal". As long as you don't reuse the name in too similar a context/scope, then it seems like this might be fine?
The reason I think it might be fine is, usernames. There are millions of usernames just introduced in the past few years since Twitter, Facebook, GitHub, and a hundred other social media sites came out. Usernames might be a person's name like @jack, or full name like @BarackObama, or might be a thing like @DrumPlayer123 or something random like @asdf123. We can even speak these, same with hashtags, #IsItMeOrIsThatWeird, etc.. There are an unlimited set of possibilities here. You might have @Wolf1 and @Wolf2 and @Wolf17, all in your little group. Basically, words are used out of context for a unique identifier. It's not like we get confused that @Wolf1 might be a wolf.
So likewise, I am thinking we can have arbitrary names applied to the millions of species, molecules, etc., even if that name is used in some base context. But instead of arbitrary symbols, just limiting it to a set of a few thousand words. Maybe these words have a base meaning, maybe they don't.
I think this would work because you can create scopes, and within each scope, have a few thousand things with unique names. Maybe there are 2 or 3 levels for the "formal" names. That is 1000x1000x1000 or a billion possibilities at least. So maybe you'd need 4 levels, the "dark gray wolf animal" essentially, for formal names. You can leave out context if it's apparent, "dark gray wolf", or even "dark gray" when talking about wolves.
Would something like this system work? What are the main pros and cons of this approach? Would it create confusion? Do any natlangs or conlangs do anything like this? It seems English does to some degree with people names, which are used to label mathematical things (Schrodinger's equation, Lie groups, etc.).
You should know that homophones are very common.
The word you are looking for is homophones, words that sound the same but have different meanings.
It would work.
Pros include that you get a lot of words, that you could get by with fewer roots, and that you get a lot of room for fun word play. As for the latter, the Japanese are fond of this.
Cons include that it might be a little harder for others to learn, and that you as a creator would need to be careful not to introduce confusion.
Would it create confusion? I suppose it depends on how well you build the language, but in natural languages it isn't too bad. Look at English!
English reuses words, as do all languages I know. And not just for names.
A file could be something you store in a computer or actual papers you store in a filing cabinet. You could use a file to remove rough edges from an object, unless it's a file of soldiers. If you go back to Shakespearean times, the verb file was used in a similar meaning to the modern word defile, which is not the opposite of the verb file.
If you don't fixate on spelling, there are other kinds of _file_s as well, such as Francophiles, pedophiles and others.
It's not hard to imagine a plant and a kind of rock both also called "file", without adding more confusion than there already is.
In my native Swedish, the word fil takes almost all of the meanings above, including the ones that English spell with ph-, and is also the word for a kind of sour milk I like to have for breakfast.
English is even sort of extreme in this context, as many words are used as verbs, nouns and adjectives, in what we looking at it from the outside might perceive as a chaotic manner. You can fish for fish and drink a drink made from an orange orange.
If you haven't seen it, search for a poem that starts "Dearest creature in creation". It's main aim, as I see it, is to ridicule English orthography, but it does a pretty good job at demonstrating the abundance of homophones as well.
There are also homographs, words that are spelled the same (but might be pronounced differently)
The main issue is that the homophones should not be referring to something such that there's a high likelihood of confusion when you really need to tell them apart. You do not want people to confuse the blargh, the gentle herbivorous fuzzy bunny-like thing with the blargh that is a fast, vicious, known-man-killing superpredator or the blargh which is a type of woody plant with the edible fruit.
@KeithMorrison Precisely! In English, the various kinds of files are very different, and are unlikely to be mixed up. This is what I meant by my "it depends" answer for the third question. There are of course categories, which add some ambiguity. If I tell you there's a bird in your car, that means something very different depending on whether it's a hummingbird, a penguin or a roc ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roc_(mythology) )
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1695 | What are all the ways you can modify the base "number" concept in a language?
I can think of these examples of numbers, but maybe there are more?
one,two,three
single,double,triple
first,second,third
primary,secondary,tertiary
,couple,triplet
How should I think of these, how do they relate to each other? In my conlang like I have mentioned, I have a base word and then append -i for verbs, -a for nouns, and -u for adjectives/features. Say the base concept of "one" is zen. One sounds like it would be a noun to me, so zena. First is a modifier/feature so it gets the -u, zenu. A single can be like a "single" (single shot at a coffee shop, so a noun or an adjective?) But so now we have let's say 2 adjective forms. Same with primary, so that is 3 adjective forms. So I'm unsure how to fit this into my pattern, and not sure if there is even more I should be aware of.
How do other languages handle these situations? Do they add extra words perhaps (for isolating languages)? If so, what is an example? I feel like I must have to add a particle or modifying word to some of these to make it a differently scoped adjective in the other cases, but it's hard to pinpoint how they are different.
Esperanto also has a suffix for fractions: duono ‘a half’, kvarono ‘a quarter’. — You might look into East Asian counter-words.
Traditional grammar usually talks about four types: cardinal ("one"), ordinal ("first"), distributive ("one by one"), and adverbial ("once"). These are, not coincidentally, the four types of numbers that are distinguished in Latin morphology: ūnus, prīmus, singulī, and semel respectively. The first three are all adjectives, the fourth is an adverb.
But of course these aren't the only options. Even in Latin you also have the "multiplier" numbers, like simplex "single" and duplex "double", which are traditionally not grouped in with the other numbers. Or you could talk about fractions, like "half" and "third". English has two separate series of ordinals, one from Germanic and one from Latin, with slightly different meanings: "first" versus "primary".
English generally uses different words for each of these classes, but Swahili for example has a much more regular system. Swahili just has one* word for each number, the cardinal: mtoto mtatu "three children". To make the ordinal, you use the associative marker -a: mtoto wa tatu "third child", literally "child of three". For the other constructions where English and Latin have special words, just attach the number to a different noun: mara tatu "thrice", literally "three times"; mara tatu zaidi "triple", literally "three times more"; sehemu ya tatu "one-third", literally "(one) portion of three".
* Well not perfectly regular, because natural languages never are. "First" has a special form, kwanza, derived from the verb "begin"; "two" has a special form, pili, used in counting. But these are the only exceptions I know of.
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1815 | How do languages which have adjectives after the noun work with complex phrases?
Say I have a phrase like these:
The seat of the great rock of the north. = The north('s) great rock's seat - 北方(的)巨石的基座/底盤.
The man of the forest of the east. = The east('s) forest's man - 東方(的)叢林的男人.
The super tall man of the great green forest of the far east. = The far east('s) great green forest's super tall man - 遠東(的)大叢綠林的超高男人.
These have several noun phrases separated by of, the last one being the best example where each chunk between of is several words. In English, you have "super tall man" and "great green forest", where the adjectives/modifiers precede the main/head noun. How does it work in languages with the adjectives trailing the "head"/main noun, like apparently in Vietnamese, or perhaps some conlangs?
It's hard for me to imagine stuff like this:
The man tall super of the forest green great of the east far.
But is that basically how they do it and understand it with ease? Or do they do something different here? Basically what is the spectrum and/or what is most common when it comes to adjectives/modifiers following the main noun/thing?
Yes, that's how it works. Some languages say "super tall man" (putting modifiers before the head) while others say "man tall super" (putting modifiers after the head).
English is inconsistent about this, and generally puts prepositional modifiers after a noun ("the book on the table") and all other modifiers before it ("Alice's expensive book"). This is also not uncommon. Languages may do some modifiers one way, and some modifiers another way.
Can you show an example how they would handle the complex "of" chains like the third example I included?
@Lance, French. Using your example, "L'homme super grand de la grande forêt verte de l'Extrême-Orient" or "Man super tall of the great forest green of the Far East". Some adjectives do normally occur before the noun, so it's not a perfect example, but there you go. Italian and Spanish (other Romance languages) use the same word order as French.
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1715 | How to turn "with", "and", "together", and related words/constructs into verbs or nouns?
I am trying to have every word have a corresponding noun and verb, to see if it's possible. Currently I am focusing on prepositions, which need some massaging for the conlang I'm working on, as I don't want a direct clone of English haha.
I'm currently wondering about the words like "with", "and", and "together". I would make them into the same verb like "join", and after thinking about it, I'm not sure how these words are really different! You say stuff like "red together with blue", but I don't get how to describe/delineate the true underlying meaning of these 3 or 4 (+join) words.
How could these 3 words (and potentially others) be nounified and/or verbified, and how would they at the same time retain their unique features (if there are any)?
I don't think that there is a definitive conceptual scheme for ensuring that prepositions all have cognate nouns and verbs. Your way would work fine, but you should bear in mind that there are other schemes as well. For example:
Root #1:
P = with (comitative)
Adv = together
Conj. = and
N = companion (widest definition)
V = accompany
Root #2:
P = with (instrumental)
Adj = useful, handy
Adv = usefully, handily
N = use /jus/
V = use /juz/
Root #3:
P = meaning "joined.to"
Adj. = joined, conjoined
N = juncture
V = join
Hey, Jim, shouldn't the nominal cognate of "with (comitative)" mean "accompaniment"?
If you have a strategy for generally verbing nouns, then I recommend using it on prepositions' noun meanings. One such strategy might be making the (transitive) verb of a noun mean "to [the noun in question]-ify x."
Regarding noun meanings, those are usually simple enough. For example, the word for "with" might mean "thing that is used, tool", or "usage, use". The word of "like" might mean "similarity". The word for "and" (which is approximately equivalent in meaning to "together with") might mean "togetherness, withness".
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2137 | What sounds could humanoids with no teeth produce?
Similar, no dupe: How should a consonant (IPA) chart look for lip-less, teeth-less, non-humans?Similar, no dupe: Which sounds could a lipless humanoid produce?
So recently, I decided to create a conlang that only uses sounds that teethless humanoids could produce. To do this, I of course need to answer the question
What sounds (on the IPA chart) could humanoids with no teeth produce?
Here is my attempt at figuring out this information:
I first started by eliminating consonants such as t/ʈ/d/ɖ, v/ⱱ, and ɱ/ɳ/ɲ/ŋ, mostly because those sounds were unreproducible (at least to the best of my ability) without touching the teeth together. In fact, I managed to eliminate a total of 38 consonants this way:
Note: put in the order I eliminated them in (left to right)
0|t ʈ d ɖ v ⱱ ɱ ɳ ɲ ŋ|10
11|θ ð z ɮ ʋ ɬ c ʒ ç ʝ|20
21|g ɢ x ɣ χ ʃ r ɾ ɹ ɽ|30
31|ɻ ʀ ʁ q ɸ β ʙ ɰ |40
So the consonants we have left are:
Note: put in the order they appear in on the IPA chart
+---------------------------+-----------+
|Row 1 (Plosive) |p b ɟ ʔ |
|Row 2 (Nasal) |m n |
|Row 3 (Trill) | |
|Row 4 (Tap/Flap) | |
|Row 5 (Fricative) |f s ħ ʕ h ɦ|
|Row 6 (Lateral Fricative) | |
|Row 7 (Approximant) |j |
|Row 8 (Lateral Approximant)|l ɭ ʎ ʟ |
+---------------------------+-----------+
However, when it comes to the vowels, through my testing, I was able to successfully reproduce all 28 distinct vowel sounds without touching the teeth together, so it can probably be said that we can keep all 28.
So altogether, the total of reproducible sounds without using the teeth is 51 (28 vowels and 23 consonants).
However, my question is
Am I correct about there being 28 vowels and 23 consonants that those sounds are reproducible by humanoids without teeth, or what needs to be added/removed to my current list?
I'm really curious why some of these got eliminated. What do the teeth have to do with a velar nasal, or a uvular stop? I can pronounce ŋ with my teeth open or closed without making a difference.
@Draconis Because I could not find a way to produce those sounds without closing my teeth
Relatively few sounds actually require the teeth. All dental, labiodental, and interdental sounds do, because the teeth are actually involved in the articulation. But most of the others don't.
Out of the ones you've eliminated, I can pronounce t ʈ d ɖ ɳ ɲ ŋ z c ʒ ç ʝ g ɢ x ɣ χ ʃ r ɾ ɽ ɻ ʀ ʁ q ɸ β ʙ ɰ without using my teeth at all. And some more might be possible if your characters still have gums of some sort; ɮ, for example, doesn't need the teeth specifically, it just needs something solid for the tongue to press against.
Or, to put it more simply, teeth are required for:
Dental consonants (like t̪)
Interdental consonants (like ð)
Labiodental consonants (like f)
Lateral fricatives (like ɮ)
"Molar" sounds, like my particular pronunciation of ɹ
Everything else can be pronounced just fine without them.
ʋ is by definition labiodental, how are you pronouncing it without your teeth? Are you actually producing a bilabial approximant [β̞]?
@Tristan Oops, a bit of overzealous copy-pasting there! You're correct of course, there's no way to pronounce labiodental sounds without teeth.
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1834 | Is placing the preposition before the verb natural?
Disclamer: I have a very limited knowledge about linguistics, so the things I'm talking might be completely nonsense.
In German we can form new verbs by attaching prepositions (?) to it:
schlagen → zuschlagen
denken → nachdenken
Sometimes we see this in English too:
out + live = outlive
over + take = overtake
I'm wondering what if my language puts every preposition before the verb, like
I give my pen to him. → I togive my pen him.
(The two objects should be distinguished by dative / accusative case, but there's no such thing in English.)
Is this acceptable / natural?
Possible and acceptable: yes! But did you think about multiple prepositions, like in I travelled from London to Rome via Paris? Of course you can stack the prepositions in some well-defined order, saying I fromtoviatravelled London Rome Paris.
@SirCornflakes I should have clarified that I'm using this for verbal phrases (its meaning has little to do with the original word), like give out (a smell etc.) → outgive. Thanks for your comment!
You're conflating a couple different things here.
First are phrasal verbs in English, where attaching a preposition to a verb gives it a different meaning: "call" vs "call off", for example. In other Indo-European languages, it's very common to use a prefix on the verb instead; German does this (with its separable prefixes) but so do Latin and Greek.
Second are prepositional phrases, where a preposition indicates how a noun relates to the action. You can generally have as many of these as you like: "I read about badgers for six hours at the office on Friday…"
Rather than using prepositions like this, some languages do mark their verbs to indicate the roles of the nouns that follow them. For example, in Lingála, you can put a special marking on the verb to indicate that the next noun will be the beneficiary of the action. I'm not aware of any language that lets you do this with an unlimited number of nouns, though; at some point you'll have to use prepositions (or some kind of marking on the noun rather than the verb) for that level of specificity.
Thanks for your answer! Some off-topic question: should I put this prefixed verb in a separate entry in the dictionary, or in a sub-entry of the verb stem?
@atzlt That part is up to you, but it could depend on how unpredictable the meaning is.
You've observed a very real phenomenon; it sounds like you just haven't learned the name for it yet.
This:
I'm wondering what if my language puts every preposition before the
verb, like
I give my pen to him. → I togive my pen him.
(The two objects should be distinguished by dative / accusative case,
but there's no such thing in English.)
is called an applicative construction.
The applicative is an example of a "valency-increasing operation" - similar to the causative, and opposite to the passive - that you do to a verb to promote an oblique object to a direct object. ("Oblique" in this context is a catch-all term basically for anything that isn't the subject or direct object.) In German, since direct objects are marked by the accusative case, this means the applicative would be a modification you make to verbs that take a dative or genitive object, and transforms that verb into a verb that takes an accusative object.
Applicatives are probably most famous in Bantu languages like Swahili, but they're common worldwide. WALS' survey implies that ~45% of the world's languages have a morphologized applicative construction - although their methodology is kind of wonky; the sample size is only 183 (for comparison, the object-verb word order survey has a sample size of over 1500) and doesn't count English and German even though both arguably do have an applicative.
Your particular example of *"I togive my pen him." is a little awkward though in that it has two direct objects simultaneously. You promoted the oblique object "to him" to the direct object "him" - good - but then you also kept the old direct object "my pen". Not all languages with an applicative necessarily allow that - they might require you to delete the existing direct object, or else relegate it to an oblique role. But some languages, called double-object languages, don't distinguish direct vs. indirect objects in ditransitives anyway - they're all just "objects" - so for them, the applicative really is equivalent to just slapping an extra object onto the verb.
If we go back to WALS and combine the maps for 109B (Other Roles of Applied Objects) and 105A (Ditransitive Constructions: The Verb 'give'), you get this map. With "Legend" in the top left corner, we can filter for just the languages that have an applicative construction (a value of anything other than "No applicative construction" in the first column) and double object marking in ditransitives ("Double-object construction" or "Mixed" in the second column), and we find that e.g. Swahili and Indonesian would theoretically allow something like your example sentence. I speak neither so I can't really personally confirm that though.
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1551 | Are there any thesauri that use a small controlled-language to define terms?
I have been looking for what I believe would be a very valuable resource in language construction. Ideally, this would be a full-size dictionary, where every description is a short list of words that approximate the meaning.
Ex:
Sleep: Still, Human, State, Noun.
Or something like this? Seems like this could be a good guide to creating more complex portmanteau words from a smaller base.
You are probably thinking about WordNet, where a synset is a set of words with exactly the same (not just approximate) meaning. But WordNet is much more than this, it also contains informations about relations of hypernym, hyponymy and more...
The original Princeton WordNet was created for English, but there are WordNets (of different sizes, quallity and level of usefulness) for many different languages.
Modern take on the idea is the approximation of semantic closeness in word embeddings models, which has the advantage that it needs "just" a big corpus and no human annotation (and a disadvantage that lacking human proofreading, it contains a lot of errors). See e.g. here (disclaimer: I am the author of that webpage and models).
Your website is very cool! I like the data visualization. WordNet is close to what I was thinking. It's a bit general (Soldier = noun + person), but a great start. Thank you for that resource.
@chaseleffers not that soldier is not the best example, because it does not have exactl equivalents. But if you look at the hypernyms, you see the word is a hyponym of enlisted person, serviceman, military man, man, military personnel and a hypernym of cannon fodder,, cavalryman, trooper, flanker, etc, etc... which gives quite a good notion of the meaning
I didn't see the hypernym section of the wordnet. Yeah, that's a great resource.
Looking for a controlled vocabulary to bootstrap the semantics of a conlang brings Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) by Anna Wierzbicka and other authors to my mind. I'm not sure how far any language description in NSM is really worked out and written down, but it may give you a starter for thought.
That is a good resource to check out. Seems like the NSM is very functionally-focused in some senses, but also somewhat specific in other cases, like the space and time sections. I guess it makes sense that those would be the most universal concepts in language. Seems like any language that wants to be intuited by people would need to easily confer the meaning of those semantic primes
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1135 | If 'Amlonde' were a word in Sindarin or Quenya, what would it mean?
I learned that in the real world Amlonde is a given name of South African origin (I cannot be more precise on linguistic background or meaning). But the word looks suspiciously like a word from Tolkien's Elvish languages. I looked it up in Helmut Pesch's dictionary, but it is not attested there.
So my question is: Can this word be analysed in Sindarin and/or Quenya, and what would it mean than?
EDIT: Some clarifications on possible answers: I am not looking for arbitrary suggestions of a meaning. Any analysis shall be based on published material on Sindarin and Quenya, including diachronic development and lesser known dialects. An answer that the word is in fact impossible in Quenya or Sindarin with some argument why this is the case is also a legitimate answer.
I don't think "ml" is a legal sequence in Quenya.
Interesting. Skimming through the dictionary suggests that this is indeed the case: -lm- occurs frequently, but -ml- is suspiciously absent. lomelinde has a vowel kept between the m and the l.—P.S. I consider an answer of the type: "It is not a legal word in Quenya or SIndarin" with some argumentation why it is so an acceptable answer to this question.
Many languages have character/phoneme combinations that are not legal, but which occur nevertheless at segment boundaries (like English doesn't really use "nm" as a legal sequence, but it still occurs in "unmittigated" etc.) Could this be similar, where "Am" is a prefix and "londe" a stem?
There is actually a neat analysis in Quenya according to a Tolkien Dictionary Site:
am-: is a prefix that means "up"
londë: means "(landlocked) haven"
So you can imagine it describing a place that once was a harbour, but through geographical changes has become landlocked, and is possibly on a hill or mountain. Or it could be a refuge, a safe place in the mountains.
Is there a landlocked londe in canon? Two londi that spring to mind are Alqualonde ‘Swan-haven’, where the Noldor seized the Telerin ships, and Mithlond ‘Grey-haven’, where Frodo embarked. There's also Lond Daer, the ‘great port’ of the Second Age, at the mouth of the Greyflood.
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351 | 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.
Yes the first sentence is so~ stereotypical. I don’t care ;)
You may take inspiration from Tolkien's Entish language. I don't have a quotation ready, but you can find something about Entish in the Lord of the RIngs books.
Really people? This site won't have active conlang creators if every conlang-creation question gets close-voted for "opinion-based"... I think that this question fits the site entirely.
I think this kind of question is a bad fit for this site because answers would need come up with specific ideas of just how the elves psychology and mentality result in their being careful, before explaining how their language reflects that. It could be improved by adding specific examples of how the elves' decision making habits are different to human decision making.
Good edit @Jan!
The language should have lots of disambiguating particles.
My idea on that would be very close to what you suggested yourself: introducing suffixes / prefixes which would indicate the uncertainty of the word. For instance, let's suppose that your word for "strong" is hariq, your word for "I sit down" is brumo and your word for "house" is niptug, and the word for "in" or "inside" would be bomp.*
Now I would invent some prefixes, such as ar- meaning "with great certainty," no prefix meaning something along the lines of "a certain degree of certitude, but not absolute certainty," (such as, it is supposed that; it is presumed that) and fun, meaning, "a large amount of uncertainty" (such as "we think" or "it appears possible that")**
Now let us suppose that I want to say that I that I sit down in the house, with an extreme certainty that it was a house that I was sitting in, but the fact that I was sitting or that I am actually inside is assumed to be true, though it could be theoretically disproved. I would say,
arniptug bomp brumo
In this fictive language,
funhariq niptug arbomp brumo
would mean, "I sit down in a place definitely inside a house which appears to be strong."
Note that these suffixes / prefixes could theoretically be added to any part of speech, or made different for nouns, verbs, adjectives, interjections, etc.
You could also possibly devise a way to make the order of the words show a carefulness about exactly how accurate what is being said is.
* Words invented totally randomly.
** Again, randomly selected; more or less prefixes could be used,
with different definitions. This is just an example.
You've just reinvented evidentiality! :P
Nice suggestion! I like it.
@curiousdannii very interesting, had never seen that before. :) Nothing new under the sun, they say.
Culture shows up in languages by a few routes:
Specialized jargon. They might have a lot of specialized words for "carefulness". Láadan is just a bunch of specialized jargon, imho.
Metaphysical obsessions. In most languages, we have to care about these issues like when it happened and the gender of the speakers and we have to care about it in every sentence, even if it isn't otherwise topical. In English, you have to choose a gender or animacy status for a pronoun even if the distinction is irrelevant. Japanese making honorific/politeness markers obligatory is a perfect example. If I ever get around to writing a language, I plan to use this strategy, although, it only works with features that everything has. For example, if I make "edibility" a necessary grammatical marker, I may have to waste a lot of air on "inedible" and "doesn't apply".
Sapir-Whorf. This is all pseudo-science bunk anyhow, so you just assert that this or that feature, say through sympathetic magic makes your speakers this way or that way. German words fit together like a car engine and that is why they make such great cars. You have to form these sentences very carefully, so the people who speak the language must be very careful.
As for the mechanics—these show up as prefixes/affixes to nouns, adjective etc, or lexical distinctions, or a lack of lexical gaps. For example, just having a short simple word instead of needing a paragraph to discuss varieties of "carefulness"
Corpus. A language shows its culture in the corpus of text. If the language has lots of sample text that says, "gosh, we are very careful people," then that is good enough. But anything can be said in any language, so such a language wouldn't be, by corpus, any more "careful" or suited to talk about the "careful life" than any other language.
Apart from the already mentioned evidentiality, you could look at modality. This expresses a speaker's attitude using a variety of aspects, such as obligation, possibility, probability, etc. The exact set depends on the language and the linguistic framework you are using.
You could have a default modality of 'optionality', so the sentence I am going to the shop could actually mean "I might perhaps go to the shop" -- notice how in English we use adverbials (perhaps) and mood (might) to express this. In your language you would have modals for definitely, or actually, so you make explicit that you are performing an action, rather than contemplating it.
As dithering is the default behaviour, your linguistic features should express the opposite, ie the rarer cases where dithering does not apply. So in a way the answer to your question of how to implement this in your language is "not at all". Because that's what you do anyway, you don't need to talk about it. But you do make explicit where it doesn't apply.
Make expressing something uncertain less concise
Let's say that, by "default" in the languge, all verbs are completely certain. For example, let's say your word for car is chicho, your word for red is hoeng, and your word for is is sherr[1].
Now the sentence chicho sherr hoeng translates as the car is red, but it carries more certainty than it would in English—the car is surely, indisputably, provably red, and for that not to be true would feel very unnatural. Finding that one's assertion was false would cause a feeling of discomfort and mild panic comparable to realizing one had skipped a sentence or phrase while delivering a speech.
Then, add an adverb hunnyokenung which lowers the certainty of a verb to something closer to English. Now the sentence is chicho sherr hunnyokenung hoeng. The clunkiness of the phrase reflects the fact that this construction is not used often (the elf children are taught "if you don't have anything sure to say, don't say it at all!").
A side note: literature in this language would not be able to express something surprising unless any statements that were later refuted were written using the hunnyokenung form, or else the author would risk angry letters from readers complaining about the improper assertion.
1 The phonetics of these words (though not the grammar) were taken from Mandarin.
Are you using a standard romanization for Mandarin here?
@MiCl No, I am not.
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.
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.
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136 | How much Dothraki was created prior to "Game of Thrones"?
Reading A Song of Ice and Fire and watching Game of Thrones are two different experiences. One difference that pops out to me is the language that the Dothraki speak, known by the same name.
Naturally the show seems to include much more of the language than the books do, as you need to have actors speak aloud for the audience to interact, where as in writing you can have the audience see the thoughts of the character.
This has me wondering how much of the language George R. R. Martin had developed prior to the production of Game of Thrones and/or how much was created for/by the show?
The majority of Dothraki was indeed created for the show.
George has stated the he is not quite a linguist in that sense (comparing himself against Tolkien).
I don't have a whole imaginary language in my desk here, the way Tolkien did.
Tolkien was a philologist, and an Oxford don, and could spend decades laboriously inventing Elvish in all its detail. I, alas, am only a hardworking SF and fantasy novel, and I don't have his gift for languages. That is to say, I have not actually created a Valyrian language. The best I could do was try to sketch in each of the chief tongues of my imaginary world in broad strokes, and give them each their characteristic sounds and spelling.
So Spake Martin, YET MORE QUESTIONS, July 22, 2001
He mostly just makes words as needed.
"DO YOU HAVE THE LANGUAGES ALL PLANNED OUT?"
No he'll make up a word here and there but he does NOT have the whole language written.
So Spake Martin, BOSKONE (BOSTON, MA), February 14,2003
Even going as far to say that now he will have refer to the creator of the language for the show in his future writing.
Of course, he then added that with HBO having created Dothraki through the work of David J. Peterson, he feels like now if he wants to have Dothraki (and Valyrian as well) he'll have to refer to Peterson's work to get it "right", or ask Peterson himself how to say something in Dothraki.
So Spake Martin, STOCKHOLM AND ARCHIPELACON REPORT, June 28, 2015
The show selected David J. Peterson, an expert language creator from the Language Creation Society to create Dothraki for Game of Thrones
Peterson drew inspiration from George R.R. Martin’s description of the language, as well as from such languages as Russian, Turkish, Estonian, Inuktitut and Swahili. However, the Dothraki language is no mere hodgepodge, babble or pidgin. It has its own unique sound, an extensive vocabulary of more than 1,800 words and a complex grammatical structure.
Which as of September 21, 2011 has over 3,000 words
Also, for the curious, Dothraki is now up to 3,163 words: More words than Mr. Padre Tony Gwynn has hits, but still a ways to go to catch Pete Rose (and my guess is Dothraki will have double his number before he gets even a sniff of the Hall of Fame).
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1999 | Does the grammatical and polysynthetic structure of my language preclude poetry?
My conlang, called Pandemonic for now, is a language with OSV word order, that uses synthetic prefixes and postfixes to both nouns and verbs. Only adjectives and adverbs, which always follow the word to which they apply, are not heavily synthetic, though they may both have prefixes. Conjunctions appear at the end of the group of conjoined elements.
Given that it appears that these structures will often limit the trailing sounds of the words in Pandemonic sentences, should rhyming or other poetry be possible and meaningful?
Rhyme is not the only component of poetry, and in fact focusing on it over much is a sign of terrible poetry, especially in languages like English that have very little rhyme. More important is the rhythm, be it stress or syllable timed, and there is no language that cannot produce a good rhythm. Once you have a good rhythm, you can pepper the poem with rhyme, alliteration, assonance and other phonemic "bridges"
I write rhyme-less meter poetry.
The verbal suffixes making most sentence ends sound the similar doesn't necessarily mean you can't do rhyming poetry - in fact, you can go out of your way to make them rhyme exactly the same. The Georgian national epic, the ვეფხისტყაოსანი Vepxist'q'aosani (conventionally translated as "The Knight in the Panther's Skin"), is written entirely (?) in "monorhymed quatrains" - 4 lines a row, each 16 syllables long, that each end in the exact same rhyme. For example, the last quatrain of the introduction (rhyme bolded):
თუ მოყვარე მოყვრისათვის ტირს, ტირილსა ემართლების;
სიარული, მარტოობა ჰშვენის, გაჭრად დაეთვლების;
იგონებდეს, მისგან კიდე ნურაოდეს მოეცლების,
და არ დააჩნდეს მიჯნურობა, სჯობს, თუ კაცსა იახლების.
Tu moq'vare moq'vrisatvis t'irs, t'irilsa emartlebis;
Siaruli, mart'ooba hshvenis, gach'rad daetvlebis;
Igonebdes, misgan k'ide nuraodes moetslebis,
Da ar daachndes mijnuroba, sjobs, tu k'atssa iakhlebis.
If the lover cries and weeps for his love, tears are the lover's due.
Solitude suits him, the roaming of plains and forests suits him, too.
When he's by himself, his thought should be of how to worship anew.
But when a lover is in the world, he should hide his love from view.
(Source - though, that translation takes some liberties to make the English mirror the rhyme structure of the original Georgian. A more literal translation can be found here.)
But if monorhyming bothers you, then the obvious alternative is just to not make your language's poetry based on rhyming to begin with. Plenty of languages' definition of poetry is effectively rhyme-blind. Mark Rosenfelder, in his Language Construction Kit, gives the following examples for alternatives:
Latin did poetry based on meter - the particular example he uses is dactylic hexameter, made up 6 "feet" per line, where a "foot" is a either a long/long pair (a spondee) or long/short/short pair (a dactyl):
Cūm pu-er | āu-dā|cī co-e|pīt gaū|dē-re vo|lā-tū
Dēs-se-ru|īt-que du|cēm, cāe|lī-que cu|pī-di-ne | trāc-tus,
Āl-ti-us | ē-git i|tēr. Ra-pi|dī vī|cī-ni-a | sō-lis
Mōl-lit o|dō-rā|tās pēn|nā-rūm | vīn-cu-la | cē-rās.
When the boy began to rejoice in bold flight
He deserted the leader and, drawn by desire for the sky
Made his way higher. Proximity to the fierce sun
softened the fragrant wax, the binding of the feathers.
English can do something similar but it's much easier, because of our lexical stress, do iambic meter - series of unstressed-stressed pairs; Shakespeare famously used lots of iambic pentameter, which often rhymed, but didn't always:
The e|vil that | men do | lives af|ter them;
The good | is oft | inter|rèd with | their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it | were so, | it was | a grie|vous fault,
And grie|vously | hath Cae|sar an|swer’d it.
Old English used lots of alliteration, as in this sample from Beowulf:
Wæs se grimma gæst Grendel hāten,
mǣre mearc‐stapa, sē þe mōras hēold,
fen ond fæsten; fīfel‐cynnes eard
won‐sǣli wer weardode hwīle,
siþðan him Scyppend forscrifen hæfde.
Grendel this monster grim was called,
march-riever mighty, in moorland living,
in fen and fastness; fief of the giants
the hapless wight a while had kept
since the Creator his exile doomed.
Hebrew poetry is often based on parallelism, especially synonymous parallelism - finding multiple ways to say the same thing:
עד־אנה יהוה שועתי ולא תשמע אזעק אליך חמס ולא תושיע׃
O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear; or cry to you "Violence!", and you will not save?
(Habakkuk 1:2)
ויגל כמים משפט וצדקה כנחל איתן׃
But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.
(Amos 5:24)
Or antithetic parallelism, where two opposite ideas are juxtaposed with parallel sentence structure:
נסו ואין־רדף רשע וצדיקים ככפיר יבטח׃
The wicked flee when no man pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion;
(Proverbs 28:1)
You could always rely simply on diction, that is, word choice for poetic effect. For example, Old Norse poetry was full of "kennings" replacing simple, concrete, boring words with more figurative, evocative, almost always longer (maybe much longer), circumlocutions. e.g.:
Ǫld vann skjǫldu ossa rauða, þás kómu þingat hvítir; þat vas auðsætt hljóms hring miðlǫndum. Þar hykk ungan gram gerðu gǫngu upp í skip, þars sverð slæðusk, en vér fylgðum; svǫrr blóðs fekk gunnsylgs.
Men made our shields red, that came there white; that was obvious to the {sharers of the {sword-clamour [battle]} [warriors] }. There I think the young king made his advance up on to the ship, where swords were blunted, and we followed; the {bird of blood [raven] } gained a {battle-draught [=blood] }.
(Source)
Fengum feldarstinga, þanns lendingar álhimins sendu oss útan, ok galt við fjǫrðhjǫrðu. Mest selda ek mínar hlaupsildr gaupna Egils við mævǫrum sævar; hallæri veldr hvôru.
We received a cloak-pin, which the {landsmen of {the channel-sky [ice] } [Icelanders] } sent us abroad, and I spent it on {fjord-herds [fish] }. Most of all I sold my {leaping herrings of Egill’s palms [arrows] } for the {slender arrows of the sea [herring] } ; the famine causes both things.
(Source)
So there's lots of ways to still do poetry even without rhyming. If you really don't want to rhyme.
in the Beowulf example, hwīle does not alliterate with won, wer, or weardode. W and hw are treated as entirely separate onsets (so too are s, sp, st, & sc). In fact the fourth lift of each line cannot alliterate with any of the other lifts.
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707 | What reasons would there be for not having a human conlang with only vowels?
All natlangs have both consonants and vowels, but it's not immediately obvious why a human language couldn't be made from only vowels.
Has anyone theorised about why natlangs always have consonants?
Have there been any attempts to create conlangs with only vowels, and were they considerably harder to learn than languages with both vowels and consonants?
A vowel-only language is surely constructable (and I think, learnable, too), but I am afraid that it will be instable against evolutionary pressure.
Vowel sequences like /aua/ or /aia/ tend to develop into glides /awa/ and /aja/ giving raise to the first consonants in the language, and at the hiat between two vowel a third consonant, the glottal stop, may materialise.
Efficiency of the coding is also a concern, maybe tones can take over the role of consonants in creating more different syllables from the vowels.
There are generally a lot fewer vowels than consonants in the phoneme inventory of human languages. That means, with fewer sounds you need to make the words a lot longer if you want to have a decent-sized vocabulary.
Also, vowel pronunciation is more varied. There aren't many different ways to pronounce /t/ or /k/, but any regional dialect will change vowels. Partly because there are no fixed places of articulation: vowels are distinguished by the opening of the jaw and the position of the tongue. Both of these are almost infinitely variable compared to closing your lips and releasing them (as you'd do for a /p/ or a /b/).
And finally, why would you disregard most potential sounds that the human vocal apparatus can produce? It's just not an efficient use of your anatomy. A bit like hopping on one leg instead of walking.
So the two main arguments against a vowel-only language are size of phoneme inventory and variability of vowel pronunciation.
Surely your two arguments neutralise each other: if variations in vowel pronunciation are counted as separate vowels (as they are in the IPA, although not in the English alphabet), then you'd have a much bigger set of vowels and less variation in each one.
@Randal'Thor But you can't do that, as despite all the variation they are still too close to work as separate phonemes.
Well, there is always Solresol, which has several isomorphic representations, and some of those could be considered vowel-only (depending on the instrument used).
For natlangs, there are whistled languages, with a very reduced consonant inventory. They could fit your criteria especially if you consider tones to be a feature of vowels, and look at the phonetic level - consonants are realized mostly by glides and occlusion (phonemically, consonants are copied from the spoken language & reduced).
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1541 | Were Tolkien's languages used in the works of C. S. Lewis and other inklings?
It is well-known that J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and others were members of an informal club named inklings and spoke which each other about their literary work. I also remember that some of the inklings used Tolkien's languages to create names for places and figures in their works but I forgot about the details.
Is there a list of words from Tolkien's languages used in the works of C. S. Lewis or any other member of the inklings?
Can someone provide examples of such words?
Tolkien addresses the use of some of his words by C.S. lewis in a letter to Dick Plotz on September 12, 1965. The letter is numbered 276 in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien.
This is the relevant part of the letter:
Núminor. C. S. Lewis was one of the only three persons who have so far read all or a considerable pan of my 'mythology' of the First and Second Ages, which had already been in the main lines constructed before we met. He had the peculiarity that he liked to be read to. All that he knew of my 'matter' was what his capacious but not infallible memory retained from my reading to him as sole audience. His spelling numinor is a hearing error, aided, no doubt, by his association of the name with Latin nūmen, nūmina, and the adjective 'numinous'. Unfortunate, since the name has no such connexions, and has no reference to 'divinity' or sense of its presence. It is a construction from the Eldarin base √NDU 'below, down; descend'; Q. núme 'going down, occident'; númen 'the
direction or region of the sunset' +nóre 'land' as an inhabited area. I have often used Westernesse as a translation. This is derived from rare Middle English Westernesse (known to me only in MS. C of King Horn) where the meaning is vague, but may be taken to mean 'Western lands' as distinct from the East inhabited by the Paynim and Saracens. Lewis took no pan in 'research into Númenor'. N. is my personal alteration of the Atlantis myth and/or tradition, and accommodation of it to my general mythology. Of all the mythical or 'archetypal' images this is the one most deeply seated in my
imagination, and for many years I had a recurrent Atlantis dream : the stupendous and ineluctable wave advancing from the Sea or over the land, sometimes dark, sometimes green and sunlit.
Lewis was, I think, impressed by 'the Silmarillion and all that', and certainly retained some vague memories of it and of its names in mind. For instance, since he had heard it, before he composed or thought of Out of the Silent Planet, I imagine that Eldil is an echo of the Eldar; in Perelandra 'Tor and Tinidril' are certainly an echo, since Tuor and Idril, parents of Eärendil, are major characters in 'The Fall of Gondolin', the earliest written of the legends of the First Age. But
his own mythology (incipient and never fully realized) was quite different. It was at any rate broken to bits before it became coherent by contact with C. S. Williams and his 'Arthurian' stuff – which happened between Perelandra and That Hideous Strength. A pity, I think. But then I was and
remain wholly unsympathetic to Williams' mind.
This was mentioned in the 2005 paper "The Inklings: Connecting the Unconnected: Genre, intertextuality and intersemiosis" by Tommi Nieminen (Department of General Linguistics, University of Helsinki, Finland):
When Tolkien and Lewis made an mutual agreement to write two science fiction stories—Tolkien of a time travel, Lewis of a space travel—, and Lewis produced the first part of the Ransom trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet (1943), it was just as much an allegory as were his previous works, or the later ones such as the Narnia series (1950–56). Even the names borrowed from Tolkien to the Ransom novels—taken not from Tolkien’s writings but his reading aloud The Silmarillion stories in the Inklings meetings—were given so different second-world interpretations that they do not carry anything of Tolkien’s world to Lewis’s.
This was the only confirmed use that I could identify. Others have theorized that other words were borrowed from Tolkien's conlangs, such as the name of the palace in Narnia, Cair Paravel. "Cair" in Sindarin means "ship". This is discussed in more depth on TheTolkienForum.com, but ultimately it looks like both sources of Cair come from the welsh word "Caer", which means a stronghold.
The only confirmed use I found was the use of names by Lewis in the Ransom trilogy mentioned above.
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2228 | Where to find conlangers on the Fediverse?
I am interested in finding conlangers or even speech communities of some conlangs on the fediverse (most prominently represented by Mastodon). What are good accounts to follow?
Just now (i.e., in the month of December 2024) there is Jamin @[email protected] posting one word a day from Valthungian, a Germanic altlang, with etymology. The word for Kiwi fruit is literally "rabbit egg".
EDIT: Another account to follow: Valannō Lyore @[email protected] – presents not only own creations but also generously boosts other conlangers!
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760 | Grammatical cases occurring only in conlangs
What are examples of grammatical cases that are not attested in natural languages, but occur in some conlang?
To qualify here, the conlang should have at least some bit of flesh (e.g., a few consistent texts, either original or translated). Pure sketches of potential cases aren't interesting to me.
The Respective or Dedative case in Quenya, also called Short Locative, is too speculative to be counted here; its attestation is very weak in the available material from J. R. R. Tolkien.
Hmm/ It should be noted that you contradict your own stipulation of "pure sketches of potential cases aren't interesting to me". A mere mention in one letter does not some bit of flesh make. I would respectfully suggest you edit: either allow sketches and mere mentions or else delete the Tolkien reference. Or better yet, use the Tolkien reference as an example of what you are nòt looking for.
Reading through the available material on the Short Locative, any assignment of meaning to it is highly speculative. I change the wording of my question accordingly.
Looks better I think!
I think the best conlang to look for such cases is Ithkuil. http://ithkuil.net/04_case.html contains a list of all cases. My [short] research suggests that some of them (e.g. navigative for "noun relative to whose vector, arc, or trajectory of motion an event takes place" or allapsive for "amount of time that expected to pass between the contextual present and the time of a future event") aren't attested in any other well-known language. I may be wrong, but it seems plausible regarding Ithkuil's goal of expressing extensive detail.
O wow ... 72 cases, there must be a lot of innovations there! +1
if you go through them, it turns out that they all make logical sense, and they are all infuriatingly pedantic in their distinctions.
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771 | Are there human beatbox inspired conlangs?
Human beatbox is an art form producing percussion sounds with the mouth only. It uses techniques and sounds that are rare or entirely absent in natural languages.
Are the constructed languages that take inspiration by human beatbox sounds?
I tried to find conlangs based on such sounds but could not find any. However, the closest human phonemes to such sounds are clicks and many conlangs use them. I don't know any well-known conlangs that use clicks, but HyPry and Gdili were two that I could find.
You could try making one yourself, but given that Beatbox sounds are fairly limited and sometimes hard to distinguish, I doubt you would be able to make an effective language from it without adding in typical consonants and vowels.
Note that ejective plosives can also be counted as "beatbox phonemes", and they are significantly more common than clicks. Still too few to make a language though.
@Richard Very true. Forgot about those. If the OP combined clicks and ejective plosives with a few vowels, a functional sound system could start to take shape. Not sure how difficult pronunciation would be though.
ANADEW: Nuxalk (also known as Bella Coola), a natural language of the Salishan family spoken at the west coast of Canada, has some beat-box elements: long strings of consonants without intervening vowels. Nuxalk features ejective consonants, too.
I was going to say this too! Great language :)
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790 | What is the meaning of ANADEW?
The acronym ANADEW is quite popular among conlang enthusiats, but what does it mean?
For an answer, I'd like to see not only an expansion of the acronym, but also some good usage examples.
ANADEW means "a natlang already did it even worse" or "a natlang already did it, except worse". In essence you thought of a strange feature for your conlang, but there is actually a natlang that has that (or a very similar) feature and did it worse than it is in your conlang.
If, for example, Pythagoras had made a click conlang (which somehow survived one or two millenia) with simple and easy clicks, then the "discovery" of the Khoisan languages with very complex click systems (worse for Europeans) would have made an ANADEW case.
I don't think that's the best possible example, you can find a few more at https://www.reddit.com/r/conlangs/comments/6yxo6k/anadew_game/ .
"Worse" being entirely subjective of course.
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766 | How many active Klingon speakers are there?
I am well-aware of the fact that some people use Klingon in conversions at special conventions and events.
Is there an estimate about the number of Klingon speakers and how many of them are there?
According to Wikipedia, about 20 or 30 fluent speakers
Another more interesting article, a bit more scholarly, mentions a wide variety of numbers per study.
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380 | Conlangs based on lesser known antique languages
The canon of classical languages studied in Europe comprises Latin, Greek, and Hebrew (and maybe classical Aramaic). Inspired by this answer mentioning a conlang based on Hittite, my follow-up question is: Are there conlangs based on other languages of the antiquity, like Sumerian, Elamite, Akkadian, Hurrian, or Ancient Egyptian?
Eressilian (Hittite)
I wrote the answer you linked, which talks about Eressilian, a conlang based on the Hittite language, supplemented with loanwords from Arabic, ancient Greek and Persian. I talked there about the Greek influence (which is slight, from the information we have); the Hittite roots are of course much stronger. An example passage given by the creator shows Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in Hittite and Eressilian:
Hittite
Hūmant+es antuhsa+es arawa+iya+ya annual+iya kraht(Persian)+a hoquq(Persian/Arabic) anda asanzi hassant+ke. Anda mem+iyan+a wajidan(Persian) asanzi har+ke+ya ēsdu aniya+du adelphotés(Greek)+us katta hūmant+as anda.
Eressilian
Uvẽndesh ãndushesh irawedhadha ãnnuelidha krata ukuk ãnda eshẽnji eshshẽndke. Ãnda mẽvedheva wajidan eshẽnji erkedha ishchu enidhadhu elelpulush kata uvẽndesh ãnda.
I don't have a grasp on the pronunciation of either language, but after attempting to sound it out, the two are quite similar. For instance, the Hittite "antuhsa es" appears similar to the Eressilian "ãndushesh" - both meaning, I believe, "man" or "human".
Goa'uld (Egyptian) (sort of)
This is the "language" spoken by the Goa'uld race in Stargate. It's ostensibly based in ancient Egyptian, drawing from the language and hieroglyphs - appropriate, given that the Goa'uld supposedly ruled Earth as gods, sometimes appearing as the gods of the ancient Egyptians. I keep seeing references to a writing variation called Nakht, which I can't find much information on.
Some (though not much) of the writing uses the Meroitic system. To my (untrained) eye, there don't appear to be a huge amount of similarities (see Meroitic and Goa'uld), but some crossovers show through pretty easily, such as "l"s and "n"s. Those are probably the main Meroitic contributions.
All that said . . . Goa'uld vocabulary is basically made up, and so it's not really a conlang. No attempts were made to keep much linguistic continuity, and so it's not a constructed language as such. There are probably some similarities to ancient Egyptian, but likely not many. I include it here only because its use of some ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs is notable; it appears that an alphabet for the language was indeed constructed.
Irǧeret (Egyptian and Akkadian, with Ugaritic, Arabic and Hebrew influences)
This one seems decently documented by its author. The vocabulary and phonology are derived from Egyptian, although there isn't much vocabulary listed. The organization of nouns - in number and gender - resembles Akkadian. It also contains the Akkadian declensions, with the addition of the dative. In short, the grammar and morphology appears Akkadian, while the vocabulary should be Egyptian. It's an interesting blend.
A note on Proto-Indo-European
A couple of languages have been derived from Proto-Indo-European, the reconstructed common ancestor of Indo-European languages. It's only known indirectly. Therefore, many (though not all) conlangs that are based on it also use words from more recent Indo-European languages. Proto-Indo-European is certainly antique; whether it's "lesser-known" is perhaps another question entirely. That said, it's not a terribly common template, and so I'm listing some Proto-Indo-European languages here for the sake of interest.
Sambahsa: Sambahsa, an international auxiliary language, appears to be heavily influenced by Proto-Indo-European, primarily through vocabulary. It modifies words from languages ranging from India to Spain, attempting to go back to the languages' common roots.
Atlantean (Proto-Indo-European): Like Sambahsa, Atlantean is Proto-Indo-European in origin, especially when it comes to vocabulary (grammatically, it is quite different). Notably, it was created by Marc Okrand, the man behind Klingon. According to the linked website, Okrand
took Proto-Indo-European roots and then compared them with language families at various points in time from around the world. Where similarities between words existed, he altered the root or its semantic value to reflect that similarity. By the combination of the PIE roots and by the adoption of new roots from these world languages, he created a vocabulary.
Given that these languages borrow vocabulary from many descendants of Proto-Indo-European, you could argue that they're not directly based in it. However, the intentional linguistic diversity within the family - and the attempts to base words on common similarities that are attributable to Proto-Indo-European - do seem to make these conlangs its descendants.
...wait, Goa'uld is an actual conlang?
I wouldn’t consider PIE to be an unusual or lesser known old language in the context of conlanging - quite the opposite, going beyond latin or proto-germanic it’s probably the most commonly derived-from language. My personal favourite is Carisitt, which I’ll probably end up linking here a lot.
@celticminstrel It's arguably not; I've included it here because of its derived alphabet.
Certainly there are a few!
Modern Tocharian: Tocharian
Talarian: more Indo-Hittite
Ememir: Sumerian
Probably more lurking about the shadows...
There's not much info about it online at the moment, but I have been developing Emezila, a conlang based on a mixture of Sumerian and Arabic. It can't really be described as an evolution of Sumerian, but it draws a lot from Sumerian vocabulary and a little from Sumerian grammar.
I've got an ongoing project of creating languages for a world where the Carthaginians won the Second Punic War, where Punic occupies a roughly analogous position to that that Latin has in our world.
Much of it is still only a sketch, but the Late Vulgar Punic (i.e. the analogue of Proto-Romance), Qartydšatim is in a reasonably complete state.
As Carthage was less Imperialist than Rome, I also assume many now-extinct languages would have survived (at least much later than they did in our timeline) so my plans also include descendants of Gaulish and Osco-Umbrian up to the modern day, and Etruscan until Late Antiquity or the Middle Ages (I haven't fully decided).
I also have multiple conlangs derived directly from Proto-Indo-European if that counts as lesser known or antique, although all probably need revisiting as my understanding has improved since I last worked on them. Only one of them has information available online which is Elyŝiskää.
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326 | How to classify the language of "Uncleftish Beholding"?
The essay Uncleftish Beholding by Poul Andersen is written in a special kind of English without borrowings from Latin, French, and Greek. The gaps in the lexicon are filled with German style compounds (in fact, a lot of them, like waterstuff "hydrogen" or sourstuff "oxygen" are real calques from Dutch or German).
Is this piece of art written in a conlang? Or is it just a funny form the natlang English?
I wouldn’t personally call Anglish (that is, English without non-Germanic (or sometimes even non-Anglosaxon) vocabulary) a conlang. Taken at face value, it replaces English vocabulary 1:1 with coined words, which is basically the definition of a relex. Whether you want to consider relexes a subset of conlangs or an entirely different category (perhaps a subset of ciphers and codes) altogether is subjective.
As a note, Anglish can also just be stylistic in nature — favouring germanic word stems over loaned ones where possible, but in the context of the essay you posted this is clearly not the case.
Isn't the definition of a conlang a language consciously constructed by a single or a group of humans? Like me, Wikipedia's editors consider it a conlang. Also, as Sparksbet says, that morphology doesn't appear in English.
As far as I can tell, Anglish doesn’t use any inflectional (“grammatical”) morphology different from english. It does use derivational morphology differently to derive new words, but these words stand in a 1:1 correspondence in meaning (but not internal structure) to established English ones(as far as I can tell at least). As such one can still do word-by-word translations between the two, by simply exchanging each anglish word with the corresponding english one. As such I would consider Anglish to be a relex, and I’ve mentioned whether that means it’s a conlang in the body of my answer.
Anglish has made some unproductive affixes productive, thus in some cases, English requires another word where Anglish can produce these.
I'm going to disagree with Adarain and say that Anglish might be a conlang in instances where it is used to as full an extent as in Uncleftish Beholding, though I think it pretty much straddles the line between relex and full conlang. In something where the preference for Germanic word stems is more of a preference than a hard-and-fast rule, it's definitely not a conlang, so those are disregarded for this discussion.
While it is true that Anglish is pretty damn relex-y and to my knowledge doesn't change any Modern English syntactic rules (although if it did, it would undeniably be a conlang), but I do think it does some things differently than more transparent relexes. The word "uncleftish" certainly breaks the rules of Modern English morphology, and extensions of sense, as in using "motes" to refer to particles, give opportunities for the semantic space to change quite a bit (I don't know to what extent the author took advantage of this, however). It depends a lot on an individual's use of the language whether it leans closer to being a conlang or a relex.
This has been called "Anglish", a type of constrained writing. As compounding is a productive force in English (ie, it happens frequently and is not limited to an existing set of words), I wouldn't say that this should be considered relexification. A relexification would have a strict set of German style compounds to use, but something that is just constrained writing would allow you to generate alternate synonymous compounds.
While compounding and derivation may be productive in English, the word uncleftish is definitely not a word that would be considered to be part of English already. Nor are any of the lexicalized compounds used for e.g. the different elements. No English speaker unfamiliar with Anglish could guess that Ymirstuff is Uranium. As such I disagree that constrained writing manages to capture what Anglish is.
@Adarain that sounds fair, I haven't actually read the essay myself. Though some Anglish would just be constrained writing, this one isn't as it brings non English roots in.
Anglish is neither invented language nor relex nor just a casual / funny "style".
It is, more than anything else, a register. The Cambridge Dictionary says of register: We use the term ‘register’ to refer to particular varieties or styles of speaking and writing. Registers vary because the language is used for different purposes, in different contexts and for different audiences. For example, there is a legal register, a register of advertising, registers of banking and a register of weather forecasting. We commonly recognise registers because of their specialised vocabulary but also because of particular uses of grammar.
Much like how we have registers for differing social contexts ("street talk" or "formal gatherings" or "liturgical worship"), Anglish is simply another register. In this case, I'd argue that the social context is one of distinct national identity vs worldwide loss of identity. Anglish is clearly a distinct variety or style of English --- it is English pure and simple! --- and it is used for the particular purpose of distinguishing English English (Our English) from World English (Everyone's English).
The Anglish Moot goes into some detail here. The Anglish/New English project is intended as a means of recovering the Englishness of English and of restoring ownership of the language to the English people.
In linguistics, a register is simply a "variety of a language used for a particular purpose or in a particular social setting." In the case of Anglish, the purpose is as stated: to communicate using a restored & nativising form of English.
As an artifact, it can't really be called an invented language, because it isn't really a thing "invented". And certainly not in the usually understood sense of the concept of an invented language. For it is already English.
It's not a relex in the conlinguistic sense because it is not a matter of "making up new words" and replacing the English words one for one. (In the linguistic sense, perhaps.) Anglish is a matter, simply, of bringing actual English words, older words, dialect words, disused words to the forefront along with some loan borrowing and calquing from other Germanic languages.
My vote is still for Anglish to be classified a Register of English.
I wouldn't call it a register because there's no social context in which this type of language is productively used.
There doesn't have to be a social context for it to be a register of English.
Anglish lacks literally everything necessary to be considered a register and literally does consist of making up new words, not just using older ones - "Ymirstuff" and "uncleftish" aren't actual old English words and they violate modern English morphology.
Okay, what does it lack? I also don't think that the words not being actual Old English really much matters in a modern context.
I wouldn't really consider Anglish to be English in the first place, so it's hard to argue that it's a register of it. But really it's just a matter of perception and drawing lines so I wouldn't say any interpretation is wrong per se.
In my opinion, non-formal registers making up new words is the rule and not the exception. Youth language often (at least in German) invents entirely new words to describe existing thing; while often the words are derived from existing words, sometimes they are entirely novel inventions. Thus, I don’t consider Sparksbet’s counterargument a valid one.
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827 | Are there constructed languages with a tense system inspired by Theory of Relativity?
For readers who aren't familiar with the Theory of Relativity, here is a sketch of how the Special Theory of Relativity structures space and time:
There is a point "here and now" where the observer is located
There is an "absolute past" meaning the region of space and time wherefrom light signals can reach the point "here and now". This region is also termed backward light-cone
There is an "absolute future" meaning the region of space and time whereto the observer can send light signals. This region is also called foreward light-cone
There is a "disconnected" region that can neither be reached by light signals nor send light signals to the observer.
While present, past, and future are commonly found in natlangs and conlangs of all flavours, the disconnected region is a new feature brought in by the Special Theory of Relativity. Are there conlangs with a tempus system including such a region?
EDIT: In real life, the disconnected region is not determined by the speed of light but by the availability of direct communication channels. Thus a sentence like My husband is in his working office now is about the disconnected region (assume no smart phone stalking to verify the sentence).
Hmm, could irrealis modality sort of fit the disconnected region?
I don't think so, you can talk in the irrealis about the present, the reachable future or the reachable past. On the other hand, you can talk about things assumed to real (just not observable, so no evidence is available) happening in the disconnected region.
Right, it's not strictly correct, but it's a possible parallel using naturally occurring semantic features.
Can you maybe give an example of a sentence that could potentially use some sort of disconnected tense? I'm having a hard time visualizing what using such a tense would actually be talking about.
@Sparksbet: OK, done that.
But if it is actually about available direct communication channels, why would you need inspiration from SRT? Related thought: I think the most important part of a relativistic tense system would be time necessarily being relative to an observer.
@Richard Having a full fledged relativistic time system in a spaceship based conlang would be gorgeous. Has someone constructed such a language?
@jknappen I thought Klingon, but it has a really conservative time system. Ithkuil only has a stem for time "relative to some other temporal frame". Tsrul ( http://conlang.wikia.com/wiki/Tsrul ) has a temporal case, which could maybe be used to indicate effects of STR. A language really like what you describe seems not to have been constructed yet.
I think you are looking for the constructed language called Lojban
According to an earlier reference to its grammar,
Technical note for readers conversant with relativity theory: The Lojban time tenses reflect time as seen by the speaker, who is assumed to be a ``point-like observer'' in the relativistic sense: they do not say anything about physical relationships of relativistic interval, still less about implicit causality. The nature of tense is not only subjective but also observer-based.
Here is a specific reference to its use of a "relativistic tense"
There's been a proposal to have words expressing relativistic tenses that are different > from usual past, current and future used in most historical natural languages.
How this 4th tense would work? Consider we are 3 light years away from a star that explodes. And in 3 years we see the explosion. So what? How do we use this 4th tense?
It would be a tag with a modifier ue'ei.
ue'ei = [MOhI] 4th relativistic tense modifier
There's also an interesting set of charts describing in detail the use of relativity theory in Lojban on the current lojban language site.
Lastly, in the Lojban Reference Grammar site, there is this little intriguing tidbit on Lojban tense usage.
In Lojban, the concept of tense extends to every selbri, not merely the verb-like ones. In addition, tense structures provide information about location in space as well as in time. All tense information is optional in Lojban
Baseline CLL-style Lojban has the standard three tenses. There is an experimental word {xa'ei} which implements a objective fourth tense, and a companion {xa'e} for subjective fourth tense. There is no consensus; see this infamous discussion for context.
I'm not downvoting; instead, please edit the question to reflect modern Lojban sensibilities.
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754 | 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?
Do you have any sources for the information in your first paragraph? While different languages are produced at different speeds, claiming this speed is correlated with "complexity of allowed syllables" is not something I've seen substantiated, particularly not by the examples you give -- Mandarin has by far the simplest allowed syllable structure of the languages you name here, and is the slowest (slower, in the records I've seen, than German or English, which have very permissive, complex syllable structures).
@Sparksbet: Here's a quick reference to Scientific American: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fast-talkers/
@jknappen, this article does not attribute the difference in speed to the "complexity" of each syllable as you do, but to the amount of information conveyed per syllable -- something more in line with what I've read in other sources than what you've claimed in your question. If that's what you actually meant by "complexity", I would suggest rewording things (and also considering how that would affect your hypothesis about Toki Pona).
@IXBlackWolfXI it doesn't matter what you think is obvious if you have no evidence to back up your claims.
@Sparksbet: I see "information" (which is measurable) as a proxy for complexity, but it is of course possible to construct some kind of counter-examples ... I'll reword the question.
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.
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784 | Is there any evidence that learning a zonal Slavic conlang can help conversing with native speakers of Slavic languages
The relatively high degree of mutual intercomprehensibility of the Slavic languages has fascinated a lot of people for a long time. It was also a motivation in the design of zonal constructed languages based on Slavic languages (e.g., Slovio and Interslavic).
Are there studies or experiments showing that learning a zonal Slavic-based conlang enables communication with native speakers of Slavic languages at least to some degree?
Yes, they show. Slovio is not a zonal conlang, it is supposed to be a kind of Slavic Esperanto. It took place 20 years ago, but nowadays noone wants to use it.
Nevertheless, Interslavic is comprehensible for all Slavic people. Speaker of Interslavic went abroad to different Slavic countries and expressed their idea using Interslavic instead of native languages or English. And it worked. People understand the meaning, though the language can sound strange or event funny to them. And if it does, Interslavic is a viable project and succeeds in its challenge.
What's the source for your statement about Interslavic?
Interslavic speakers' experience.
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1045 | Is Schleyer's first sketch of Volapük available as a reprint?
Johann Martin Schleyer published the first sketch of Volapük in 1879 in a rather obscure catholic newsletter named Die Sionsharfe. This newsletter isn't easily accessible, as far as I know. Is this first sketch available as a reprint in some more accessible work?
To my big surprise the relevant issue of Sionsharfe is now digitised and freely available from Digitale Bibliothek München. The first sketch of Volapük at this moment still named only Weltsprache or Allsprache, the word Volapük itself can be found a few month later, occurs in Nr. 35, Vol. IV (1879) Beilage as a supplement.
What a fascinating document!
Following issues of Sionsharfe also contain shorter or longer fragments of Volapük, unfortunately the digisat ends with Nr 48 (1880), there are four more years missing.
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844 | Did a majority of followers of Ido indeed switch over to Occidental?
The Wikipedia article on Occidental/Interlingue says (in this version):
According to the Occidental magazine Cosmoglotta in 1928, a majority of Ido adherents took up Occidental in place of Ido.
Obviously, Cosmosglotta isn't an unbiased publication venue. Is there any independent evidence that this switching of language actually took place?
Ido as a reform of Esperanto (around 1907) did convince only a minority of the Esperanto speakers. It indeed might be that a second disillusion sent peoply to Occidental (or Interlingue), but there are still Idists. And for instance Interlingua. The term "majority" might relate to a quite relative Quantity here. However the name Interlingue or Occidental should have had some more allure to non-Esperantists, classical educated, Romance speakers.
I'm as pro-Occidental as they come (it's the only auxiliary language that I support) but I came across that article in 1928 during my typing up the archives of Cosmoglotta and that article is nothing more than Ric Berger wishful thinking. He unfortunately spent just as much time attacking Ido as he did supporting Occidental, and kept on proclaiming it to be moribund and ready to collapse for some 20 years.
Here's the article in question that he wrote in 1928 on the Ido conference from which he concluded that Ido was on its last legs:
http://cosmoglotta.pbworks.com/w/page/132587775/Cosmoglotta%20A%20053%20%28oct%201928%29 (Title: Raport del Occidental-Observator Ric. Berger al Association «Cosmoglotta», Wien.)
So the answer is no. However, it's also true that the majority of the Occidentalists at that time were once Idists, from Berger to Gär to Ramstedt to Pigal to de Guesnet and all the rest. There was definitely a large influx from Ido to Occidental, and Occidental as far as I can tell was the most active auxiliary language after Esperanto by the late 30s and into the 1940s. Matejka and Berger had a lot of back-and-forth in the 1920s to early 1930s until Matejka decided to move over to Occidental, which he stayed with until his death in the late 1990s. He's probably the most prominent example of a major Idist who went full in on Occidental. But Berger hadn't taken into account the other source for new Idists, namely new users who weren't satisfied with Esperanto but still liked the overall concept (i.e. the people that thought that Zamenhof almost got it right).
Anyhow, I removed that sentence from Wikipedia last year when going through the Cosmoglotta archives because it certainly isn't backed up by anything besides Berger's wishes.
r/Ido has twenty times as many subscribers as r/Interlingue. While comparing reddit subscribers may not be the most scientific method, it's probably fair to assume this reflects their popularity in general. It's impossible to really know if most Ido-ists switched to Occidental back in the 1920s, but even if they did I think it's fair to say that later generations preferred Ido to Interlingue. Perhaps confusion with the more popular Interlingua is to blame.
As of 1928, Interlingua was not yet designed (not even projected) and Cosmoglotta was the magazin of the Interlingue community. A confusion is excluded here.
@jknappen A confusion is excluded at the time of the article's publishing (at which point Interlingue was called Occidental anyway as far as I know), but I'm referring to the sizes of the modern reddit communities rather than to the languages' popularity in the 1920s.
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539 | Are there speech communities for Tolkien's Elvish languages?
Has anyone tried to put one of Tolkien's Elvish languages Sindarin or Quenya into everyday conversational use? I can imagine fan groups doing this, but I can also imagine big problems with the available vocabulary (and potentially also with the available grammar).
Are there documented events where Elvish was spoken conversationally?
Any additional information (e.g., on how to deal with the vocabulary) are also welcome!
It is not possible to speak Tolkien's Elvish Languages.
This may confuse some people, considering how much nonsense there is online for "how to speak Tolkien's Elvish" (there's even a wikihow article about it). But according to the Elvish Linguistic Fellowship, an organization dedicated to the study of Tolkien's invented languages, even Quenya and Sindarin are simply not learnable:
The vocabulary, grammar, and syntax of Tolkien's invented languages, even of Quenya and Sindarin, are far too incomplete to allow its casual, conversational, or quotidian use. As Tolkien himself stated, "It should be obvious that if it is possible to compose fragments of verse in Quenya and Sindarin, those languages (and their relations one to another) must have reached a fairly high degree of organization — though of course, far from completeness, either in vocabulary, or in idiom" (Letters p. 380). Indeed, it was never Tolkien's intent to make Quenya, Sindarin, or any of his languages into spoken, written, auxiliary, or otherwise "useful" forms; rather, they were done for purely personal enjoyment. As Tolkien wrote, "It must be emphasized that this process of invention was/is a private enterprise undertaken to give pleasure to myself by giving expression to my personal linguistic 'aesthetic' or taste and its fluctuations" (ibid.)
-- the aforementioned E.L.F.'s FAQ, emphasis mine
An article entitled "Elvish As She Is Spoke" goes into more depth about the history of Tolkien's Elvish and the problems with trying to learn to speak it.
"But don't they speak Elvish in the films?"
The lines and lyrics from Tolkien's languages in the Peter Jackson films were written by David Salo, a linguist who wrote a grammar of Sindarin. He built the dialogue he needed on the limited available attested vocabulary, coining some new words himself but with the goal of making it intelligible to any viewers familiar with Tolkien's languages. To quote him:
Why is there Elvish in the movie? Why did Peter Jackson care enough to strive for some accuracy in the way language is presented? (...) The Elvish in the movie is addressed to the minority of viewers who know something about the languages. And what are they going to want to do when they hear the Elvish sentences? They're going to want to figure out what they mean, and why they mean what they mean. Part of my intention, my particular vision and contribution to this movie, was to create sentences which would be intelligible to the people who study the languages (...) I'm enormously happy to see some people saying based on their knowledge of Elvish, great or small, that they recognized and understood some of what they heard on the screen. That's great - that's exactly the kind of effect that I was looking for.
Here is a collection of the translated dialogue from the LoTR films, with the attested and unattested vocabulary in each line listed. As you can see, a lot of it is attested in Tolkien's works, but there is quite a bit that needed to be invented for the film by Salo. There have been other projects based on Tolkien's Elvish languages in the past as well, but the real fanatics tend to view these as "pseudo-Elvish", since anything not invented by Tolkien can't really be said to be part of Tolkien's Elvish. That said, there's nothing wrong with seeking out resources for and learning these expansions on Tolkien's conlangs -- just know that calling any one an authentic recreation of Tolkien's Elvish is pretty flawed.
Tl;dr
Since Tolkien never fixed his languages firmly or described them completely enough to provide any such comprehensive and corrective model (that never being his goal), ... it is consequently a further inescapable fact that no one has or ever will be able to speak Quenya and Sindarin, any more than anyone will ever (again) be able to speak, say, Etruscan or any other fragmentarily-attested non-living language.
Look into the E.L.F.'s resources (though they do seem a tad outdated) if you're interested in further exploring what information we have about Tolkien's Elvish.
Wikipedia for a while had a contributor who insisted that Salo's dialogue must be described not as “Sindarin” but as “Salonian neo-Sindarin”.
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561 | An Elvish word for squirrel
Is there an Elvish word for squirrel?
According to my latest information from Helmut W. Pesch, Das große Elbisch-Buch, Bastei-Lübbe 2009, there is no such word.
My best try is the Quenya word nornoyaulë (literally "oak cat", from norno "oak" and yaulë "cat", formed after a German dialectal word).
peccuvo
peccuvo (Quenya): Squirrel, lit. "nut-hider" [pec 'nut' + kuvo 'hider']
(source: Parma Eldalamberon #22 2015).
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665 | Designing a vocabulary for geographical features
I want to draw a map of a fictional world resembling Europe in climate and basic geographic features (so there are rivers and lakes, alpine mountains, mittelgebirge, marsh lands and bogs, some plains and forests).
I am thinking of dithematic words (similar to typical endocentric compound words where the second part denotes the general feature and the first part gives a distinguishing detail), so I need words for river, lake, mountain, marsh, bog etc. and some determining words.
However, I want the words to look naturalistic and not overly schematic. What techniques can I use to make the geographical features look naturalistic?
EDIT: Assume that I have already designed a phonology for my conlang stub, and that I have already some phonotactics and candidate root words. What I am interested in is some natural looking variation of the names to generate.
Are you asking about just the general geographical words? In terms of their phonological makeup being naturalistic? Or what?
You might want to skim through this post from Worldbuilding Stack Exchange on the development of names for fantasy lands. It was pretty popular and got lots of creative answers.
If you're just asking for help thinking up words, I don't think that should really be allowed here. I guess I'm asking if there can be more specific criteria here.
There are many factors that make actual real-world placename not look schematic (unless, maybe, you're looking at Japanese placenames...)
Have many different etymological sources from names
In practice, names have a lot of forms, and the younger the names, the more varied the forms: religious names (i.e. saints) and feasts, people names ("X's place", "X's farm", "X's dwelling" are all very common sources of names, but just look at how many us towns are named after female given names!), other placenames (e.g. Athens, Georgia), etc.
Layer the source languages
European names show variety at least in part because the names comes from many layers of languages: France has names in modern French from Germanic, Celtic, Romance (French, Old French, Spanish, Latin roots), and pre-IE languages. In England you have Scottish, Celtic, Old English, Normand and Old Norse/Danish names.
People really don't pay that much attention to the form of a word
A simple example is how common "new town" is as a name: Newton, Newcastle, Villeneuve, Neuville, Villanueva, Villanova, Neustadt, Neuburg, Novgorod, Novohrad, Nevşehir, Yenişehir... All of these are fairly common city names in their respective languages. "Blue Lake" may not feel original, but to te people who come later, it's just a name like any other. The same as we don't really notice "Rowan" or "Rose" are common nouns once they are people's name.
And of course Neapel/Naples... And then there are several rivers called 'river' (Avon) in the UK.
@OliverMason thanks! I can't believe I forgot Neapoli!
The first thing is: Design not only one word for each geographical feature, use several of them. To give some examples from a natural language (German in this case): A mountain may have a name in -berg (which is frequent in the mittelgebirge) but also -spitze, -horn, -kopf, or -kuppe. Some beacon mountains have names of their own without an element meaning "mountain" (e.g., Brocken, Großer Belchen, Kahler Asten, or Eiger). Similarly, cities are not just -stadt "city", but there are also cities in Germany with names in -burg, -berg, -heim, -reut, -furt, or -hafen.
The second thing is: Hydronyms are special. The names of larger rivers often reflect an older substrate and are not taken from the current language of the place and don't have any transparent meaning. Examples are Potomac, Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri in the USA or Thames, Rhine, Rhône, and more in Europe.
With this in mind, the names on the map should show some interesting variation.
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582 | How Standard Average European is Esperanto?
Esperanto is by design based on European languages, so every similarity to European languages is in fact intended.
But I want to know how Standard Average European (SAE criteria listed by @Sparksbet) Esperanto is. One of the hallmarks of SAE, the have-perfect, is absent from Esperanto, and some criteria are formulated in a way that I feel not able to evaluate them. Has someone undertaken this already, or can do it on-the-fly?
See also this combination of features in Esperanto that is not matched by SAE languages but by central Semitic languages and Welsh.
Tl;dr: Esperanto possesses about 8/12 SAE features
Let's go through these features one by one. This is going to be pretty long, sorry for that. For reference, I'm using the famous Haspelmath paper as reference for which features define the SAE sprachbund, as I did in my earlier post.
1. Definite and indefinite articles - ✗
Esperanto defies SAE norms out the gate here, as it only has a definite article.
libro - "a book"
la libro - "the book"
This is actually quite bizarre, as those SAE languages that do not fit this criterion (such as Slavic languages, which heavily influenced Esperanto) have no articles at all. However, some neighboring non-SAE languages do have only a definite article, so this isn't too bizarre cross-linguistically.
2. Relative clauses with relative pronouns - ✓
Haspelmath characterizes this way of forming relative clauses, unique to SAE languages, by the following criteria:
The relative clause is post-nominal
There is an inflecting relative pronoun
This pronoun introduces the relative clause
The relative pronoun functions as a resumptive, signalling the head's role in the relative clause.
Esperanto relative clauses fit all of these criteria.
Tiu blua balono, kion mi estis tenanta, knalis
"That blue balloon, which I was holding, popped."
Here, the relative clause kion mi estis tenanta follows the nominal head balono. It is introduced by an inflecting relative pronoun kion, which is inflected for the accusative case to mark the balloon's role in the clause (that it is the object of estas tenanta. Pretty much prototypical SAE here.
3. 'Have'-perfect - ✗
Many European languages used a form of "to have" plus a passive participle to mark what we can loosely call the perfect. The languages that possess this construction have grammaticalized it to different degrees, but according to Haspelmath, "what is important here is that they all must have had basically the same meaning when they were first created."
Esperanto does not have a 'have'-perfect. Instead, Esperanto emulates Slavic and Finno-Ugric languages in using "to be" + an active participle -- a form Haspelmath explicitly contrasts with the 'have'-perfect in his article.
Mi estas vidinta la viron.
mi est-as vid-i-nta la vir-on
I be-PRS see-PERF-ACT.PTCP the man-ACC
"I have seen the man."
Unsurprising given Zamenhof's language background, but not SAE.
4. Nominative experiencers - ✓
With "verbs of sensation, emotion, cognition, and perception," there are two main strategies for expressing the experiencer -- either the experiencer is treated like an agent and marked as a nominative subject (e.g., "I like it"), or it is treated like a patient or goal and the stimulus is marked as a nominative subject (e.g., "It pleases me", "It is pleasing to me"). English pretty much exclusively uses nominative experiencers, but this isn't strictly binary across languages -- many languages, including quite a few SAE languages, will have some verbs that do the former and some that do the latter. However, most SAE languages have a very strong tendency to prefer nominative experiencers.
Esperanto primarily uses nominative experiencers.
Mi vidis fantomon. - "I saw a ghost."
Mi timas la mallumon. - "I fear the darkness."
Mi flaras florojn. - "I smell flowers."
Esperanto does possess at least one verb that bucks the trend, plaĉi.
Ĉokolado plaĉas al mi
"I like chocolate" (lit., "Chocolate is pleasing to me.")
However, even this construction is gradually becoming less used over time as speakers favor the nominative experiencer verb ŝati instead.
Mi ŝatas ĉokoladon.
"I like chocolate."
Therefore, I think it's safe to say that Esperanto is pretty SAE in this regard.
5. Participial passive - ✓
To quote Haspelmath: "Standard Average European languages typically have a canonical passive construction formed with a passive participle plus an intransitive copula-like verb ("be", "become", or the like). In this passive the original direct object becomes the subject and the original subject may be omitted, but it may also be expressed as an adverbial agent phrase."
Esperanto passives behave pretty much exactly in this way. Unsurprising, since none of the language families from which it draws its inspiration differ from the SAE trend here either.
La knabo estas batita (de sia fratino).
la knab-o est-as bat-i-ta de si-a frat-in-o
the boy-NOM be-PRS hit-PERF-PASS.PTCP of REFL-POSS brother-FEM-NOM
"The boy is hit (by his sister)."
Granted, these passive participle constructions in Esperanto can often be avoided using anticausitive morphology or free word order in contexts where this type of passive construction would be unavoidable in, say, English. But this construction exists and is certainly frequently used enough to be considered a nicely SAE feature of Esperanto.
6. Anticausative prominence - ?
Esperanto possesses both a causative affix -ig and an anticausative affix -iĝ, both of which are used very frequently.
fand-i fand-iĝ-i brul-i brul-ig-i
melt-INF melt-ANTIC-INF burn-INF burn-CAUS-INF
"to melt (tr.)" "to melt (intr.)" "to burn (intr.)" "to burn (tr.)"
To say for certain that Esperanto has a preference for one over the other, some proper analysis of the language's vocabulary and usage would have to be done. In my limited experience, I'd say that they're about equally common in Esperanto, but it's really not possible to say without a lot more research into Esperanto verbs and their usage.
7. Dative external possessors - ✓
As @jknappen has pointed out, Esperanto does allow for dative external possessors
Mi lavas al mi la manoj.
"I wash my hands." (literally, "I wash to me the hands")
I can't personally speak for how common they are, but the only requirement for this criterion is that they exist.
8. Negative pronouns and lack of verbal negation - ✓
This is another easy one, as this SAE feature is explicitly spelled out in the basic 16 rules of Esperanto:
When another NEGATIVE word is present, the word NE [English no, not] is omitted.
Mi ne venis Neniu venis
I not come No.one comes
9. Particles in comparative constructions - ✓
There are quite a few ways of marking comparatives, but particle comparatives like the English "than" are pretty overwhelmingly SAE. Esperanto uses a particle comparative, as its ol is pretty much identical in function to English "that".
10. Relative-based equative constructions - ✓
Esperanto's equative construction tiel ... kiel is actually more transparently based on relative clauses than the English construction, as it uses synchronic relative correlatives -- and even the English "as ... as" construction is considered relative-based by Haspelmath. Another transparently SAE feature.
11. Subject person affixes as strict agreement markers - ✗
It's far more common, cross-linguistically, for languages with person-marking to be pro-drop. However, several SAE languages (including French, German, and English) inflect the verb to agree with the person/number of the subject without allowing the subject to be dropped.
While Esperanto is not pro-drop, to my knowledge, Esperanto does not inflect verbs to agree with the person or number of the subject, and so it avoids this SAE feature.
12. Intensifier-reflexive differentiation - ✓
European languages verb frequently distinguish between intensifiers and reflexive pronouns, but using one form for both appears to be more common worldwide. English actually averts this, as it uses its reflexive in this intensifier function (e.g., "He did it himself").
Esperanto's intensifier particle, mem, is distinct from its reflexive pronoun si.
Li batis sin.
"He hit himself."
Li mem batis ĝin.
"He hit it himself."
Thus, Esperanto is SAE in this regard.
For drawing a map of the SAE Sprachbund, Haspelmath leaves out features 4, 6, and 9 (because he lacked data or found the features difficult to evaluate). So Esperanto is in the 5 out of 9 class on this map, together with the Baltic languages, most Slavonic Languages, and Hungarian.
@jknappen That's interesting! That, along with which features are the SAE ones, makes a lot of sense given Zamenhof's language background.
Update: It seems that Esperanto has dative external possessors, see here: https://esperanto.stackexchange.com/questions/4841/traduko-die-mutter-w%c3%a4scht-dem-kind-die-haare/4846#4846 This brings Esperanto in the 6 out of 9 class together with Czech, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish.
@jknappen Interesting! I hadn't encountered those before. I've updated that item in my answer.
Esperanto shares a number of similarities with Standard Average European and is definitely Eurocentric.
One Eurocentricism is definitely non-existent in Esperanto, and two are questionable.
✱ Definite and Indefinite Articles
Esperanto uses a definite article la for definite nouns and uses no article for indefinite nouns. This is like some West Germanic languages (but only in the plural), Icelandic, Faroese and (Ancient) Greek. This doesn't fit the SAE exactly, which states that there is an indefinite article alongside the definite article. Nevertheless, it is also missing in quite] a few European languages.
✓ Post-Nominal Relative Clauses with Resumptive Pronouns
Esperanto has post-nominal relative clauses and allows resumptive pronouns (verification needed). The latter part may be because of a Eurocentricism on Zamenhof's part he didn't notice. This fits the SAE standard.
✕ 'To have' Perfect
Esperanto uses esti 'to be' where European languages use 'to have'. Active-passive is indicated with the participle, cf. mi estas vidinta 'I have seen' and mi estas vidita 'I have been seen'. This doesn't fit the SAE but isn't completely different.
✓ Nominative Experiencer
Esperanto is nom.-acc. and uses nom. for A and E, whereas for P acc. is used.This fits the SAE standard.
Esperanto prefers 'standard' verbs like 'I like it' over a bit more complicated constructions like 'it satisfies me'. This fits the SAE standard.
✱ Active-Passive
Like I said above, passive is formed with 'to be'. But so is the active. The difference isn't the verb 'to be'-'to have', but the participle (specifically, whether the participle has -ta or -nta). This literally does fit the SAE but doesn't act like the SAE languages.
✓ Anticausative Preference
Preferences are up to the speakers. I'm not a speaker but I'd say there is a preference for anticausatives over causatives, especially since many Esperanto speakers are European and copy their preferences to Esperanto.
✓ Dative External Possession
Esperanto uses dative external possession, especially in translations where another language, with dative external possession, is translated to Esperanto. This fits the SAE.
✓ Comparative particle
Esperanto uses the particle ol 'than' for comparatives. Ol comes from German als 'than', also a comparative particle. This fits SAE perfectly.
✓ Relative Clause Based Equative Construction
Esperanto uses tiel ... kiel for 'as ... as' relative-clause based equative constructions. Literally, that is 'so (in that manner) ... how/as (relatively used: in what manner, in which manner)'. This fits SAE.
✓ Reflexive and Intensifier Pronoun
Esperanto doesn't have a form like the English 'himself' and uses mem 'self'. This is the root of 'himself'. Lin mem 'himself' is literally 'him self'. The reflexive is different, Esperanto uses si. This fits SAE standards.
Icelandic and Faroese actually do never use an indefinite article, not only in the plural.
How can you claim Esperanto does not have a form like "himself" when it has the reflexive pronoun si? You also seem to misunderstand the semantics of "mem". "Mem" is uses for emphasis -- "li mem" does not correspond to "him self" in usage and is used more like "he himself" is in English. I'm a bit baffled by this bullet point entirely, since having a distinction between emphatics and reflexive pronouns like Esperanto does here is a noted feature of the SAE sprachbund and isn't one possessed by English - why is English the point of comparison here?
Are there indications that Esperanto has a perfect at all? According to the 16 rules, there are only present, future, and past tense. Mi estatas vidinta is at least very unusual.
@jknappen Esperanto uses forms of esti "to be" + participles for perfect, progressive, and prospective aspect, as well as the passive voice. While Esperanto doesn't use these constructions as often as English uses their equivalents, they do still definitely exist. I've no idea where you got estatas from, though -- that is not a normal Esperanto verb form to my knowledge.
Related question on epo.se: https://esperanto.stackexchange.com/questions/1724/are-the-compound-verb-tenses-ever-really-used-in-esperanto
@Sparksbet estatas is simply a typo, should read estas.
Reading back over this, I'm confused how Esperanto passives don't "act like SAE languages". Esperanto passives are exactly like other SAE passives, and its having active participles as well isn't unique either (Slavic langs have active participles like that too).
also -1 due to the header you've added -- I liked your write-up before you added that, but Esperanto has about as many SAE features as the average Slavic language, which are typically considered SAE, so now your answer is just misleading.
@Sparksbet See revision.
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735 | What are the reasons behind ROILA's phonology?
ROILA (RObot Interaction LAnguage), a constructed language for communication between robots and between robots and humans, comes with a 5 vowel system. the vowels are written a e i o u but their sound are not according to cardinal vowels (which one would expect from natural languages) but:
a æ AE fast
e ɛ EH red
i ɪ IH big
o ɔ AO frost
u ʌ AH but
(Columns are: spelling, IPA, ARPABET, example word)
What are the reasons behind that choice?
I'm fascinated by the fact that the obvious answer, given by b a, occurred to neither of us. It is not mere anglocentrism, it is blatant incomprehension, of a kind I don't think you'll see in conlanging.
The process of creating the phonology is described at length in Omar Mubin's PhD thesis "ROILA: RObot Interaction LAnguage" (available from the publications page). It seems to have happened in three stages.
He determined which phonemes are most common in a number of natural and artificial languages (pp. 17-19). The most common vowels were /i, u, o, a, e/ (in IPA).
The final set of phonemes he chose included the vowels a, e, i, o and u. He doesn't indicate that the vowels were given in IPA, and indeed he later gives them the IPA values /ae (sic), ɛ, ɪ, ɑ, ʌ/ (pp. 22-23).
AA /ɑ/ was later altered to AO /ɔ/ in order to avoid confusion with AE /æ/ (p. 35-36).
The only explanation I can give for the incongruity between stage 1 and stage 2 is that he (mistakenly?) put the five vowels /a, e, i, o, u/ into his orthography, but changed their phonetic values to the English orthographic "short" vowels, which are /æ, ɛ, ɪ, ɑ, ʌ/ in American English.
The fact that he had to avoid confusion between /æ/ and /ɑ/ (in step 3), but doesn't consider any confusion between /æ/ and /ɛ/ or between /ɔ/ and /ʌ/ seems very English-centric, but which would be very strange from the perspective of Dutch, which doesn't distinguish either pair of phonemes (considering the fact he was doing his research in Holland).
Unsurprisingly, "American English speakers significantly outperformed other speakers in our setup" (p. 34). They also mention problems with Dutch accents and different regional English accents (p. 86 of this document).
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2003 | Non-decomposable TAM strategies
The agglutinative language I'm most familiar with is Hungarian, and the way Hungarian handles TAM is, I think, incredibly boring: separate T-A-M markers with no allomorphs that just get concatenated together. Need to make a verb past-tense? Just slap on the past tense suffix (of which there is only one allomorph, -t)! Need to also make it conditional? Just slap on the conditional mood suffix too (of which there are technically two allomorphs but only because of vowel harmony, -ne and -na)!
This strikes me, I guess, as "morphology on autopilot", and since the lack of allomorphy makes verb endings all basically resemble each other morphophologically (Hungarian nouns, arguably, suffer worse from this), I think this makes Hungarian sound tediously repetitious. I am always looking for new ways to make my languages not work like Hungarian does.
One alternative is to encode inflection non-concatenatively, and the go-to example of non-concatenative verb morphology is the Semitic triconsonantal root system - e.g. in Akkadian iparras "he decides" vs. iprus "he decided", which segment indicates past-tense? - But you don't actually have to ditch concatenation to get the kind of effect I want. Compare Georgian:
ვაშენებ vasheneb "I am building", present indicative
ავაშენებ avasheneb "I will build", future indicative
ავაშენე avashene "I built", past aorist
ამეშენებინა ameshenebina "I have built", past perfect
The stem here is -შენ- -shen-; You can see the present and future have a suffix -eb that the aorist doesn't have (the "thematic suffix"), but that can't be a "nonpast tense suffix", because the past perfect also has it. And by contrast the past aorist and past perfect have a prefix a- that the present doesn't have (the "preverb"), but that can't be a "past tense suffix", because the future also has it. So these affixes are necessary to produce different TAM encodings, but they don't apparently have any specific TAM meaning in and of themselves.*
That's really what I'm after: non-decomposable inflection. Inflection whose meaning isn't simply the sum of its parts.
There are a few methods I know of to accomplish this for TAM marking:
the aforementioned Semitic triconsonantal root system, AKA vowel apophony on steroids
the aforementioned Kartvelian "combinatory" model
Indo-European-style fused subject-TAM: not decomposable into separate tense, aspect, and mood affixes when they're all marked simultaneously with the same verb ending
separate stems for different TAM: most languages do this at least a little for especially common, suppletive verbs, but e.g. Sumerian systematically distinguishes hamtu (aorist past?) from maru (everything else?) by stem alteration. I would also compare e.g. French ét-ait "he was being" vs. ser-ait "he would be", where the normally TAM-indicating endings are identical and TAM is in that case communicated by the stem itself.
I don't know if any natlang does this, but one idea I had was basically direct-inverse tense: every verb is inherently either past or nonpast, and is marked not for tense per se, but for whether or not the actual tense matches the expected tense.
Two alternative approaches I'm aware of that, in my opinion, don't really solve the problem of decomposability, but instead just move it somewhere else:
Nominal TAM: moving TAM marking onto nouns instead of verbs. This is sort of interesting but doesn't fundamentally change what encodes TAM, only where TAM is encoded.
Basque periphrasis: most non-present tenses are rendered periphrastically, with one of a couple different auxiliaries + one of a couple different participial forms. Changing the tense of the auxiliary changes the tense of the compound verb. Often this can be decomposed as the auxiliary giving the tense, and the participle giving the aspect.
It strikes me that this question could be asked about other verb categories too, not just TAM - maybe evidentiality, transitivity, persons involved, etc. - but at the moment I'm mostly trying to figure out an interesting TAM marking scheme for a language in a different family from my other families that kind of have all the options covered already. If I've already done Kartvelian-esque verbs, if I've already done Indo-European-esque verbs, and I want to try something new... what else can I do to spice up TAM marking? What other natlangs should I look to for inspiration?
* (They're both thought AFAICT to originate as aspect markers - preverbs marking perfectivity, thematic suffixes marking lexical aspect(?), but synchronically that's not what either one is functioning as)
For some more suggestions on inflecting languages, see the comments below this question in [linguistics.se]: https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/q/36972/9781
your direct-inverse strategy isn't too dissimilar from how PIE verbs of a given aspect are derived from roots (if we take the view that roots did in fact have a defined aktionsart, rather than believing that this is simply an issue of survivorship). Root verbs have the same aspect as the root, and to get a different aspect you had to alter the stem (through things like ablaut, suffixes, or the nasal infix)
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1872 | How to reconcile the large number of similarities between my languages' morphemes
All of the languages I've made so far are placed on the same continent of my conworld, and it's a different continent from where humans evolved, so they would have had to migrate into it. For basically worldbuilding reasons (e.g. having certain mythologies preserve a deep cultural memory of this migration and how one initial population gave rise to the myriad of current ethnic groups), I want to limit the number of migration events/number of initial hunter-gatherer populations everyone else eventually descends from. This maybe, but not necessarily, suggests that all the current language families descend from just a handful of ancestral macrofamilies.
Now, a lot of my languages (from different families) have enough morphological similarity to suggest... some kind of connection, but if a phylogenetic one, it's not at all clear which ones are supposed to be grouped together, and it's slowly driving me insane. There don't seem to be two that are obviously more related to each other than to the others.
To take 4 example languages from 4 different families, which I'll just call A, B, C and D:
*-k derives adjectives in B, genitives in C, and some sort of oblique marker in D that could conceivably come from a genitive. It has no discernable analog in A though.
*-(V)S (probably *-ʃ) reflexes as an productive accusative + non-productive nominative in A, but a productive masculine singular nominative in B, productive masculine nominalizer in C, and some sort of core argument marker in D
*-Vr in C is an ablative that became an ergative-genitive, an agentive marker in B, and a participle marker in A that might derive from one of those other functions. D has no obvious analog.
Instead, *-(a)r shows up as a plural marker in D, and sort of in A too
C and D both have *-om as a core patientive argument marker, plus the related *-(V)n-om where I haven't yet quite decided what the *-n- does
A, B, and D all have a 2nd person pronoun derived from *-ɣ-
A and B both have 1st person verb subject marker derived from *-(V)S
A and B both have a 3rd person verb subject marker derived from *-o/-a
B has a bunch of obligatory verb infixes, some of which like *-ɣ- and *-β- match up with verbalizer suffixes in A, others of which like *-l- match up with verbalizers in D
B and C both use *-l- in a benefactive or related oblique case; A has *-l- show up genitives/adjectives and it's uncertain whether this is related
A, B and D all seem to derive an oblique case from *-ʕə or something like it
A has a dative -t and D has a locative -ta, perhaps both derived from an allative
A and D both have a definite marker derivable from *-jə-
B, C and D all mark gender from something derived from *-jə-, but D marks the opposite gender with it that B/C do
etc. There are plenty of parallels, but seemingly no consistent grouping to be made.
Grouping them all under the umbrella of one macrofamily seems to either require 1) way more convergent evolution than seems likely, or 2) case markers - not like, the rules of role marking, but the actual morphemes themselves - getting constantly loaned between different families, which I thought was highly unnaturalistic.
On the other hand, not grouping under the same macrofamily makes it seem really suspicious why all these families seem to share the same morphemes - something I thought even Sprachbunds can't accomplish, only converging on the same structure and not literally the same phonetic value for analogous morphemes.
So... what does that leave? How do I explain a bunch of families being too similar to not be related, but also not consistently similar enough to be related?
If they're in the same macrofamily, they might have similar morphemes. The similarities in their sound just implies rather conservative evolution. ─ But I would advise you to actually work out the evolution from the protolanguage to the modern languages. Otherwise it's not naturalistic, and you don't get an explanation for the "similarities" and have to ask this question on Stack Exchange.
So your continent is a bit similar to the Americas in the real world. Let me recapitulate some theories about the language families of pre-columbian America. After his highly successful classification of the languages of the African continent, Greenberg went on to classify the languages of the Americas and he came up with just three families: Eskimo-Aleut, Na-Dene, and Amerind. This classification was harshly criticised and never generally accepted, while Eskimo-Aleut and Na-Dene are well established language families, Amerind isn't. Instead, almost all relevant linguists hold up some dozens of independent language families for the languages of the Americas with no provable relationship among each other, plus a good number of isolated languages.
So a time of ca. 15.000 years was enough to create dozens of apparently unrelated language families in the Americas.
Given enough time, a quite chaotic picture with seemingly many unrelated languages is not too unplausible and there is not need to tweak them into the Procrustean bed of one macrofamily with all sound laws and roots spelled out. And working diachronically backwards from already existing conlangs is much harder than going forward from a protolanguage.
To your closing question: The explanation is probably something like: The languages of my constructed world are probably related somehow, but the time since their split is too long to tell how exactly and to give definite proof of this.
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1853 | Should I analyze these consonants as codas or onset clusters?
In my conlang, the proto-language had a CVR (R standing for a resonant) syllable structure and no voiced obstruents. Later, unstressed vowels were lost between voiceless obstruents (i.e. all obstruents). After this, obstruents were voiced when between two other voiced segments (/s/ became /r/, which was not present in the protolang), and all clusters with any voiced segments were split by an epenthetic vowel /a/.
The result is that the new language appears to be CVC, but only permitting voiceless obstruents to serve as codas, and only word-internally before other voiceless obstruents. Which made me wonder: does it make more sense to analyze this syllable structure as CCV? This doesn't end up working exactly (the protolang had uniform initial stress, preventing words from starting with clusters), but it feels like it makes more sense. So how should I analyze the syllable structure?
As already noted in the question, the answer is: It depends on the analysis. However, there are some tools to inform the analysis, most notably the sonority hierachy. The sonority sequencing principle describes a syllable as a sequence of sounds with peak sonority at the syllable core (a single vowel or a diphthong) and falling sonority towards the beginning and the end of the syllable. So, a syllable boundary is at the troughs of sonority. It is not necessarily uniquely determined by this requirement and there is another heuristic often invoked, the maximum onset principle: Put as many consonants as possible to the second syllable. This is not the only possible way to determine syllables, Ancient Greek grammarians used the heuristic to move the maximum possible word initial consonant clusters to the second syllable and Greek has a lot of interesting consonant clusters in this respect, e.g., /mn-/, /pt-/, /ps-/, or /kt-/.
Applying it to the conlang described in the question, we arrive at some words with the structure CVPPVC where P stands for a voiceless plosive. Since all voiceless plosives are on the same level of the sonority hierarchy, a syllable boundary between the two plosives is the choice suggested by this analysis. Putting the syllable boundary before the consonant cluster is not completely outlandish, compare the Greek words starting with /pt-/ or /kt-/, but the described conlang still does not have word initial consonant clusters, so it looks unnatural to me.
For more food for thoughts, see also https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/29950/is-there-a-maximal-coda-principle
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1863 | How much of the irregularity caused by sound change (e.g. vowel loss) will be retained in inflectional paradigms?
In creating a language family with multiple generations, I'm noticing a huge buildup of irregularity in my inflectional paradigms, mostly caused by things like vowel loss etc. How long would it take for these strange rules of the inflection to be ironed out? Would they be at all? Is it a safe assumption to make that people will, over time, generalize the most common rule?
The way I put it in historical linguistics classes is:
Sound laws are entirely regular, and create irregularity
Analogy is entirely irregular, and creates regularity
In other words, neogrammarian-style sound laws apply perfectly, uniformly, and without exception across the language, and often create irregularities when they interact with each other (as you've seen). Analogy happens sporadically and unpredictably, and serves to smooth out those irregularities and make them regular again.
So the answer is yes, people will regularize things via analogy, but how quickly, how frequently, and just generally how they do that is unpredictable. Proto-Indo-European verb conjugation was a mess of irregularity; Ancient Greek preserved most of that irregularity, while Latin regularized it down to just a handful of paradigms (the five "conjugations"), plus a handful of exceptions (common words which didn't get regularized). Conversely Latin had many different ways to mark case and number on nouns, while Ancient Greek simplified these down to three (the three "declensions").
For conlanging, that means it's entirely up to you how much you want to regularize! As a general rule, the most common words are the least likely to get regularized—that's why we have odd forms like "am" and "is" and "be" in English, when practically every other verb follows a regular pattern in the present tense. But beyond this, it happens exactly as much as you the creator want it to happen, whether that's "the entire language" or "not at all".
Define "huge amount". Let's say this is for verb conjugation (maybe it's avtually for nouns; you didn't specify). If there's some commonality - e.g. vowel syncope as you mention - among enough the irregulars to number, say, half of the average size of your regular verb classes, at that point I would just call it a new verb class.
I just made up that "half of the average" metric, you could choose some other threshold, but my point is what it sounds like you're describing is a pretty common mechanism to create multiple conjugation paradigms in the first place. Then you don't have to level the irregularity if you just redefine it as regular - the regular conjugation of the "loses-its-vowel" class.
If a sound change is frequent enough, you don't even have to think of it in terms of irregular vs. regular. In Georgian, verb stems very often get a vowel or two elided. e.g. look up the word for "to kill" and you'll be told it's მოკლავს mo-k'l-av-s. The stem, which looks like -k'l-, is really an underlying -k'al-, but good luck guessing that when the /a/ gets elided in almost all conjugations... until it suddenly reappears in მოვკალი mo-v-k'al-i "I killed him". Georgian is so replete with this vowel tomfoolery that its dictionaries just don't even bother trying to keep track of which elisions are "regular" or not. There's not really a rule to determine when you do or don't elide, but calling it "irregular" belies how it's so pervasive that it resists analogical levelling.
I also recall the example of Nishnaabemwin, which has very aggressive vowel syncope that it never bothers regularizing: mkizin is "shoe," mkiznan is "shoes," and nmakzin is "my shoe" (the root form is makizin, actually the source of English "moccasin.")
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1885 | Should prenasalized consonants be distinct from nasal+obstruent sequences?
I have a language with CVC syllable structure and a series of prenasalized consonants. As written, therefore, a word like /anda/ would be distinct from /aⁿda/. I can barely grasp the difference here, and even less so how to romanize this. Is it realistic to have an allophonic process turn /anda/ into [a.ⁿda], or vice versa?
It's perfectly reasonable to get rid of that distinction, and have /nd/ and /ⁿd/ be treated exactly the same. Many languages in the Bantu family (the family that's most famous for its prenasalized stops) lack that distinction.
If you want to keep the distinction, it would probably be considered contrastive syllabification (the way the consonants are grouped into syllables is significant), which happens but is pretty rare. Googling that term will get you some more information on how that tends to work.
I don't think there is a difference between /aⁿda/ and /anda/.
There doesn't need to be any difference. If a diphthong can constitute a single syllable (as in "aisle," "boy," and "cow") so can a prenasalized consonant. A little practice can get you used to saying and hearing [nda] or [mbe], for example, as single syllables.
But if you WANT there to be a difference, you can make a distinction between non-syllabified nasals in prenasalized consonants vs. syllabified nasals that precede obstruants--with the phonetic difference being the length of the nasal.
So, for example, [anda] and [an̩da], which would be two- and three- syllable words respectively.
/'a.ⁿda/ and /'an.da/ could present a distinction in a language concerned with morae, since the former comprises two morae and the latter three.
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1950 | Since languages that use OSV/OVS word order normally have short sentences, what would this mean for creating a conlang that uses OVS/OSV word order?
About OVS word order
So recently I was reading up a bit on word orders in languages when I came across this Wikipedia article about OVS word order. Now, this is what the Wikipedia article says about OVS word order:
In linguistic topology, object-verb-subject (OVS) or object-verb-agent (OVA) is a rare permutation of word order. OVS denotes the sequence object-verb-subject in unmarked expressions: Oranges ate Sam, Thorns have roses. The passive voice in English may appear to be in OVS order, but that is not an accurate description.
The article then goes on to describe how the passive voice works in English and why it might seem like OVS word order (not really important but still). Now, in the table on the right hand side at the top, it shows different types of word order and gives a few examples of languages that generally use that word order. Here is that table, recreated to the best of my ability:
Word Order
English equivalent
Proportion of languages
Example languages
SOV
"Cows grass eat."
45%
Ancient Greek, Bengali, Burmese, Hindi/Urdu, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Persian, Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu, Turkish, etc
SVO
"Cows eat grass."
42%
Chinese, English, French, Hausa, Italian, Malay, Portuguese, Spanish, Swahili, Thai, Vietnamese, etc
VSO
"Eat cows grass."
9%
Biblical Hebrew, Classical Arabic, Filipino, Irish, Māori, Tuareg-Berber, Welsh
VOS
"Eat grass cows."
3%
Car, Fijan, Malagasy, Q'eqchi', Terêna
OVS
"Grass eat cows."
1%
Hixkaryana, Urarina
OSV
"Grass cows eat."
0%
Tobati, Warao
However, note that this is a table of the languages that normally use these word orders. As mentioned in the article, most languages allow for OVS word order due to case marking, those being noted are Classical Arabic, Romanian, Croatian, Basque, Esperanto, Hungarian, Finnish, Russian, and to an extent, German and Dutch.
The article also notes that even though Swedish and Norwegian do have case marking, those languages lack a more extensive form of case marking, however are still able to do OVS word order due to case marking with pronouns, making it fairly often that you'll hear somebody speaking Swedish or Norwegian with OVS word order due to being able to do case marking with pronouns. However, it seems that sentences with OVS word order are fairly short.
Example in Russian: Я закончил задание (lit. "I finish mission")
v.s. Задание закончил я (lit. "Mission finished I" - "It was I who finished the mission")
This example is showing an example of a sentence in Russian in the present progressive1 (with SVO word order) compared to the same sentence, but in the past affirmative (with OVS word order). However, in both cases, the sentences are relatively short.
About OSV word order
According to the Wikipedia article:
OSV is rarely used in unmarked sentences, which use a normal word order without emphasis. Most languages that use OSV as their default word order come from the Amazon Basin, such as Xavante, Jamamadi, Apurinã, Warao, Kayabí, and Nadëb. Here is an example from Apurinã:
anana nota apa
pineapple I fetch
Now here's the thing. While this is allowed in other languages, this only occurs in marked sentences, and those sentences are also really short, even in the languages where this is the default word order.
Why might this be?
Reason 1. Why this might be is because even though languages only sometime use OVS/OSV word order, those sentences are generally only describe something that is important to the speaker, such as in Mexican Spanish (another notable example, sorry I didn't mention this earlier), which uses OSV for these sentences.
Reason 2. Now you might be asking: Well, why isn't it just any sentence length when using OVS/OSV word order? The reason might be most people just aren't able to remember this great amount of info all at once. They might need to think about all of the details of what they are about to explain before formulating the sentence, and like I just mentioned, most people can't do that.
OVS word order in conlangs
Interlingua and Klingon, and a brief mention of Esperanto
As noted in the Wikipedia article about OVS word order, Interlingua is an example of a conlang that uses the aforementioned word order. Although there is no mention of it accepting the passive voice, however, the editor-in-chief of Panorama in Interlingua, Thomas Breinstrup, sometimes uses the sequence in articles written for that.
Another notable example of OVS word order is in the fantasy language used in Star Trek, Klingon. The OVS word order was chosen to make Klingon sound more extraterrestrial-like, since it is extremely rare in languages here on this planet.
Now, about Esperanto, I guess I really shouldn't be mentioning this, however, I am mentioning this because it does use OVS word order, but only because it has free word order in the language.
What would this mean for creating a conlang that uses OVS/OSV word order?
Now, I ask this because say somebody wanted to create a conlang that uses one of these word orders normally. Would it be more difficult, because there isn't a whole lot of info on widely spoken languages that generally use OSV/OVS word order, or would it have to do more with choosing a more well known word order that they are familiar with, maybe using OSV/OVS word order for some purpose, and then gradually shifting over to fully using OSV/OVS word order?
One more example
Note my (148 character long, will most likely need to be edited) question title. Now as we are on the topic of word order, this is the word order that I actually used to write the question title, just to show an example of how English has a somewhat free word order:
Since languages (subject) that use (verb) OSV/OVS word order (object) normally have (verb) short sentences (object), what would this mean (verb) for creating a conlang (subject) that uses (verb) OVS/OSV word order? (object)
Now here's the thing: Yes, it could be argued that technically this is a sentence that uses SVO word order with another verb and then an object, then being conjoined with the second part of the sentence using a verb and then using SVO word order, it could also technically be argued that yes, while the first part of the sentence is normal SVO(VO), the second part of the sentence is VS(VO) word order, and if I had somehow ended up with putting an object in the place of where the verb was, the second part of the sentence would have technically qualified for being considered VSO(V), which shows that English sort of does have free word order.1
To clarify
Sorry if any of my tags are wrong
1I'm probably wrong about this.
Fun Fact: Sentences are normally short in any language. Long sentences are rare and often the hallmark of an elaborated written register of the language. Specially, example sentences are short. They should show the point without presenting too much confounders,
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1907 | How likely is it for conlangs to have verbs that have the same conjugation as another verb?
So I have been studying Spanish recently (mainly verb conjugations because I'm great at constructing sentences, but still am horrible when it comes to verb conjugations), and decided to teach myself the verb conjugation for ser (to be, used to identify something in a permanent state) in the preterite form.
However, I thought that I was getting a feeling of déjà vu because it looked sort of similar to the verb conjugation for ir (to go) in the preterite form. I looked back at my notes to refresh myself on the conjugation of ir in the preterite form to make sure that it was just a fake feeling of déjà vu, however, it turned out that the verb conjugations were in fact the same in the preterite form.
For anyone who wants to know, these are the verb conjugations for ser and ir in the preterite form:
Yo fui
Tú fuiste
Él/Ella/Ud. fue
Nosotros fuimos
Vosotros fuisteis
Ell@s/Uds. fueron
Proof:
Conjugation of ser
Conjugation of ir
This made me think: Is it usually okay for conlangs to have verbs that have the same verb conjugations, leading to the listener having to interpret what is being said entirely based on context, or should this happen more as the language evolves?
Japanese and Chinese
I bring up Japanese and Chinese because I feel like they would make good examples of where pretty much anything that is said in those two languages is interpreted based on how the listener chooses to interpret what is being said, although being natural languages and not conlangs.
Example for Mandarin Chinese (Simplified)
Example for Japanese
"我吃了一个苹果" (Wǒ chīle yīgè píngguǒ "I ate an apple") could be interpreted by the listener as "我吃了依各凭果" (Wǒ chīle yī gè píng guǒ "I ate yogurt", although could be interpreted as "I ate the fruit of Ezekiel", a more oldspeak way of saying it, per se)
This one is more obvious, albeit it being different from the previous example because this example is more just similar sounding words, like "参加" (sanka "participation") could be interpreted as "酸化" (sanka "oxidation"). Some other examples of this are "漢字" (kanji "Chinese characters") and "感じ" (kanji "feeling"), "死亡" (shibou "death"), "脂肪" (shibou "grease") and "志望" (shibou "ambition")
On the topic of Old Spanish
Old Spanish
I wasn't really able to find anything that really related to similar sounding words/verbs on the Wikipedia for Old Spanish, since the only thing that I could find to relate to this was osso "bear" v.s oso "I dare", which while looking different despite being pronounced the same, apparently are written the same in Modern Spanish today (oso "bear" and oso "I dare") so I feel like this would at least be a somewhat good example at least.
According to the Old Spanish Wikipedia
The Old Spanish spelling of the sibilants was identical to modern Portuguese spelling, which, unlike [modern] Spanish, still preserves most of the sounds of the medieval language, and so is still a mostly faithful representation of the spoken language. Examples of words before spelling was altered in 1815 to reflect the changed pronunciation:
...
osso 'bear' versus oso 'I dare' (Modern Spanish oso in both cases, cf. Portuguese urso [a borrowing from Latin], ouso)
For anyone who is wondering, "cf." means "confer".
My question
Is it likely that new conlangs will have verbs that will be conjugated the exact same as another verb, or should this happen more as the language evolves?
Links that I used when researching this
Old Spanish Wikipedia
Similar sounding words in Japanese source
Google Translate (I usually use Google Translate to get rōmaji "ローマ字" (Literal translation to English: Roman characters) and pīnyīn "拼音" (Literal translation to English: Pinyin) if I can't remember it off of the top of my head.)
DeepL Translate (This is more for getting an extremely accurate translation if I want to provide an example to what I am talking about, however I usually always then go to Google Translate to get the pronunciation if I can't exactly remember it)
To clear up any confusion
I am sorry if I lost you really anywhere in my thought process, I'm good at writing short questions but I feel like whenever I try to write a long essay explaining my question, it always has seemed like I tend to more or less accidentally go off track on what my question is supposed to be about.
This is more of an addendum to point #1, but I also feel like sometimes I also don't seem to add a whole lot of evidence to long essays that I write, so sorry if it feels like that.
I am also sorry if any of my tags are not related to my post.
This is known as suppletion: when a particular verb, for whatever reason, is missing some of its forms, and they have to be filled in by another verb. This is why "go" and "went" look so different in English: "go" is missing its past tense, so we've filled it in with the past tense from the unrelated verb "wend" (as in "wend your way"). For a more modern example, "can" has no future tense, so we have to fill in the gap with "be able to" ("she could do it", "she can do it", "she will be able to do it").
In Latin, as in English, the verb "to be" ended up becoming an amalgamation of a bunch of different stems via this process. Some forms are cognate with "is", from a PIE root meaning "be" (sum, est, esse, etc), and others are cognate with "be", from a PIE root meaning "become" (fuī, futūrus, etc). This process only got worse in Spanish: regular sound changes made some of these forms indistinguishable, so forms from another verb (sedēre, "reside") were co-opted to fill in the gaps. This is where forms like ser come from.
Meanwhile, the verb "to go" in Latin was fairly regular, but had a very short stem: a single i-. This meant that a lot of its forms became indistinguishable when sound changes merged this stem into the endings. As a result, Spanish once again co-opted forms from other verbs to fill in its gaps: some forms come from vadere "to walk" (like voy), while others were taken from the already-suppletive verb for "to be".
So, how common is this? Suppletion is very common! But if it creates too much ambiguity, more suppletion will happen to reduce that ambiguity: in Latin, the past tense of tollere "lift" were used to fill in gaps in the paradigm of ferre "carry", so tollere started using the past tense of the prefixed form sustollere instead.
Evidently in this case, the ambiguity didn't create too much of a problem, so it survived unchanged (like "can" and "be able to" in English). But it's easy to imagine Alternate Spanish where things turned out mostly the same, but ir borrowed a different verb's past tense to reduce this ambiguity (like how the past tense of "wend" is now "wended" instead of "went").
It's also possible for verbs to end up with the same conjugation, not because of suppletion, but because sound changes made them into homophones. Similarly, when this happens, either the ambiguity will be acceptable, or it won't be (and one of the verbs will fall out of use as a result).
Thanks for the answer! I would never have thought that suppletion/ambiguity could be a result of that happening if it weren't for this!
NOTE: many varieties of English allow the double modal construction, the sort of thing that educated prescriptivists laugh at, like "I might could do that" or "She'll can get that for you." I find they are extremely useful.
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1920 | How do mora-timed languages work?
So I was researching a bit on different types of languages, mainly languages from Eastern Asia, because those seemed to have been very intriguing to me, when I came across Japanese. Now, here's what the Wikipedia page on Japanese says:
Japanese is an agglutinative, mora-timed language with relatively simple phonatics, a pure vowel system, phonemic vowel and consonant length, and a lexically significant pitch-accent.
Now here's what a "mora-timed language" is:
According to the Wikipedia on mora-timed languages when it comes to Japanese/dialects of Japanese:
Most dialects of Japanese, including the standard, use morae, known in Japanese as haku (拍) or mōra (モーラ) rather than syllables, as the basis of the sound system. Writing Japanese in kana (hiragana and katakana) is said by those scholars who use the term mora to demonstrate a moraic system of writing.
And according to that same Wikipedia page at the top:
A mora (plural morae or moras; often symbolized μ) is a basic timing unit in the phonology of some languages, equal to or shorter than a syllable. For example, a short syllable such as ba consists of one mora (monomoraic) while a long syllable such as baa consists of two (bimoric); extra-long syllables with three moras (trimoraic) are relatively rare. Such metrics are also referred to as syllable weight.
The term comes from the Latin word for 'linger, delay', which was also used to translate the Greek word χρόνος : chrónos ('time') in its metrical sense.
Now here's how I would assume how a mora-time conlang would work:
Similar to how most mora-timed languages that are widely used today, there has to be something as the sound basis of the language (as why I think [although this might not necessarily be true] English would not be a mora-timed language)
Now, ask yourself: are there/are there going to be (as this might be a constructed language) any different types of morae present in the language?
And I ask what I did in Note 2 because of this:
For example, in the two-syllable word mōra, the ō is a long vowel and counts as two morae. The word is written in three syllables, モーラ, corresponding here to mo-o-ra, each containing one mora. Therefore, scholars argue that the 5/7/5 pattern of the haiku in modern Japanese is of morae instead of syllables.
Therefore, it is sufficient to say that my example as to why I put Note 2 there is valid because it is possible to have more than one type of mora in a language. The Wikipedia only mentions that trimoric syllables are rare in languages that we hear today.
More of an addendum to Note 2, however, this only really applies to syllables in a language, and nothing else.
Other examples of mora-timed languages
Ancient Greek
According to the Wikipedia for mora-timed languages, short vowels (such as ε "e") in Ancient Greek have one mora, and longer diphthongs/vowels contain 2 mora (such as η "ee"). It also says that there are two types of accents that is only placed on one mora of a word:
The acute accent ´
What this does: It represents a high pitch on a single mora or the last mora of a long vowel, for example, έ "é" and ή "eé"
The circumflex accent ~
What this does: It represents a high pitch on the first mora of a long vowel, the most prominent example being ῆ "ée"
(Old) English
Here's how mora-timing worked in Old English:
Monophthongs (a word that has a single perceived auditory quality) and short diphthongs (such as ai or oi) counted as one mora, while long diphthongs and monophthongs were considered to be bimoric. Also, consonants ending a syllable counted as one mora on their own.
My question
Is my understanding of how mora-timed languages work correct, or how could I better understand how they work?
The most important thing to note is that moras, like phonemes, are a theoretical abstraction. Some mora-timed languages really are timed that way—as in, each mora takes approximately the same amount of time to speak. (Japanese is like this.) Others aren't, but moras are still useful to the analysis.
So they're a theoretical abstraction. But, they're often a useful one! As you pointed out, in Ancient Greek, the accent doesn't just fall on a vowel: if the vowel is long (or a diphthong), the accent can fall either on the first part, or the second. This suggests that we should break vowels down into smaller pieces when talking about accentuation.
Similarly, in Akkadian, to figure out where to put the accent, you need to put syllables into three different categories. Light syllables have a short vowel and no coda, heavy syllables have either a long vowel or a coda, and ultraheavy syllables have an ultralong vowel, or both a long vowel and a coda.
This seems like a place where moras would help. We can say a short vowel is one mora, a long vowel two, an ultralong vowel three, and a coda consonant adds one. Then the three categories of syllables are one mora, two moras, and three or more moras.
It's not likely that each mora was actually pronounced for around the same length of time, like in Japanese, because of how the writing system works: long vowels were sometimes written twice to emphasize their length, but usually weren't (which is odd if they were literally twice as long). Similarly, in Ancient Greek (unlike in Japanese) syllables with more than two moras were treated exactly the same as syllables with two moras in poetry. But the moras help explain the facts of the language, and thus are useful to us.
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1877 | Convergent evolution in languages
Are there any examples of languages in totally different parts of Earth having similarities in such things as grammar and words? As one example, I've noticed 'Mama' and 'Papa' seem to be common across the globe, though that might just be due to colonisation.
Relevant question on [linguistics.se]: https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/q/865/9781
Some words are very consistent across the world for non-linguistic reasons. For example, "mama" consists of the earliest sounds infants are able to make. This is the same reason languages on opposite sides of the world have words that sound like "mow" or "meow" for "cat".
Some linguists have also proposed that particular sounds or groups of sounds are fundamentally associated with particular concepts in the human brain, though this hasn't met with wide acceptance.
Words can also be borrowed from one language into another; this is especially common with words for trade goods or new technologies, which can easily become so-called "Wanderworter" (or Wanderwörter if you're German) spreading across the world along with the things they describe. That's why so many languages have similar words for "tea", and also for "internet". Cognates of "cannabis" appear all the way back in ancient Sumerian.
Grammatically, certain structures are extremely common across the world, which some linguists attribute to "universal grammar" built into the human brain. For example, languages that put verbs before their objects, also tend to put nouns before relative clauses. When one of these features changes in a language, the other tends to change with it.
Grammatical structures can also be borrowed between languages. A lot of languages in western Europe have the same structure for expressing "perfect" verbs (ones that describe the aftereffects of a past action): English says someone "has eaten", while in French, someone a mangé ("has eaten"), and in Greek, ekhei phaei ("has eaten"). This is an "areal feature" that has spread between languages due to a long period of contact; when languages are in long enough contact to accumulate a lot of these shared features, they become a "Sprachbund".
And of course, some things end up converging due to sheer coincidence. There are a lot of languages in the world, and only so many different ways to arrange words. English and Akkadian and Swahili all put prepositions before nouns, not because of some ancestral relationship (or any direct contact), but because there aren't that many different places to put prepositions, and "before the noun" is a common choice.
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1944 | Specificities of VSO languages and common ones with SVO languages
I'm currently working on a VSO language and syntax is the next big step to tackle. However, I find it quite hard to find ressources on VSO languages and thought I could glean some informations quickly and easily here. So the questions are :
What are their main specificities ?
How close to SVO languages are they ?
Which features do they have in common ?
I've already found the following infos :
Strong tendencies
Adjective comes before standard of comparison
Verb comes before adpositional phrase
Adpositions come before the noun phrase (i.e. they are prepositions)
Verb comes before manner adverb
Copula comes before nominal or adjectival predicate
Auxiliary comes before verb (for those languages that have
auxiliaries)
Negative auxiliary comes before verb (for those languages that have
negative auxiliaries)
Complementizer comes before sentence
Adverbial subordinator comes before sentence
Weak tendencies
Head noun comes before genitive noun
Question particle comes before sentence (in those languages that have question particles)
Article comes before noun (in those languages that have articles)
I think what I'm mostly looking for is a general scheme of VSO syntax to understand its core and iterate around it. For example, how are conjunctions and prepositions generally handled ? Things like that.
I've read the following books on the subject of conlanging :
The Language Construction Kit
Advanced Language Construction
The Syntax Construction Kit
The Conlanger’s Lexipedia
The Art of Language Invention
However, my understanding of syntax is really basic, that's the part I've the most difficulties with.
If I say "VSO languages tend to be overall head-initial", is that meaningful to you?
If I remember well it means that Verbal clauses tend to start with the verb, Nominal clauses tend to start with the Noun etc ...
As far as universals are concerned, VSO languages are generally "head-initial", just like SVO ones. In fact, it's common for languages to be categorized into "VO" versus "OV", without mentioning the subject, because whether the object comes before or after the verb is more telling than where the subject goes! That's where most of the tendencies you mention come in.
According to most types of generative syntax (the sort you've probably done if you've drawn any syntax trees), VSO languages are actually "underlyingly" SVO, and then the V moves to a special "tense" or "inflection" node before the subject. But there's only one of these nodes, which means if you have an auxiliary verb, you end up with the order Aux-S-V-O. It's sort of like how in English, when you turn a sentence into a question, only one auxiliary moves: "you have been doing well" → "have you been doing well", not *"have been you doing well". There's only one slot available for the movement, so only one auxiliary gets to move, and the rest have to stay in their original places.
Finally, just remember that all of these are tendencies rather than absolute rules! VO languages tend to put nouns before adjectives, but just look at English. So if these tendencies conflict with the aesthetic you want for your language, feel free to ignore them! They're inspiration, not a restriction.
Thanks for your reply ! Really clear, in-depth and concise.
@PouillaudeAlexis If you found the answer useful, remember you can vote it up with the arrows on the left, and "accept" it with the green checkmark!
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1932 | Participles and types of verbs
I'm currently working on the verbal morphology of my language and was wondering the following :
How are action verbs differentiated from state ones ?
Is it even a necessity ?
Could a verb be both ?
How could that manifest in the language ?
Why participles seems to be the perfect answer ?
How could it be replaced ?
I started working with the idea that some verbs could be both. For example, I have a verb which can both mean "standing up" as in "he is standing up", but also "stand up" as in "he stands up". Respectively, action meaning and state meaning.
State verbs can't be actions, at least most of them. Needing something can't be an action, same for loving. In "semantically correct" English one can't say "I'm needing help" or "I'm loving someone", although they are grammatically valid. They can, at most, induce actions. You need help so you surely are looking for some. You love someone so you surely are showing it to them.
However, in most European languages, action verbs can be used as states thanks to the past participle. But in reality, that's either the passive voice or the transformation of the verb in an adjective.
"He covers his bed with leaves" -> "His bed is covered with leaves" -> "His bed covered with leaves smells like rotting forest"
"He cuts the apple" -> "The apple is cut" -> "The cut apple is left on the table"
So my main questions really are :
Are these the only possibilities ?
How could participles be replaced ?
Do these solutions bring anything else to the language or is it strangeness for the sake of it ?
The easy answer would be "let context do its work" but that doesn't satisfy me ^^
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1931 | Phonetics and Phonotactics critique?
Could you help me with a conlang idea I had? I want to make a language that has a solid amount of phonemes so I don't have to make words too long (I want the language to he agglutinative, so there's always a risk of it getting out of control lol). But I also wanted it to sound relatively natural. Could you please give me some useful constructive criticism on this draft of the language's phonetic inventory and phonotactics? The vowel a here is a mid vowel, like Italian. A macron on top doubles the quantity but doesn't change the quality. An apex means that the vowel is more open. The circumflex is just an apex with a macron (so an open vowel with double the quantity). Kh and Gh are like the Greek fricatives. Th and dh are like think and then. Sh is like in English and zh is its voiced version. Ly is like Spanish Ll. Y is /j/.
Phonology:
Vowels:
a e i o u
ā ē ī ō ū
é í ó
ê î ô
ha he hi ho hu
hā hē hī hō hū
hé hí hó
hê hî hô
Phonotactics:
The back vowels are of the "a, o, u" groups, and the front vowels are of the "e, i" groups. Use ' to separate breathing vowels from modifiable consonants (e.g. perlet'he, to differentiate it from perlethe). Back vowels can only be in contact with Front vowels and vice versa. So *āō is not a valid combination, but ēa is.
Consonants:
p b f v
k g kh gh
t d th dh
s z sh zh
r l ly m n y
Phonotactics:
ly and y are never syllable final. b v g gh d dh z zh are never word initial. Voiced consonants cannot go beside unvoiced consonants. Voiced consonants change unvoiced consonants, in case of agglutination. So if you have a word like eg and it should agglutinate with the word tu, it would become egdu, but if it was ek + tu it would become ektu. Also el + tír = eldír.
Possible syllable structures:
V, VV, VC, CV, CVC, VVC, CVV, CVVC
Stress:
Stress is always on the antipenultimate syllable. If there are two syllables, stess is on the first syllable.
Most of what I put into a How To Phonotactics on this site is already evident here. If you haven't seen that, there may be a short search worth of insight left for you. If your goal is to give the language "character" with its own sound, looks good! I get the sense you want words to "crescendo." Food for thought, none neces. issues: 1 stressed syl. even in long words? l,m,n,r are okay onsets? Context tells egtu=egdu from egdu=egdu? Does getu->gedu? Know of Turkish V & C harmonies? H in examples, not in C list; what if eg+hu? Encode any grammar with reserved or rule-breaking phonotactics?
By the way, I replied in a comment because I wonder if you might be asked to revise your question to be more broad than your own example and less open-ended. E.g., maybe something like, "What factors could we evaluate phonotactics/phonetics over?"
Even in long words the antipenultimate rule would apply. l, m, n, r and ly are all valid word starters yes! Basically ek + tu will produce ektu, because both consonants are voiceless. But if any of the consonants are voiced, the voiced consonant would make the voiceless one voiced too. Ge + tu would make getu. Vowel + consonant does not affect if it is voiced or not. eg + hu is eg'hu (the ' is just to differentiate it from eghu with a voiced gh). It is basically just a breathed vowel and can appear anywhere any other vowel can. Not sure how I'd go about the rule-breaking. Any suggestions?
I think I was unclear by trying to fit a lot into the char limit. I understand the consonants and voice rule and the ' ;) It's also similar to consonant harmony in Turkish. So h does not transform into a voiced cons. after a voiced cons.? Good to know for lmnr and vowels. I still wonder how you tell apart homographs like eg+tu=egdu vs eg+du=egdu. If it's context-based, there's nothing wrong with that but I don't know yet if you've thought about it. I suggest it could be fun to think of grammar or even pragmatics concepts you could encode by reserved or rule-breaking phonotactics combinations.
Oh now I get what you mean. I said in the OP that "b v g gh d dh z zh are never word initial." But I said that between a lot of other information so it's normal that you missed it. Basically, except for l, ly,.m, n and r (the only voiced consonants without an unvoiced equivalent), all initial consonants invariably become unvoiced. So *du is impossible. If they met someone called Deven for example, they would instinctively call him Têvan or something similar. They can't do initial voiced consonants. Given that l, ly, m, n and r are all voiced there is though a possibility of confusion. (Cont)
Between ek + nu and eg +nu for example! Both would homophonically be pronounced as egnu. I thought my initial solution solved this problem, but I see now that it only attenuated it. I didn't think about that and that is something I have to figure out what to do
Let us continue this discussion in chat.
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1967 | Layered languages
I was wondering if there exist layered languages, either natlang or conlang. What I mean is that the basis of the language is quite simple (simply mashing vocabulary together creates correct sentences), but then more complex structures can be used to add more meaning/nuance and such. One example of what I mean is the idea of inbetween words which can be left out seemingly without changing the meaning but they do change some subtle nuances. The idea would be that the language is very simple to get conversational in (safe for vocabulary of course for which there is no shortcut), but has a lot of depth to beyond that point which can be ignored at first. I am sorry if this isn't very clear, I am not very experienced in conlangs.
OK, here's some food for thoughts.
Arguably, natural languages are layered in this sense. There are some simple registers like Baby talk and Foreigner talk, there are registers like Elaborated and restricted code used by adult native speakers of different social classes.
More on the side of constructed languages, there is BASIC English, a simplified version of English with the purpose of easy learnability for foreigners, and there is Leichte Sprache, a special version of German to be understandable for people with cognitive challenges.
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1970 | Executive phoneme list for human?
I want to make my own language, but for begin this works, we need to know all phonemes existing, for decide which keep and which give up.
Do you know a site with list of phonem with playable sound (it's important to understand, we need to hear)
The IPA, or International Phonetic Alphabet, is how we write these things down, and they have a website. The charts at the bottom of the linked page cover every phone with a symbol, and clicking on the symbol will play it's corresponding phone. Note that while he vowels are played straight, the consonants are played in the structure /Ca.aCa:/ for clarity. Also, these are phones, not phonemes. Actual languages will realize them slightly differently for ease and contrast, as Draconis explains.
The problem is that phonemes are a theoretical abstraction. They only exist by contrast with something else, and what things contrast depends on the language.
For example, if you look at an IPA vowel chart, you can see the angled line on the left side that represents all the front vowels. There's an infinite number of possible vowels there, and every language divides that line up differently. Some languages draw a dividing line somewhere in the middle, and have two categories: high and low. Some languages draw two dividing lines and have three categories. Others draw three lines and have four categories, and so on.
So, how many phonemes are there along that line? Maybe infinitely many, or at least hundreds, since every language draws their dividing lines differently. Or maybe only five or so, since I don't know of any language that has more than that many front unrounded vowels. What are those phonemes? Well, every language defines them differently.
If you look at an IPA chart, that's a great start for this. The IPA originally tried to provide separate characters for any sounds that any (European) language drew a dividing line between, which is why it's got five symbols for front unrounded vowels. But that quickly became infeasible when they started expanding to non-European languages. For example, a lot of languages have aspirated stops, or ejective stops, and these didn't get their own symbols. Or, they originally thought no language distinguished dental from alveolar sounds, and assigned them the same symbols…but that turns out to not be true in various Australian languages.
So the best way to get this sort of understanding is to read up on the IPA chart, and learn about some of the distinctions that languages make that don't get their own IPA symbols. But be prepared: there are a lot of symbols there. Know that no language in the world, natural or constructed, distinguishes all of them.
Sounds are objectively classifiable (it's a vibration frequency), so I'm not talking about the symbols that represent a sound, it's not of much interest, what matters are the sounds themselves.
I'll take a look at the IPA first, thank you. But it's surprising that there is no inclusion of the sounds of non-European languages since this is also where there is richness and exoticism (from our point of view).
I don't think there are so many ways to produce distinctive sounds, different enough to be audible to an entire population (sounds that are too close get simplified very quickly)
@Matrix Sounds are objectively measurable, but frequencies are continuous: there are an infinite number of possibilities.
yes, but like I said, it's not true for human interpretation. there is no gradiant when you hear, only quanta : when difference is enouth, you can said "it's another sound", if not, you will hear same sound (even if reel frequence have changed) ;)
@Matrix Ah, but those quanta are language-specific.
Wikipedia's IPA pages are really comprehensive. You can hear each IPA sound in the chart, as well as read up on each individual manner/place of articulation.
For Consonants: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPA_pulmonic_consonant_chart_with_audio
For Vowels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPA_vowel_chart_with_audio
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1973 | Mathematical Quenya Symbol?
I found many sites where Quenya numerical system was explain, but nothing about mathematical opperation like :
+ - / * (I don't speak about advanced notion like x² or square), but there is nothing written by tolkien about basic equation ?!?
Tolkien never think avout this, and don't create mathematical symbol, he as philologist, not mathematician.
Tolkien never even had to invent the Tengwar numerals (not Quenya, which is a language, not a writing system). Hell, Tolkien never had to invent the Elvish languages and scripts for Middle-earth (he had to for his own pleasure though). I agree with Draconis that symbols for +-*/= likely didn't exist in the Third Age, and I don't think Tolkien needed to include them in the books even if he had them in mind.
Also know that we know of the Tengwar numerals because Christopher Tolkien found some notes and published them years after Tolkien's death. It's not like Tolkien wrote a book telling the readers: see the Elvish had numeric symbols but no +-*/=. George R.R. Martin never even designed an alphabet for Westeros. Is that also a mistake of him?
@Eugene GRR is not a linguist, its a mistake of curse, but it's not his job to create languages^^
It's not a question of pleasure (if you are linguist of sunday maybe), but profesional linguist must think about reel evolution of langages ;) It's impossible with so much time, there is no mathematical symbol. But it's not my question, or a debate, I just would be sure there is nothing about this in all work of Tolkien. Question closed. you can interpret that however you want now...
It wasn't Tolkien's job either when he was writing a novel as a novelist. Let's put aside whether it's plausible that they didn't invent such symbols in Ages. You are mistaken! Tolkien never said there weren't such symbols. What if Christopher Tolkien never found his father's notes on Tengwar numbers or never made them public? I guess you would then claim it was a mistake of Tolkien not to have invented any numbers? If so, I assure you there are a lot more than numbers that are lacking in Tolkien's languages. We don't even have a complete pronoun table of Sindarin.
I don't believe so, no. The idea of writing equations with symbols like that is actually a very recent invention, historically speaking; ways of representing numbers go back to the very beginnings of writing, but the equals sign wasn't invented until the 1500s! So it's not surprising that the elves didn't have such a thing (or at least that Tolkien never mentioned it in the existing sources).
no, I think it's a mistake of Tolkien. He juste dont think about this... Babylonian (-1700 JC) already resolve equation. So your beliefs are incorrect.
@Matrix The Babylonians were doing math, but they didn't have an equivalent of +, ×, =, etc. The idea of writing an equation out like "a²+b²=c²" is a very modern thing.
I dont talk about square or ², just 1 +1 it's basic
@Matrix to elaborate on Draconis' point a little, Newton's Second Law is commonly expressed as F=ma today, but in Newton's time it was written out in words something like "the force is proportional to the product of the mass and the acceleration". Writing things out in words was the norm until very recently. There was no dedicated mathematical notation, people did algebra (or arithmetic or whatever maths they were doing) on expressions written out in words
so for 1+1 this would historically have been written "the sum of one and one" or "the sum of two ones" or similar. Having a specific notation for maths was not seen as necessary historically, and likely wouldn't have been by Tolkien
https://taruithornmiruvor.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/part-2-figure-1-tif-copy-2000x1070.jpg the duration of age, if you take historic's Earth like reference, it's very very very long in comparaison, so mathematical symbol must be spawn at this time... BREF... I have my answer thx ;)
Apparently, the Egyptians did have a sort of ideogram for “plus” and for “minus,” which were Gardiner D54 and D55 , respectively. You could tell which was which by telling whether the legs were pointing towards the beginning or the end of the line. But I guess that would have been closer to a scribal abbreviation (like our modern &) than mathematical notation, per se.
Age from Tolkien are > to 1500 years needed on our Earth to create this symbol. It's not realistic to think with (at leat) twice as long, there is nobody to abstract mathematics ;)
@Matrix But were the people in Middle Earth doing the sort of mathematics that would make it useful?
waw, what level do you have in science to say that? XD
@Matrix I'm saying, to the best of my knowledge, we don't know whether anyone in Middle Earth invented algebra. I'm not aware of anything in Tolkien's writings about it.
yes but it's not realistic,i think it's a mistake from the author, not intradiegetic
@Matrix You can go on to argue that it's a mistake of Tolkien not to have Atom Bombs and jets by the End of Third Age, because the Elves, for example, had tens of thousands of years since their Iron Age.
@Matrix Also, how is it Tolkien's mistake not to include any mathematical equations in his books? Do you honestly think that a novel must contain manuscripts with math equations? He never even mentioned any toilet, bacteria, or diarrhea in Middle-earth either. Also a mistake?! Seriously mathematical notations aren't the only thing, nor the usual thing you would come across in any real life text, literary or otherwise. When was the last you saw +-*/? In a Math class? Physics discussion?
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2019 | How can I model/simulate/test non-human vocal arrangements?
In various world-building projects, I find myself running into the aggravating situation of having to create languages for non-humans using the human phonetic inventory. I would love nothing more than to create exciting, original phonetic inventories unique to my worlds, but I have absolutely no clue how to go about doing this. Is there a method in which I could simulate, for example, airflows through a structure and the resulting sounds? This question might be better suited to, say - the biology StackExchange, but I'm sure if I posted this there, then it would be better suited for here.
I am not finding any free simulators that could help with this project. In fact, this article on modeling vocal tracts of extinct animals describes it as a multi-discipline endeavor even for professional scientists. If I find anything, I'll add it as an answer.
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2025 | An all consonant language? (Part Two)
I'd like to create a language with only consonants, using the letters b, ch, d, f, g(hard), j, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, sh, t, th (voiced and unvoiced), v, z, and (most importantly) h. I feel like the h would just become a mixture of unvoiced vowels as humans spoke the language. Is this likely to happen over time?
Why would you want only b, ch, d, f, g(hard), j, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, sh, t, th (voiced and unvoiced), v, z, and h?
Why would you not be looking to adapt a Semitic tongue, since they don't rely on vowels?
In any case, how far have you got, up to now?
I just thought it would be a neat idea. I've not actually done any work on it, mostly because I wanted to see the answer to my question. If the language would be likely to develop vowels, I probably wouldn't go ahead with the project.
You're wholly entitled to see Draconis' Answer as satisfactory and I suggest you really do think about the first sounds babies make while learning to use their mouths.
Doesn't 'everyone know' that in every recorded language, the word for 'mother' starts with an 'm' sound?
Listen to the babies and explain in detail where vowels come into what they're experimenting with, as opposed to the formats various students need to use to transcribe those sounds onto paper.
Average out the babies' sounds and will you still insist they're using vowels, or just playing with 'm'?
Since conlanging is a pretty niche field, it can be hard to do research on these things before posting. I don't see any fundamental issues with this question.
@RobbieGoodwin "Doesn't 'everyone know' that in every recorded language, the word for 'mother' starts with an 'm' sound?" That isn't remotely true. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mother/translations#Noun
@curiousdannii I'm so glad I used the 'scare quotes of doubt'. Clearly I'd placed too much trust in the wrong person and I thank your for disproving it.
Even so, don't you think the small group of languages in that link do show a disproportionate number of 'm' syllables, particularly initial 'm' syllables?
You could have a language with no vowel contrasts. Trying to recall something I read somewhere (sigh): Conventionally it is considered universal that every language has at least three vowels, but there's at least one language for which a controversial analysis proposes only one or two vowel phonemes with lots of allophones.
Well, over time, you're almost certainly going to gain vowels. Vowels are very easy to pronounce (think about the first sounds babies make as they're learning to use their mouths), and very easy to hear. So the evolutionary forces that apply to any language in productive use will tend to introduce vowels. They're just so useful!
If you want this language to be naturally spoken for a long time without evolving vowels, you'll need some way to prevent that. One way would be to have the speakers lack vocal cords, or not be able to use them (so they're always whispering). This makes vowels a lot harder to hear, so they lose some of their evolutionary advantage. But this will probably remove all the nasals, too, since those are practically impossible to hear without voicing.
Are you suggesting there are no - perhaps even, could be no - languages without vowels? I can't conclusively contradict that and don't you believe Semitic tongues at least almost always avoid vowels?
@RobbieGoodwin Semitic languages have vowels, they just often don't write them. Very important difference there. I'm not aware of any language that doesn't have phonetic vowels (i.e. sounds produced with very little constriction of the vocal tract that are mostly defined by their formants).
This is the not the place for that particular extended discussion and still, how will Mr Layman not see having unwritten vowels as almost an impossibility? How could the reader understand the inclusion of unwritten sounds? Please be sure, this is not asked for the sake or argument; I'd really like to know, but I don't understand and can't imagine.
If it's not asking too much, would you mind Posting a new Question with its own Answer explaining that?
@RobbieGoodwin If you're interested in the difference between letters and sounds, feel free to ask a new question, and we can answer it.
No, I'm not interested in the difference between letters and sounds… that would be roughly about the difference between standard letters and phonetic symbols.
What difference can you discern among, eg, 'uruk' and 'iraq' or even 'warka' when without vowels they become 'rk' and 'rq' and even 'wrk'?
@RobbieGoodwin In that case, feel free to ask that. Or whatever your question is.
@RobbieGoodwin I say this in complete sincerity: I'm happy to answer questions on the topic (I in fact teach a class on that), but a comment doesn't give enough room for detail to be sure what you're actually asking. This is why I'm suggesting that you ask it as a separate question. For example, are you concerned about names specifically? Why would it be more confusing than e.g. English "lead" vs "lead" vs "lead"? Etc. A question has room for that, a comment doesn't.
I personally don't think it is possible to have a language without vowels unless you are talking about a sign language or some code like language that doesn't use syllables (as in clicks or taps or dots and dashes like morse code). Though I think @Draconis has a point, maybe if they whispered a lot, or maybe if the speakers were snake people and hissed everything and replaced the vowels with 'S's.
However far more achievable would be to have little to no supporting and elongating vowels, and as little vowels as possible.
Nothing would be drawn out, all sounds immediately followed by another sound when two or more phonemes are put together. Very up and down sounding, like stuttering on purpose but language.
Instead of having vowels stressing/not stressing/raising them up or down for the sake of tone, I theorize that rhythm would instead become far more crucial. Something like iambic pentameter must exist especially for more formal kinds of talk/occasions. And people singing or just arguing probably always sounds like rapping/a rap battle.
But see this example of a natural language with long consonant sequences: https://conlang.stackexchange.com/a/2028/142
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2046 | Is There an Optimal Order for Addressing Phonetics, Morphology, Syntax, Semantics, and Pragmatics?
I am about to create a constructed language. Is it acceptable if I follow the levels of language in the given order: phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics? Or do I need to do this other way?
As already said, this order is logical but each aspect shouldn't be designed independently. For instance, if you want your language to have an agglutinative morphology, its phonology should be thought beforehand with this purpose in mind.
To give an example if your phonology have consonant final words but doesn't tolerate some consonants to be adjacent, it means that you cannot have suffixes starting with a consonant as morphemes, or you need to add rules to handle them:
by adding a vowel between the root and the suffix (turkish: masa + m > masam, my table -- but kalem-i-m, my pen). Is it going to be the same for all suffixes ?
by deleting or modifying one the conflicting consonant (inuktitut: umiaq + liuq- > umialiuq- to build a boat). Should you delete the root or the suffix consonant ? Or merge them into something else, following what rules ?
and many other solutions
so that your morphology can easily become extremely complicated for some choices of phonology. Of course you can have a virtually constraintless phonology and all sorts of morphemes (like georgian does) or a very rigid phonology and syllable structure and morphemes that fit into the pattern (like japanese).
The same is true for morphology/syntax interactions. If your language has a lot of information encoded morphologically, you would expect (at least for naturalistic conlangs) its word-order to be relatively free, or you might end up with your grammar doing a lot of things redundantly, which a lot of conlangers find aesthetically unpleasant. Instead you should have a quite rigid word order if your language is isolating [*].
In the end, everything is a matter of taste, but if you want your result to be consistent, it is a good idea to have a general picture of the result before diving into the details, for example by defining beforehand some typological features of your conlang-to-be.
[*] of course this is by no means systematic, chinese can switch easily from SVO to topic-comment sentence structure without any morphological device to indicate it.
The way you do this is up to you, essentially -- it's your language. However, it seems logical to follow this order, because you will compose larger units that you use in subsequent stages of your design.
For example, when looking at syntax, you will be dealing with words. It's a lot easier if you already know what those words look like, though you can of course use placeholders instead. But then you dont get the 'feel' of the language.
This doesn't have to be strict: if, during your work on syntax, you find that a word doesn't look so good, simply go back and change it.
As I said, this is more advice than fixed rules.
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2049 | Lower than / Covered by
I am wondering if there is a distinction in any natural language between a preposition or postposition with the meaning "lower than" and a different preposition or postposition with the meaning "covered by" such that it would be incorrect to say that my muscle is under my skin etc. You have to use the preposition or postposition with the meaning "covered by".
I also wonder if there are any natural languages with unique prepositions or postpositions or other unique distinctions. One thing I was thinking about for one of my conlangs would be to have some prepositions with fairly unique meanings such as "nearer to the center" or "along the top of something" or a distinction like being on the west, east, north, south side of something or proceeding in that direction. That would be if the speakers know the cardinal directions at all times, similar to the Aboriginal Australians.
Well, this is my question and I hope someone would know something unique about this. I am thinking about this presently and I have investigated the grammars of some languages, but I don't know where to look. I also want to know if someone else might have an idea for a preposition which would mean something more unique or distinct, or if some other distinction can be made such as that the hypothetical language would use two or more prepositions with separate meanings where we would use just one word.
Scandinavian languages have the preposition you look for. I'll use Swedish as an example.
The word "nedanför" means "below", but strictly in the sense you ask for. It could not be used if you mean "muscles below your skin". Similarly, "ovanför" means "above". There are also Swedish words "under" and "över" with the same dual meanings as in Eglish.
As you ask for further examples of prepositions, I could mention that most of the basic Swedish prepostions come in pairs: one that concerns locality and one that concerns direction or movement. As an example, where English has the prepostion "here", Swedish has "här" and "hit". "We are here" translates to "vi är HÄR", while "we came here" translates to "vi kom HIT". Similarly, while English uses the same word "in" in both "we came IN" and "we are IN a house", a Swede would say "vi kom IN" but "vi är I ett hus". And so on.
Some prepositions come in groups larger than 2. The just mentioned "här" ("here") and "hit" ("to here") are accompanied by "häråt" ("in the direction towards here"), and to further complicate things "hitåt" means approximately the same thing. (If you like to mess with people and make them confused, try asking the next Swede you meet about the difference between "häråt" and "hitåt"!)
NIce example. Minor nitpick: här, hit & Co. are adverbs, not prepositions. The example of the two translations of "in" involves prepositions again.
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2053 | Vowel Breaking Sound Change
I find breaking to be an interesting sound change which I haven't used much before, and I'm trying to figure out when it would most commonly occur. My understanding is that it would be prone to happen if the vowel is a front vowel and the consonant or consonant cluster is pronounced in the back of the mouth, like "kald" becoming "ċeald" in Old English. Similarly with "ċealf", "hīeran" and so on.
Now I think this sound change is a bit daunting to keep in mind when going over how certain words might change from a proto-language to a current language, so I had in mind creating a kind of cheat sheet showing which vowels might break into which diphthongs. I'm also looking to find good examples of vowels breaking in other languages.
I'm aware of a notable example, Proto-Germanic "ek" turning into Old Norse "jak", which turned into the modern word for the pronoun "I" in several Scandinavian languages. Something similar happened with "hertōn" turning into "hjarta".
Keeping this sound change in mind, I think of a potential word "ahel" in a proto-language and turn it into "ajal" or "aial" or "ajel" in the descendant language.
I found some good examples too in Romanian, such as Latin "pellis" turning into "piele", meaning "skin", and "porta" into "poartă", "flōr" into "floare", "petra" into "pietră".
In Rejang there are three specific vowels breaking, "ə" turning into "êa", "i" turning into "ea", and "u" turning into "oa", such as in "tənur" turning into "tənoar" turning into "tênoa", meaning "egg".
It seems to me that if the breaking vowel is "e" or "a" there seems to very often be an addition of an "i" or "j" sound, while "u" or "o" tends to have an "a" put after it, and the consonants that tend to trigger this kind of change are "r" and "l" mostly. Of course, this is just my guess having looked at some examples of vowel breaking, and I would like to find more examples.
"Breaking" tends to involve a vowel becoming a diphthong, which requires more articulatory effort but makes it more perceptually distinct. This can either result in a diphthong "centered" on the original position—for example, e becomes aj—or it can involve inserting a different sound at one end or the other (like i becoming aj).
Off the top of my head, the latter is more common. We see that happening in Old English vowel breaking, for example (æ > æə > æɑ), and also in Modern English's Great Vowel Shift (u > əu > au). Old English vowel breaking was triggered by consonants at the back of the mouth, but the Great Vowel Shift was triggered by the vowel space getting too crowded, and the high vowels needing some way to become more distinct. Crowdedness also led to breaking in the Western Romance languages, as in Latin fokum > Spanish fwego (via an intermediate *fwogo), Latin festam > Spanish fjesta.
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2163 | What sorts of sounds can seals make?
I saw the video "How to Write Languages for Animals": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vahlnBkVUA, and I wanted to try my hand at creating one for seals using the following images:
Only I can't make heads or tails of the seal one because I don't know how many of the listed parts can actually be used to make different sounds. Can anybody else make sense of this?
I was able to find an additional image of the seal vocal tract that includes the general flow of air. Sadly, there was nothing animated that would give you a better idea of how all those parts work. The related article does talk about how seals are fairly adaptable with their voices, so the phonology for your language could be quite robust.
I also found a site talking about the sounds leopard seals make. What strikes me is that there's a lot of trills as well as more vowel-like sounds. So I would guess a seal language would have lots of trills, nasals, and vowels, and probably fewer sounds that use the front teeth since those aren't as flat in seals.
Beyond that, all I can suggest is watching clips of seals vocalizing and trying to match the sounds to the IPA chart to get your phonology worked out. Quite a few species seem able to vocalize with their mouths closed for underwater communication, which makes observing their vocal machinery difficult. You may also want to choose a specific species because the sounds they make vary widely. Hoover the Talking Seal was able to approximate a number of sounds from Maine-accented English. I'm pretty sure I can hear him hitting mostly sounds in the nasals, velar, uvular, pharyngal, and glottal categories when I compare his sounds to those from the IPA chart. The other seals in his tank may not make word-like sounds, but they sound very guttural compared to this clip where a Weddell seal's beat-boxing and warbling is rendered as sheet music.
Hoover was a harbor seal, so if you like his sounds that's the species to look for.
Aquatic mammals have the ability to close their nostrils, so they would be able to pronounce nasal obstruents. They could also use this to produce sounds which are nasalized but with the nostrils producing a fricative.
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2165 | How does the writing system 12480 work?
I've been trying to come up with a language for a science fiction book, and I came across 12480, which I think would make a good base for the language. The only problem is, I'd like a general idea of how it works, and it seems to be slightly complicated:
Omniglot has links to websites that it says help, but they all appear to be deadlinks. Does anybody on this forum happen to know how it works?
You can use the WaybackMachine by archive.org to read web pages which are not there anymore, this snapshot is of 2006 and it lacks Flash and some other elements. In fact 12489 is just a set of encodings to write down numbers in hexadecimal form and encode your numerical or alphabetical data with them.
I put this in the languages stack exchange because nobody answers in the conlangs one.
Never mind, Conlangs SE seems to be a bit less active than Linguistics SE. Besides, this 12480 stuff looks quite old and discontinued, so there're not many chances it's known to lots of people here. Besides, it's really good luck for you the WaybackMachine has at least something about 12480, you can try to see if snapshots from other dates have more elements recorded. In the early 2000s there was quite an interesting conlang I liked, it was named Nova, it had its own conscript Nova Morphograph, but now I can't find anything at all about it however hard I search the web, everything is gone...
IPA Column
This seems to be the key to this delightful looking writing system! As for the subsystems, we note that Bubble Script and Four Line Script are simply graphic representations of binary numbers. Given that the author's website is down it would be very difficult to deduce exactly how he intended these scripts to be used.
The example texts themselves don't appear to be in English, or perhaps they are and there is some weird factor that is not made clear in the chart of correspondences itself.
Of note, his theory is that this is some kind of mixed alphanumeric system. Immediate red flags for me are barmy statements like "traditional writing systems ... are inferior" and "12480 ... allows ... optimal amount of representations" and "12480 is far more universal..." This strikes of 1990s era Auxlang supremacy, i.e., someone with an agenda to push.
That said, and without having access to any more than this chart and some very vague descriptive text, I would say that essentially what you could do is simply use his symbols (or symbols like them) to replace the IPA symbols:
The IPA column gives you the signs for the consonants and vowels and you'll them just read across to the appropriate other column for the actual script set you're using (dot, bubble, four line, etc). This site clarifies the boxes in the IPA column.
So, if you want to write "Anonymous" in Bubble Script, you'd need to sort out how you pronounce your name. I come up with [ʌnɑnɪmɜs]. Your vowellage may vary, which will cause you to spell your name differently. Then scan across the columns to see where each IPA symbol lands in the Bubble Script column!
This is definitely the Primitive Race Finds Arcane Artifact and Tries to Use It way of looking at this. The image you quoted seems to come from a work by David Peterson from 2006. Peterson as far as I know is still active in the glossopoetic community. You might try contacting the Language Creation Society to see if they can help with contact details for this writing system's creator, Bradley Tetzlaff.
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2065 | Question on if I am doing Split-Ergativity right
I am making a split ergative language, and I am struggling a lot on it.
So, I am doing a Dyirbal-type pronominal split, where 1st and 2nd person are nominative-accusative and everything else is ergative-absolutive. So here is an example (just making this up, this is just an example as I don't want to share my language yet), assume this is VOS
Musu hama tani
so, Tani would be a 1st person pronoun, so it would be marked:
Musu hamanai tani
Where -nai is a accusative marker, and Tani is nominative and lacks a marker. But if you switch Tani to Kata, the third person pronoun:
Musu hamago katasha
Where -go marks the Absolutive case, and -sha marks the Ergative Case.
But when you go into intransitives
Yasi tanisha
And this is where I am just getting confused. Can someone help explain how exactly split ergativity works, preferably using some rushed sample conlang to indicate to me where I am going wrong and how I can fix it, or just modify what I have shown you in a way to fix it up and make it actually work. Because I am struggling to make both systems work together, as I understand them pretty well individually, but, again, putting them together is just making it rough for me.
This is just stressing me out.
It will help us readers if you translate your examples.
With a special absolutive case marker (-go in your example) you go beyond plain split ergativity where nominative and absolutive are typically identical. So the question boils down if the subject of an intransitive sentence should be nominative or absolutive. My gut feeling says nominative, but as a conlang designer you are free to take the other choice as well. You can even go further to tripartite alignment by creating a special intransitive case for the subject of intransitive sentences.
I was thinking of using Tripartite Alignment as it simplifies things, but I ultimately feel Split-Ergative is best for the language I am working on, it just feels right. Might just ultimately decide to do it though. Thanks for the answer.
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2085 | Translate into quenya
I want to translate those sentences in quenya :
One ring to show our love,
One ring to seal our love,
One ring to spread our light,
And forever to make us bright
This gives with latin letters the following :
Er cor ana tán our mel,
er cor ana seal our mel
er cor ana pále- our kal
ar ullúme ana care us calima
So this gives in Tengwar the text in the image I've joined.
What do you think? Do you have any correction to bring?
I wish you a good day.
I don't know enough Quenya to give an actual translation, but that's absolutely not correct: it's got English words interspersed with the Quenya ones. (Also, though, if the goal is to imitate the Ring inscription, that's in Black Speech, not Quenya.)
Hi, thanks a lot for your answer. I know the original is in black speech but I wanted a translation in quenya.
I propose a new translation : "Er corma an tana- our melmë,
er corma an nut- our melmë
er corma an faina- our cala,
arë illúme an alya- ve cal
"
Except the our I can't translate correctly. I use this dictionary (since I'm french) : https://www.ambar-eldaron.com/telechargements/quenya-fr-A4.pdf. What do you think?
I don't know where you got those "Quenya" lines but they look suspiciously like from a certain broken machine translator which is absolutely not helpful.
I'd use corma for "ring" - cor would be Sindarin. (cf. Cormacolindor "Ring-bearers")
Er corma "One ring" sounds about right.
Now "to show" is to explain the purpose or attribute of "One ring". AFAIK, the only known sample from the corpus that comes close is
Vanda sina termaruva Elenna-nóreo alcar enyalien
Oath this stand-FUT Star-wards-land-GEN glory recall-GERUND-DATIVE.
"This oath shall stand in memory of the glory of the Land of the Star"
Or literally "This oath shall stand for the recalling of/to recall ..."
This would lead to: Er corma tanien <our love>.
**mel from your translation would be the bare stem of the verb "to love". No, you can't use a verb here, let alone its stem. The noun is melme.
So depending on who WE are, our love can be translated:
melmelva "our love (mine, yours, and others')"
melmelma "our love (ours, not yours)"
Or let's say it should be:
melmenqua "our love (between you and me, the two of us)"
The first line would then be:
Er corma tanien melmenqua.
the third:
Er corma palien calanqua.
And The fourth:
ar ullume carien inque calima
and forever make-GERUND-DATIVE us/thee-and-me bright
Or:
ar ullume calimatien inque
and forever bright-CAUSATIVE-GERUND-DATIVE us/thee-and-me
The second line is tricky because I can't find a word for "seal". Maybe you can find a replacement with a real dictionary.
Alternatively, instead of using the dative form of a gerund, you can use a relative clause, which is far better attested in Quenya.
Er corma i tana melmenqua One ring that shows our love.
??
Er corma i palya calanqua One ring that spreads our light
Ar ullume calmata inque ~
I found a fan-coined verb *lihta- "to seal" (from líco "wax"), it looks OK, IMO.
The second line can therefore be either:
Er corma lihtien melmenqua
or
Er corma i lihta melmenqua
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2093 | Syllabic plosives
Fricatives and Sonorants can be in a nucleus of a syllable. Can plosives also act as a syllable? If so, do any of your conlangs have this feature?
ANADEW: Nuxalk aka Bella Coola is a natural language famous for its long chains of plosives. However, calling the plosives syllables in this case raises another question: Is syllable a term that is suitable for the description of Nuxalk, or should one say that there are no well-defined syllables in Nuxalk (see this question on the linguistics stackexchange for more on this).
For use in conlangs, see also Are there human beatbox inspired conlangs? on this site, five years ago there was kind of a "no" answer to the second question.
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2121 | Is this lojban sentence grammatically correct?
Is "ta se klama" grammatically correct?
Could I say "That is gone to" in lojban, without adding a zo'e to my sentence?
Or would it have to be "That is gone to by something"?
zo'e in Lojban is always implied when any place of a selbri isn't filled. You can use zo'e when you want to explicitly note that there is a "something", but it's not necessary.
So, ta se klama is grammatically correct, and would mean "That is gone to", as you said, or equivalently "Someone/something has gone there".
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2134 | How do I say "minimum age" in lojban?
Would "lo sarcyselna'a" be grammatically correct? Are there any specific rules on where to put sel and other cmavo rafsi in lujvo?
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2135 | Question about selma'o FA
Is the fi elidable in sentences such as the following:
fe tu’a lo karce fa mi djica [fi] lo nu litru?
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2146 | Need help putting modality in my language bad (realis irrealis system)
For my conlang, which is just a proto language so far, I want a realis-irrealis grammatical mood system because other than the verbs, it's pretty analytical, so it would make sense to use more separate words for more meaning. I've watched Artifexian's videos on mood and modality and even saw him make a system in his own conlang, but I still don't understand the concepts completely.
So far, I have a separate word for a speculative mood " /feŋ/ ", so the sentence meaning "She might be dead" reads as
" /eŋ:ai/ /i:pe/ /feŋ/ /a:bi/ "
( dead she possibly be.PRES.PERF )
I guess feŋ functions as a modifier to the verb here (my language doesn't have a distinction between adjectives and adverbs), so I guess I could coin more adjectives but there's a lot of other modality to cover though. Should I just coin new words? Because I don't want to create a relex of English and that seems to be it's strategy, and to my knowledge the only other language I'm familiar with outside of an Indo-European one is Japanese and I don't really want a system like that (my language has a lot more tenses and aspects, for example). I'm totally open to revising even the speculative so far, but I just feel a little overwhelmed. How do you approach this in your conlang, and do you use a realis-irrealis system? Thanks!
So to make sure I'm understanding, tense and aspect are marked morphologically, and you want mood to be marked syntactically instead?
That doesn't seem like a bad system, can you explain more why you think it's bad?
What is one approach alternative to simply making up a new adverb every time I encountered some verb mood or mood-like construction?
In short,
derive yourself a set of must-have, basic moods
give them twists/advanced cases to make additional moods
if you find a mood-like nuance with no relation to any of your basics, maybe it's not a big deal and a phrase can express it or maybe it's pointing to how you can improve your basics
make up example and counter-example sentences to make sure your moods are distinct and useable
In long,
Mood was trickier than most grammatical problems for me because it was harder to pin down both what all shades of meaning does "mood" encompass, as well as how can I tell whether I have a sufficient set. To me, your question on how to navigate realis (one set of moods) and irrealis (another set) considers the same.
For example, I analyzed the formal moods listed for the languages I know and I also looked at lists of moods in resources online. But then months later I'd hear a normal construction that hadn't come into my analysis. "We happened to meet your ex at the restaurant," say, and I'd think like, "Wait, that 'happened to' seems to give epistemic information about why something occurred... epistemic verb nuances might be modal...? Causation is worth indicating clearly, so is this happenstance/With No Known Causation thing worth making a mood out of?" For reasons based in how the rest of my grammar worked, that I could not tell how many such nuances I'd run into or want to keep in the end proved to be a challenge.
Over time I wound up with
the plain old indicative mood is indicated by lack of other mood marking
six "basic" moods which are pretty straightforward each on their own
pairs of the "basic" moods make 14 more moods I liked over time
the meaning of each pair is more or less sensible as the sum of basic concepts
one pairing is not currently used: for not meeting both the two criteria above
For an example, one "basic" mood is the Non-committal and another is the Controlling. Paired, Non-Committal+Controlling make the Happenstantial mood, as in "we happened to meet your ex at the restaurant." So read a little literally it sounds a bit like "by no particular command, we met your ex at the restaurant." For me, surely I did not expect more notable, "advanced" moods than the number of pairs the (eventually) six basics created, and since there is usually more than one possible way to interpret the sum of two basics, it gave me wiggle room to revise what the combinations meant over time until a strong total set had evolved. So I got my answer on how to tell what was enough in that way.
Perhaps you would like to do your own analysis, so at the I am giving just the one example of what I did. I'm open to discuss my lot, though; I looked for a while for how to get feedback on a set of moods without success.
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2132 | How do languages make lemmata from root words?
(Google tells me the plural of "lemma" could be "lemmas" or "lemmata", so i chose the latter. Please tell me if it's wrong.)
From reading online and offline sources, I've gathered that lemmata are mostly semantic while roots are mostly morphological. Following this, languages should have some way of taking roots and assigning lemmata to them, giving each root a meaning.
However, I can't find any consistent sources for how a language would assign meaning this way. All I can find are word lists, which would be great if I wasn't trying to design roots with lemmata attached. Is there a process for assigning meaning to roots I should follow?
Sidenote: The language I'm working on is meant to be a PIE-analogue, and I've been looking at PIE roots on Wikipedia. The lists weren't well suited to my goals but did tell me some things about how derivation affects meaning.
There are a few different methods, and an actual natural language may use a combination of them.
The simplest approach would be to use roots directly, and to require analytic constructions to derive ways of discussing additional senses. This is arguably what something like Toki Pona aims for, but is not very naturalistic, as people will naturally settle on conventional constructions for certain things and it will gradually involve into the next system.
Then you can have synthetic systems that use derivational affixes to derive senses from roots. This will require various derivational affixes that can be attached to roots to form additional lemmata. This will typically include affixes for changing parts of speech (e.g. forming agent nouns from verbs, forming fientive verbs from adjectives, or adjectives of similarity from nouns, amongst many, many others), as well as various affixes for deriving lemmata within the same part of speech (e.g. forming collective nouns, causative verbs, or superlative adjectives).
Multiple such derivational affixes can be applied, although different languages will tolerate chains of differing lengths. Polysynthetic languages allow extremely long chains of affixes, some of which may be derivational, others inflectional.
Related to this is composition which involves forming compounds. These consist of two (or more) parts, these are typically stems, and so may consist of a root (and possibly derivational affixes), with the entire compound inflected as a single unit. Some languages with extensive composition do form compounds of fully inflected lemmata (look up Sanskrit Compounds if you want to see an especially extensive system). This is a common origin for derivational affixes used in synthetic formations.
Then you have apophonic, templatic, or internal formations. These derive lemmata from roots (or each other) through changes internal to the root (or stem) itself, especially changes to the vowels (apophony strictly refers only to changes to vowels).
A few case studies then:
Finnish is an agglutinative language and does almost all of its derivation using synthetic or compositional means. Roots are generally bisyllabic and may receive a number of derivational affixes to form a stem (which may then be compounded with one or more other stems) before receiving inflectional endings.
Ancient Greek is a fusional language and active derivational processes are generally similar to those in Finnish (i.e. new formations are almost exclusively synthetic or compositional). It does however preserve a wide array of related lemmata derived from roots with varying vowels because at an earlier stage (PIE and shortly afterwards) it made significant use of apophony. This is why a verb like phérō "I bear" with a root "pher" has some related nouns beginning "phor" as in phorós "tribute", and most prominently in the suffix *-phóros "-bearing".
Biblical Hebrew, like most Semitic languages, uses templatic derivation as its primary method. In Biblical Hebrew a root consists solely of consonants, with no vowels, and so cannot be used on its own. To form a lemma from a root, the root must be inserted into a pattern or template telling you what vowels to insert where (sometimes alongside affixes). The root q-ṭ-l has senses related to killing and is commonly used to illustrate different patterns. The most common verbal patterns (and the ones that survive into Modern Hebrew) are the active qaṭal, intensive qiṭṭel, causative hiqṭil, reflexive hitqaṭṭel, (medio)-passive niqṭal, passive quṭṭal, and passive causative huqṭal. There are also various noun & adjective patterns, some of which interrelate to each other or to verbal patterns and which often have significant semantic overlap.
As you're interested in PIE, it's worth noting that it uses a somewhat mixed system. Traditionally it's viewed as synthetic and compositional, with a note that apophony does occur, with the applied affixes affecting the vowel "grade" of the stem to which they're applied, but there is a minority arguing that it is better described as a templatic system.
So, let's illustrate how this works by looking at a single root, conventionally cited in the e-grade: **deyḱ- "to indicate", but from a templatic perspective, arguably better represented as **d_yḱ- for which the following forms can be solidly reconstructed (alongside several other less certain formations):
*déyḱti: an imperfective (present) verb "to be indicating" formed directly from the accented e-grade of the root with athematic imperfective inflectional endings (and with further apophony between distinct inflectional forms).
*dḗyḱst: a perfective (aorist) verb "to point out" formed from the accented lengthened e-grade of the root with a derivational *-s- suffix with athematic perfective inflectional endings (and with further apophony between distinct inflectional forms).
*doyḱéyeti: a causative imperfective verb "to demonstrate" formed from the unaccented o-grade of the root, with a derivational -éy- suffix and thematic imperfective inflectional endings.
*déyḱs: an animate noun "indicator" formed directly from the accented e-grade of the root with athematic animate inflectional endings (and with further apophony between distinct inflectional forms).
*díḱeh₂: a feminine noun "indication" formed directly from the accented zero-grade of the root with feminine inflectional endings.
*diḱtós: an adjective "shown" formed from the unaccented zero-grade of the root with a derivational *-t- suffix and thematic inflectional endings.
This illustrates the extensive use of a apophony within PIE, as well as a small number of derivational suffixes, some of the most widely attested in PIE (the *-s- for forming athematic perfective verbs from imperfective roots or stems, the *-éy- for forming causative imperfective verbs from verbs, and the *-t- for forming thematic adjectives with a passive sense).
You are also correct on the plural(s) of lemma. The form lemmata is accurate to the Greek, whilst lemmas is the regular English plural.
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2069 | Can a language exist without transitive verbs?
I'm developing my first conlang (no name yet) for a story and came up with an interesting idea: all verbs are intransitive, and objects are added with prepositions.
So, a sentence like "I eat fish" would be translated literally as "I eat with a fish."
Sentences with more than one object would be stuck together in whatever way makes sense, yielding sentences like "I gave from money to the man," and "I roasted with an apple and a fire."
How naturalistic would this be? The language is spoken by a remote people so I don't care how rare it is, just that it's possible at all.
I'm reminded of how every so often a conlanger will have the bright idea that "hey, what if there was a language with no verbs?" And yet, the grammatical relationships that are mediated by verbs still need to be expressed, so they inevitably end up "inventing" a new part of speech... that does exactly what verbs do... but they're too emotionally invested how creative and quirky having a "verbless" language makes them sound, to call a spade a spade and admit that they have verbs.
In your case, there isn't really a reason to do this whole song and dance about how these oblique arguments (instrumental as in "with a fish", genitive "from money", etc.) obviate the need for direct objects. If they're consistently being used where languages would normally put a direct object, for arguments that for all intents and purposes act like direct objects, then let's call a spade a spade - you have direct objects. And therefore transitive verbs.
Synchronically, your direct object case effectively just has a bunch of allomorphy. Diachronically, patientive cases often evolve from these kinds of oblique cases, so I would think I was just looking at an intermediate stage where the patientive case was in the middle of evolving. In either case "I have no transitive verbs" ends up being an unhelpful way of describing an otherwise unremarkable phenomenon.
Although I am not aware of any natural language that goes without the notion of transitivity, I think it is worth a try. For a broader point of view, you may want to study morphosyntactic alignment to see what natural languages do with transitive verbs, there is definetely more than the boring nominative-accusative system of Standard Average European languages.
I also want to bring the logical languages to your attention with Lojban as their most popular representative. Here each "verb" has a well-defined predicate structure but no place in this predicate structure can be identified as the direct object.
Let's consider a nonce version of English in which objects are prepositional phrases. This alone will not make the verbs intransitive.
For the verbs to qualify as intransitive, those prepositional phrases have to be adjuncts. In other words, you have to be able to omit them from sentences without making the sentences ungrammatical.
Let's assume that "throw" in your conlang can be modified by an adverbial prepositional phrase meaning "of a baseball."
We know that "Jeff threw of a baseball." means "Jeff threw a baseball." But what does "Jeff threw," mean? It has to have a reading, or the verb "throw" can't be intransitive because it must take an object. Making the object a prepositional phrase is no different in this connection than giving the object an equivalent case-affix.
One way around this is to make all your verbs ambitransitive, as "eat," "write," "read," "sing," and "speak" are in real English. Objects can be omitted from sentences with ambitransitive verbs if the objects don't denote anything important and the action denoted by the verb is the focus. So, for example, "Jane is eating," doesn't need an object if it answers the question "What is Jane doing?" rather than the question "What is Jane eating?"
If all of your verbs are ambitransitive, you could have a sentence like "Jane is throwing" that answers the question "What is Jane doing?"
The problem with this scheme is that some verbs aren't sufficiently descriptive to tell the listener what she wants to know about the states or events that the speaker is talking about. For example, we could say "Alvin is kicking," but, in most contexts, we couldn't do so without prompting a response such as "What do you mean 'he's kicking? Kicking WHAT?" So too with other verbs in sentences like "Don closed," "Mary opened," and "Morey picked up."
I'm out of time and don't see an obvious alternative to my own failed scheme, but I hope to read more about how you plan to address the issues raised by your scheme.
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2166 | Would the Numerical Tongue be adapted?
Last year on October I applied for a Guinness World Record where I proposed to write the Bible in numbers using a concept I refer to as the Universal Tongue. My proposal was declined because it didn't meet the breakable criteria.
The Universal Tongue is a concept where words are represented by numerical sequences that correspond to the position of each letter in the alphabet. For example, the word 'hello' can be written as 7, 5, 12, 12, 15, where each number corresponds to the position of the respective letter in the alphabet (H=7, E=5, L=12, O=15).
This numerical representation allows for a standardized and universal way of communicating words across different languages, as the numerical sequence remains consistent regardless of the language's alphabet or pronunciation. It can be particularly useful in cryptography, data encoding, or communication systems where a common and easily translatable format is required. Would this be considered for adoption globally?
How does that "remain consistent regardless of the language's alphabet or pronunciation"? 7-5-12-12-15 is just as dependent on the English alphabet as HELLO is; a Spanish-speaker would instead say HOLA or 7-15-12-1, and a Mandarin-speaker would find both of them equally meaningless.
Everyone would have to learn English then they learn the numerical tongue
So what advantage does it have over the English alphabet that people already know?
In a few years we could be speaking in one language if it is adopted globally just as in the times of Babel
Why would using numbers help that at all? You said yourself that everyone learning English would be required first, at which point we already have one language.
Words are heavy numbers are weighty. A rock is heavy, sand is weighty. To build a strong and firm house you need both rock and sand
To the people who close-voted: I don't think this question is necessarily opinion-based. Even if the answer is no, that's still an objective answer.
If everyone has to learn English (and to be fair, many people around the world already use English), why burden the system with a numeric alphabet? What you're proposing is, essentially, a spelling reform. The concept of spelling reform is broken, because it doesn't meet a need. You'd have to overcome the already useless nature of spelling reform and then you'd have to convince billions of individual English users that numbers are better than letters.
I think you also might be confusing language with orthography. We would NOT actually be speaking one language just because of universal adoption of your numeric alphabet. The world will largely speak one language because it is useful and convenient to do so. Your analogy of rock and sand doesn't make sense. English language, orthography and alphabet are already an integrated whole. We don't actually need to keep reinventing the wheel. We just have to let people learn how to use the wheel that already exists!
To put it bluntly, not really.
We already have a standard method for converting letters to numbers: Unicode. In Unicode, the capital "A" is the number 65, lowercase "a" is 97, a space is 32, the cuneiform sign AŠ is 73784, and so on. This is how computers work with text; it's how this message is being transmitted to your computer, how your web browser is looking up the right shapes to display it with, and so on. There used to be dozens of these standards, but now Unicode's pretty much universally won out.
What about for human use? Well, if people wanted to, they could write "hello" as "0x68656c6c6f" (the bytes that make up its Unicode encoding), but that's a lot harder for humans to read and doesn't really come with any benefits. We already have an encoding of the letter "A" that's easy for humans to read, and it's the letter "A".
I am proposing to my government (Kenya) that we adopt a Numerical number plate system. For example if a vehicle registration number is KUM 291 it be written as 11 21 13 291 this is why I am raising the issue
@NelsonNjagi What would be the benefit of that? It just takes more space.
Numbers streamline the data processing criteria to a more effective and efficient form. This is an assumption
@NelsonNjagi it is an incorrect assumption. Letters are not significantly easier to process digitally and they make the system vastly easier for human users (e.g. a police officer entering a number plate in a form is less likely to enter a mistake entering KUM 291 than 11 21 13 291)
@NelsonNjagi --- One issue is that in Kenya vehicle plates carry much more meta information than a simple string of numbers will allow. KUM seems to indicate a registrant living in Kisumu (regional code KU); GK indicates a federally plated vehicle; KN a Naval vehicle; CD for chartered diplomat. And I think it's cool that diplomatic tags are arranged in order of independence recognition (1CD being Germany). Part of the issue is that those letter codes become, in a sense, a kind of pictogram: the symbols "KAF" and "CG" themselves have meaning to anyone who knows the code.
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2200 | How to Construct Phonotactics?
For use in worldbuilding, I am intending to construct some fictional names in a fictional language. I want the phonotactics in those names to be distinct from the more widely-known real-world languages/families (so preferably avoiding or diluting PIE, Sinitic &c. features), but easy to convey in writing to an Indoeuropean audience, and plausible-sounding.
Given those constraints, what are good simple guidelines and principles for coming up with a set of phonotactics for such naming?
PIE phonotactics are pretty strange compared to any modern language I've seen!
The answer here may be of some interest.
https://conlang.stackexchange.com/questions/1608/how-does-one-go-about-designing-phonotactics-for-a-conlang
First of all, you should familiarise yourself with the common features of Indo-European languages. For a good starter see What are the defining traits of a Euro-centric conlang? and its answers. Unfortunately, we don't have similar questions and answers for other major language families like Sino-Tibetan, Austronesian, Semitic, or Bantu.
The simplest way to deviate from well-trodden paths is by incorporating a restriction, e.g., on word-final sounds or on consonant clusters. Elvish conlangs have some remarkable phonological features here, like the restriction of word-final consonants to coronals (/d/, /t/, /n/, /s/ ...). For more suggestions, see Designing a mildly weird phonology and its answers.
Another device often used by fantasy authors hiatuses, especially the "defining fantasy vowel" /ae/ (Laura Wattenberg), but also a fondness of /ie/ and /ue/.
You can restrict word-initial consonant clusters by adding a prosthetic vowel to them; or you can go in the opposite direction and add consonants to words starting with a vowel, such that all words begin with a consonant or consonant cluster.
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1188 | How can I name my days of the week?
In my conworld, months are divided into twelve-day weeks. That seems a bit too long (since I recall that people complained that the ten-day weeks of the French Republican calendar were too long), so I've divided my week into two halves, so I don't want the names for the days to have numbers, in order to avoid silliness like "first firstday" or "second thirdday." I know that English days of the week are named after Norse gods, but since my months are named after gods, I want to avoid that, too.
What are other attested etymologies for names of days of the week, in either traditional calendars or the modern Gregorian one?
The French Revolutionary ten-day 'week' was "too long" only because you only got one day in ten off. If your twelve-day 'week' does "five-on-one-off-five-on-one-off", you probably won't get any complaints from "modern humans".
Having said the above, if you're dividing your twelve-day week into two sixdays, why not just make your week six days and be done with it?
You could do something like 4 days work, 1 days off, 5 days work, two days off, to have it less symmetrical.
https://xkcd.com/483/ Consider reusing pre-existing words where feasible, as a starter.
@Criggie That seems irrelevant for a conlang, unless there isn't an actual conlang going along with the words for the days of the week.
While in English (and German) the days are named after (North-)Germanic gods or the sun and the moon, the months are also name after gods (and emperors), albeit from a different set (Roman), with some numerical ones thrown in (September/October/November/December); so there is no need to be consistent.
In Irish it's similar: some names have been taken from Latin, others have been added in with cultural/religious significance.
I was just looking at another language which is from a different family (Hawai'ian), but I guess they no longer have the weekdays they had before they had contact with Western powers: their days are literally "Night-one" (Po'akahi) to "Night-six" (Po'aono), plus Sunday being "Pray Day" (La pule). The month names are just localised versions of the English ones ("Ianuali", "Pepeluali", etc). Indonesian weekday names also seem to be derived from the names of (arabic) numerals.
You could choose anything where you've got a set: celebrities/rulers, planets, plants, animals, whatever. I don't think anyone would look at it and think it weird to have a "fox-day", or an "oak-day". Add a regular prefix or suffix to the word that means something like "day", and it should look alright.
And if you have two half-weeks, why not have an animal half followed by a tree-half?
Just for reference, Portuguese is a romance language, but it has the same logic as Hawai'ian: the names of the weekdays are, literally translated: of-the-lord (Sunday), second-day, third-day, fourth-day, fifth-day, sixth-day, sabbath (of Hebrew root). Note that the numbering starts with Sunday as the first day of the week.
The modern weekdays are actually not named directly after gods, but after planets. This system started with the Babylonians, who named each day (*) after one of the seven classical planets: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the Moon, and the Sun. This system was borrowed by the Egyptians, then the Greeks, then the Romans, then various Germanic peoples, using local equivalents to the Babylonian names each time, which is why we now have "Sunday" and "Monday" (from "sun" and "moon") and "Saturday" (from Saturn, who had no Germanic equivalent) alongside an eclectic assortment of Germanic deities.
If astrology is important in your conculture, a similar system would make sense. You could name the days of the week after planets, constellations, important stars, or any heavenly objects that are important to these people.
(*) Strictly speaking, they assigned each hour to a planet, then named each day after the planet that governed its first hour. Cassius Dio has a more elaborate explanation.
In Japanese, as I misunderstand, the days are named for Sun and Moon and the five elements (fire, water, wood, metal, earth) – for which the planets are also named; the order matches. I have no knowledge of the history of this system.
Following all the restrictions given in the question, I propose using letters of the writing system as names for days of the week.
If your society is literate and the number of symbols in the writing system is relatively small, the canonical order of letters is going to be very well known.
I don't know of any natural languages that actually do this, although the heavenly stems were historically used to label days of the week based on which sacrifices and rituals were supposed to be performed when. So, the heavenly stems form a small closed system with additional meaning besides designating a day of the week.
Tying the symbols-as-days-of-week to a religion, current or historical, is probably a good way to make the system plausible in your conworld.
So, you specifically mentioned not wanting to name days after numbers, but some very widely spoken languages do exactly this.
I think you can make the 12-day week in two halves thing make sense by having a duodecimal number system with six as a sub-base. In a system like this, some or all the numbers in the 7 to 12 range would be derived from the words for 1 to 6.
In Mandarin Chinese, the days of the week are simply numbered, with Sunday being an exception to the pattern.
星期一 (week 1) means Monday.
星期二 (week 2) means Tuesday.
星期日 (week sun) or 星期天 (week sky) means Sunday.
In addition, some number systems have a sub-base.
For instance, here is a numeral system developed for an Inuit language with a vigesimal number system by speakers of the language. The number system has a sub-base of 5, which is reflected in the forms of the numerals.
Here is the table in the article reproduced below. The system is not completely regular, but many numbers in the 1-20 range, particularly those congruent to 2 or 3 mod 5 are transparently derived from a small multiple of 5 followed by the word for 2 or 3. Some numerals have irregular forms or are represented subtractively like 9, 14, 19.
0 1 2 3 4
- atausiq malġuk piŋasut sisamat
5 6 7 8 9
tallimat itchaksrat tallimat malġuk tallimat piŋasut quliŋuġutaiḷaq
10 11 12 13 14
qulit qulit atausiq qulit malġuk qulit piŋasut akimiaġutaiḷaq
15 16 17 18 19
akimiaq akimiaq atausiq akimiaq malġuk akimiaq piŋasut iñuiññaŋŋutaiḷaq
20
iñuiññaq
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940 | How to reanalyse collectives in High Valyrian?
Note: For the purposes of this question, please do not assume that the Tongues of Ice and Fire Wiki is correct1 unless it references somewhere else.
The High Valyrian [grammatical] number page of the Tongues of Ice and Fire Wiki contains the statement that
Collectives often acquire a special meaning (e.g. muña "mother" → muñar "parents.") Sometimes this results in them being reanalyzed into entirely new words, with their own plural (e.g. azantys pl. azantyssy "soldier" → azantyr pl. azantyri "army").
High Valyrian has few irregularities (it is a conlang after all) and generally, when they exist, they're clearly noticed and pointed out. The issue I have is that, while there is a rule where collectives keep the gender of the word they're derived from, that 'rule' doesn't state whether or not completely new words do the same.
To give two opposing examples:
ābrar ['aːbrar]
n. 6col.1lun. life. (Relexicalized collective from ābra)
In the above, ābrar is listed as a lunar2 ('lun.') noun, as it is derived from a lunar noun (ābra). However, if it was reanalysed into a completely new word, it could potentially instead be listed as an aquatic ('aq.') noun, such as:
jēdar ['jeːdar]
n. 6col.1aq. year (col. of jēda time.)
If the rules are applied as consistently here as they are in the rest of the language, I'd either expect ābrar to be aquatic or jēdar to be lunar, so is there some rule that dictates if/when a reanalysed collective keeps/looses the gender of the word it's derived from?
1 It often has errors and part of the reason for asking this is to find and fix those errors
2 High Valyrian has 4 genders: lunar, solar, aquatic and terrestrial. Relevant to this question is that lunar nouns generally end in a vowel and aquatic nouns generally end in '-r'
I think there are no rules. Some natural languages use similar mechanisms but they don't have any rules.
I'm assuming that you're asking this question with regard to comparison with natural languages, as it appears that there is no overtly stated rule for High Valyrian in particular.
Whenever you're dealing with reanalysis, there generally aren't going to be rules ACROSS examples, even though there may be patterns. To illustrate, there are a handful of words in Modern English which start with an /n/ but come from older words without it (e.g., 'newt,' < Old English 'efete'), and symmetrically a handful which start with a vowel but came from older words which started with /n/ (e.g., 'adder,' < OE 'nǣdre'). In both cases, these are the result of rebracketing (a kind of reanalysis) of noun phrases with the article 'a(n),' during the period in Middle English when it was losing its final /n/ before consonants. But as you can see, the reanalysis could go in either direction, and of course there are many words (in fact the majority of such words) which retained their original character (e.g., 'acre' < OE 'æcer'; 'night' < OE 'niht'). This we cannot formulate a rule to explain these changes, although we definitely identify patterns, such as the fact that only nouns beginning in vowels or /n/ are affected.
It's also worth noting that in HV specifically, there is also a correlation between gender and animacy. In particular, lunar and solar nouns tend to be animate, while terrestrial and aquatic nouns tend to be inanimate. Given the meanings of the two words you cited, it is possible that speakers have resisted reanalyzing ābrar as aquatic because 'life' is arguably the most quintessentially animate word possible. 'Year,' on the other hand, presents no such problem, and so it is free to be reanalyzed as aquatic. I would wager that stuffy grammarians would likely formulate an artificial "rule" to the effect that zero-derived collectives like these maintain the gender of the base noun they come from, and that speakers adhere to that rule about as much as English speakers adhere to not ending words with prepositions (which is to say, not much). Of course, HV is a prestige language, so it is also conceivable that its speakers strive to speak a "pure" version of their language as a way of asserting their status, something we also see in nat langs.
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710 | What are the places where I can attach an indication of tense in relation to a conjugated verb action?
Info
My conlang uses verb conjugations only in the present tense. To indicate other tenses (preterite/past imperfect/subjunctive/future/etc) I use the combined phrase "sona," meaning "in (the) time (of)" and then adding a various suffix to indicate the specific tense("sonasato"="in time past"). This means I only have the present tense of conjugations per verb, not changing the actions of the subject per tense. (In English, you have "I eat" (present) and "I ate" (past), as one example. In my conlang, you use "In the time of past, I eat." (Past, but using a present conjugation.) What I'm wondering about are the places where I should put this simple tense indicator in a sentence. The conlang's sentence structure is like this (using an example from English as translation):
English:
The dog drank from a bowl of water.
The dog(determiner+noun)-> drinks (conjugated verb, "it drinks") from (preposition) a bowl (determiner+noun) of (preposition) water (noun).
In my conlang, you would say
Sepyew ("(it) drinks", conjugated form of "to drink" in present tense) eu bítõe (the dog) de è roum (from a bowl, this would be contracted into "dè roum" or "dèroum.") de aqua (of water.)
This, however, was the present tense. The past tense (The dog drank from a bowl of water) involves the "sonasato"(in the past tense) in some form, but I don't know where the most logical place to place it would be. Ordinarily, that wouldn't present a problem.
Unfortunately, my conlang has no punctuation, that is to say, sentences are one long string of words. I've not considered how to handle this with dialogue, but otherwise it hasn't presented a problem until now. Pauses for breath within conversation are natural, but I'm addressing this question from the written aspect of language. Because the sentences are fluid, I don't know how to handle the abrupt changes between tenses other than using the "sona" variants excessively. And the rules of the language mean that the tense is always expressed, per statement (not sentence, because of the punctuation) by either ignoring the sona rule (indicating the present tense) or by using it (to indicate some other tense.)
Question
Keeping that in mind, what would be the most logical place to place the tense indicator so that I can change it relatively easily between tenses in a language with no periods or commas (pauses), and where?
Note to all: I realize this runs the risk of being too POB. I'd appreciate constructive comments detailing how to help refine this question, if you feel it needs improvement.
Since it’s your conlang, you can put it wherever you think is best—but my inclination would be immediately adjacent to the verb it applies to. Your sentence structure seems to be VSO, so my initial inclination is to place it immediately after the verb.
For your sample sentence, Sepyew sonsato eu bítõe de è roum de aqua.
For the translation of a sentence like "The truck carried the food Joe ate", you would need two tense indicators, one for each verb: "it-carry past-tense the truck [he-eat past-tense Joe the food] sentence-as-object-indicator". If only one verb is in a non-present tense (The truck carries the food Joe ate), you apply the tense indicator to the verb that is in the non-present tense:"it-carry the truck [he-eat past-tense Joe the food] sentence-as-object-indicator".
For what it's worth, 'sentence-as-object' is one of the most vexing topics on the Klingon Language Discussion List - and tlhIngan Hol was invented by a linguist!
For brevity, there could be a convention that "when the tense applies to the whole sentence, it comes first", which would also allow for compound tenses like the future-in-the-past
The most prominent positions in a sentence are the beginning and end, and so those positions are frequently used to indicate the information structure of a sentence. A word carrying grammatical markers is not very prominent, but there is actually a common position for unprominent words: second position, or Wackernagel's position, named after the linguist who identified the pattern.
In many languages, both with free word order and those with tighter syntaxes, the second position of a sentence is where grammatically important but non-emphasised words are found. Second position usually refers to it coming after a complete constituent (so it could be a word or a phrase), but in some languages it may mean it comes literally after the first word, even if that would split up a phrase.
The past tense marker you constructed, sonasato, is a rather long element. Applying the rule "short before long" this would indicate that you put it even after the objects, like
Sepyew eu bítõe dèroum de aqua sonasato
In this example it becomes the last element in the sentence.
I haven't heard of the "short before long" rules - is that a conlanging thing, or is it meant to apply to natlangs too?
It is definitely a natlang rule and searching "short before long" linguistics brings up papers mentioning its validity for English, and questioning it for head-final languages: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010027701001214
@curiousdannii it's not so much a rule as it is a general tendency -- I believe Heavy NP Shift and heaviness in general is the phenomenon jknappen is referring to?
@Sparksbet: There are a lot of similar (and at the same time different and maybe even experimentally distinguishable) concepts floating around on how speakers order the information in a sentence, to mention a few more Minimal dependency length, given—new, information gain. In our group we are mostly interested in the management of information density (assuming a limited channel capacity)
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189 | Can you construct garden path sentences in Lojban?
A garden path sentence is a sentence whose beginning suggests one parsing which is invalidated as the whole sentence is read and then re-parsed. Some examples in English (from fun-with-words.com):
Fat people eat accumulates.
When Fred eats food gets thrown.
The girl told the story cried.
It is claimed that Lojban is a syntactically unambiguous language. Does that mean that garden path sentences cannot be constructed in Lojban?
Lojban's official formal grammar is written in YACC, which is a LALR(1) parser generator. Since this means that the parser only ever "looks ahead" a maximum distance of one token while parsing, garden path sentences are impossible in the traditional sense.
This just means that the parse tree can't be drastically transformed during the sentence—it doesn't mean that the meaning of sentences can't be changed signficantly later on within them. The first example that comes to mind is the song NA KU from Djemynai's ZA'O, which contains the chorus "pu ku zvati fa do .ije ca ku zvati fa do... na ku." This glosses roughly as follows:
pu-ku zvati fa-do
PST present 2sg.NOM
You were here.
.i-je ca-ku zvati fa-do na-ku
and PRES present 2sg.NOM NEG
Now you are not here.
Note that the use of ku allows the negation particle to be moved to the very end of the sentence. This does not affect the parse, so it's not a traditional garden path sentence, but it still allows the creation of a surprising effect, which is similar in some senses.
Is negation always at the end, or only when -ku is suffixed to na?
@curiousdannii The ku particle allows moving na to a different position in the sentence, yes. A more "typical" way of writing it would be do ca na zvati.
See also joiku, a phrase where you need more lookahead in the grammar to parse. This is forbidden under the official grammar, but widely used parsers don't require ku due to using a PEG parser instead.
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149 | Is the language of The Gostak more than just relexified English?
Finally, here you are. At the delcot of tondam, where doshes deave. But the doshery lutt is crenned with glauds.
Glauds! How rorm it would be to pell back to the bewl and distunk them, distunk the whole delcot, let the drokes discren them.
But you are the gostak. The gostak distims the doshes. And no glaud will vorl them from you.
So begins The Gostak, an Interactive Fiction game based on the classic phrase "the gostak distims the doshes".
The game is filled with words with no meaning in English, but which are used consistently, such that the player can at least learn their functions and relationships, if not what they actually mean. The grammar of the text seems to just be normal English, but are there places in the game where it starts to transform its grammar as well?
Well,
it is pretty clear that this is just relexified English, just look at the function words: at, the, of, where, but, is, with, .... Also the syntax is 1:1 English syntax, and even the inflections (plural in -s, perfect participle in -ed, third person singular present tense in -s) are the original English one. All in all, it sounds like a strange kind of English slang.
Sure, but I'm wondering if in a deeper part of the game there's evidence of grammatical differences. Probably this isn't a good question for the site though.
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28 | How to read One Ring inscription?
The following inscription appears on the One Ring in The Fellowship of the Ring book:
Which in Black Speech can be written down as:
Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul,
Ash nazg thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.
However, the inscription is using different letters. I've checked Tengwar, but I can't find any of the words (e.g. ash, nazg, etc.).
How should the inscription be read exactly, in other words, how it's transformed from the above fiery letters into latin letters?
There's an article on Wikipedia with list of known words. (The ring inscription section). Unless you mean the pronouncation
You are likely having a hard time reading these tengwar because of three big problems:
the style itself is such that the tengwar are slanted and written
calligraphically
the mode used to write them is unusual and not common for Elvish languages
there are no spaces between words!
The page linked should provide assistance; the issue is that the tengwar and tehtar behave (like in several modes) as in an abugida: the vowels are diacritics to the "host" consonants, and a null consonant is used for vowel-initial words (even when the words aren't separated by spaces).
(2) In particular, no attested Elvish language has /ʃ/ as in ash. But the title pages use tengwar and cirth for English; if you decipher those, you can confirm that (as mentioned in the Appendix) the columns of tengwar that represent t, p, k, kw and their kin in Elvish are used in English and Black Speech for t, p, č, k and their kin, respectively. Thus ash is written with the tengwa that in Elvish would stand for /kh/, while nazg and –uk use the tengwar for /gw/ and /kw/.
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314 | What are the benefits of inventing irregular verbs in one’s conlang?
Many natlangs have irregular verbs that do not follow the same patterns as the majority of verbs, often as a product of old verb patterns that are no longer used. Some of the benefits of not having irregular verbs are an easier to learn and interpret conlang, but are there benefits, such as giving a sense that the language has changed over time?
I'm voting to reopen, because that is a very common stuff in natural languages. This is a good topic for discussion and it fits the site for me.
I agree -- the benefits and disadvantages of including irregular verbs in a conlang are something that can be fruitfully discussed and opinions can certainly backed up with evidence, so this is hardly unsuitable. It promotes exactly the sort of discussion we want in this stack exchange.
@Sparksbet Do note that the question title was substantially edited. "Should I do X?" questions are rightly closed as off-topic, but will often be able to be edited to be on-topic fairly easily
Irregular verbs are naturalistic.
For this reason, even an international auxiliary language, namely IALA Interlingua, has irregular verbs to match its Romance source languages (that are famous for their wealth of irregular verbs mostly directly inherited from Latin)
Irregularities add flavour to your conlang.
They make the conlang as a whole more interesting and create some esthetic effect. It also shows that the conlang designer has spent some more time to make Eir creation not too schematic.
An invented language should have in it what the glossopoet wants to put in it. Regardless of which point of the Triangle your language most closely identifies with, there is plenty of room for whatever you might want to put in there.
So, yes, indeed, be it auxlang or artlang or engelang, an invented language shòuld have irregular verbs (irregular nouns, irregular adverbs, irregular interjections, etc) if that's what is required by the language for it to be true to itself within its context and also be an accurate projection of the glossopoet's vision for it.
Yet also, no, indeed, be it auxlang or artlang or engelang, an invented language should never have irregular forms of any kind. If they cause the language to run afoul of its creator's vision for it, then they are inappropriate to the work of art being created. Or if such irregularities would in any way foul up the language's subcreated realism.
In some respects, there may be matters of taste or audience expectation involved. For example, I think most language inventors would argue that auxlangs should be as irregularity free as possible. I'd argue the opposite, but that is indeed a matter of taste and sense of plausibility. Perhaps also a nod to a future where the auxlang in question shall have conquered all others and taken its rightful place as the naturalised L2 of the entire world. Irregularities are bound to creep into such a system.
There is no particular benefit one way or the other external to the invented language. I don't think a perfectly regular system is any easier to learn. It's not inherently better to be irregularity free. Within the language, it might be argued that verisimilitude and plausibility (leastways of human language) demand some amount of irregularity. Surely that might be seen as a benefit, perhaps for a language within a fictional setting.
So, yeah. Put em in or leave em out. Dealer's choice. Six of one, half dozen of the other! There is no right or wrong answer here.
Since when has "shòuld" ever had an accent?
I notice you rolled my suggested edit back. I’ll try to remember not to correct what I attempted to correct in your posts any more (I may forget; if I do, please don’t judge me harshly). However I am curious as to why you decide to keep the not commonly accepted accents and the overly large paragraph break blanks. Can you enlighten me?
Re shòuld
As for the rollback, I really don't have a problem with people editing answers for spelling errors, factual errors, etc. But, really, if the plan is to entirely rewrite my answer, I'm going to roll that back. S.E. exists for people to ask & answer questions. If one doesn't like my answer, one's more than free to vote it down, or better yet, write a new answer! Perhaps talk about a major edit in comments rather than just vandalizing the targeted answer. The accents are ancient Conlang tradition; the breaks have been removed; I will refrain in future!
@elemtilas It appears that you added that section to the wiki yourself. Do you have any other references that prove it is a common conlang convention? IMO it's confusing and does not clearly convey emphasis. Also, calling Jan's edit "major" is exaggerating.
I did indeed! You can check out the Conlang-L archives. For example, here
Ah. There were two edits; mine (put in the review queue) and Sparksbet’s (applied immediately as part of the accept and edit button of the review queue). Mine only concerned the accents, the hidden nbsp;s and typographic apostrophes. The rewording was done by Sparksbet. Seeing that you now implemented my original edit suggestion, I am relieved that it was not my part that you strongly disliked.
Depends on what your goal is. If you want to create an auxlang, then you should have few, if any irregular verbs. If you want naturalism, then most natlangs have at least one irregular verb, though the exact number varies widely. Also consider how your irregular verbs will arise.
A benefit to having irregular verbs in your conlang is shortening common words. If common words like "to be" and "to walk" were 4-5 syllables in some conjugations, your speakers might consider it a hassle to say those gigantic words all the time, whereas less regular, but shorter forms of the conjugations might be easier to say.
Though really, it depends on what you want in your conlang. If you're going for naturalism, some irregularities are a must, but if you're going for an auxlang, avoiding irregular conjugations (or possibly even conjugations altogether) would be ideal.
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914 | 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?
@L.Dutch The subject of this question seems fine to me; we have a long established tradition of allowing questions seeking resources useful to worldbuilders on the site, even if those resources technically overlap the subject area of another site in the network.
That said, @Brendan, I have two quibbles with this question. (1) The title doesn't really match the body; are you interested in Rosenfelder's books in general, or TSCK specifically? (2) We prefer questions that can have reasonably objective answers, and "should I do X?" might fall short of that. Is there anything you can do to the question to encourage more fact- or experience-based answers, rather than ones based in opinion?
Hi Brendan. We can move the question over there for you, but I think they're going to want to know what you're looking for in this (or another) book. That is, "should I buy X?" is a matter of opinion, but "I'm trying to accomplish X; would this book help me?" or "I have this goal; would I be helped better by this book or these other ones?" gives people something to base responses on. You can [edit] to add this information to your question. Thanks!
Thanks for being supportive and migrating the question here to conlang stackexchange - I'm not aiming for Tolkien level but Fae Spraesh and the history of a certain civilization become important for a particular character and there HAD to be at leat a basic worlist relevant to that character's beliefs, motives etc - his race are NOT 'English-speaking aliens' as is typical of Stargate SG-1 'aliens'.
"and a 'holy musical magic language' called Fae Spraesh which is developing differently other Super Power" Uh, what? Is this sentence missing some words? Please give this post another proof read.
We don't do book recommendations here (though you can ask in chat), but it would be fine to ask if books A & B cover the same material as book C.
I've edited the question to be less of a "should I buy this book?" and more of a "does this book have anything in it that my other books don't have?", since the latter seems like a better question for the Stack Exchange. I've also tried to clear up some of the bits where your text ran together in ways that made it difficult to read, but please edit the question yourself if you feel my edits don't get to the heart of your question or misrepresent what you were trying to say.
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.
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158 | How do tones disappear from a language?
There have been many good writeups on Tonogenesis, i.e. how language acquire tones. But never have I seen such a writeup on the opposite phenomenon, which one might call Tonoexodus. Obviously, one way for tone to get lost is to simply have tones merge until there’s only one left. However, doing that without any thought to a highly tonal language would be rather disastrous. If any Chinese language suddenly lost all its tones this would likely make communication rather challenging. This makes me think that perhaps, there is more to tonoexodus than just a disappearance of tone. So my question is:
Are there any phenomena which go hand in hand with the loss of tone, analogous to how the acquisition of tone goes hand in hand with the loss of consonants or phonations?
See also this question and its answers in [linguistics.se]: https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/9398/are-there-documented-languages-that-evolved-from-tonal-to-nontonal
tonoptosis perhaps?
I don't claim to be an expert on this, but I think it may be because that while tonogenesis is a "special" process, in that it produces a whole new dimension to the phonology (as opposed to something more "trivial" like clusters becoming new single segment phonemes), whereas tonoexodus seems to not be much different from other processes of loss in segmental contrasts. Yes, a sudden collapse of the tone system in a Chinese language, or any other language with a high functional load on tonal contrasts would be rather challenging to deal with, but so would any sudden collapse of significant scope, whereas a slow collapse, where contrasts are lost slowly, one after one, in some environments before others gives plenty of time to resolve any disasterous mass ambiguity with innovations.
I have tried looking around for examples of tone loss, and this seems to be the pattern I have been able to find. The Oto-Manguean languages with fewer tonal contrast that the reconstructed protolanguages seem to simply come from mergers of tones, either consistently or only in some environments (e.g. unstressed syllables) though the data is not quite clear[1].
Classical Chinese had 8 tonal categories divisible into yin and yang registers occuring respectively after voiced and unvoiced consonants, and into four different categories, ping, shang, qu and ru(checked syllables). While some modern lects such as Songjiang maintain all of these as seperate categories (Songjiang also retains contrastive onset voicing), others collapse the system in various ways. Beijing Mandarin collapses the yin/yang distinction of the shang and qu tones and merges ru into the other tones, while the relatively nearby Tianjin Mandarin keeps yin shang seperate, while merging yang shang with other tones. Along similar lines the different Chinese lects have radically different distinction-dimininshing sandhi processes, from the well-known relatively limited 214 > 35 / _214 rule of Beijing Mandarin to the complete loss of surface realisation of all but one dominant lexical tone in Northern Wu variants such as Shanghainese. Again, there does not seem to be any phonological compensatory measures associated with any of these losses of contrasts.[2]
Tonoexodus that isn't a simple collapse seems to be hard to find, though the Danish glottal suprasegmental feature stød likely originates in a pitch accent system (note that some dialects have pitch-accent and some collapse the distinction entirely), and it seems reasonable to expect that other collapses of a two-way tone system to a phonation system could be found. As for other things, the largely autosegmental nature of tone means that it doesn't leave much room for other segmental changes, however there seem to be a few cases of such influences, primarily on consonant voicing discussed in sections 2.6 and 2.7 of Yip's Tone[3] and references therein, though she notes that it has been argued by Thurgood that all such alternations are a product of phonation types (which may then coincidentally be associated with tone) influencing voicing rather than tone itself.
In conclusion it seems that the most likely process of tonoexodus is simply a slow gradual loss of contrasts in an increasing number of environments, with the associated lexical replacement/innovation that comes with language change, and a tone system evolving into something else rather than just being lost entirely is likely to become a phonation system, possibly with a minor influence on consonant voicing as well.
Balto-Slavic & Greek (possibly also other IE branches, I'm not sure how well Indo-Iranian, Armenian, or Albanian reflect PIE accent) also suggest the possibility of a pitch accent (which can develop from a full tonal system as tone sandhi becomes more extreme) simply developing into a stress accent
One well-known example of tonal loss is Swahili; unlike other Bantu languages, it is not a tonal language. In the absence of historical data, all we have left is reconstruction and (not unfounded) speculation. One rather plausible way of tone erosion is the sandhi, where the tones are influenced by neighbouring syllables.
According to Hyman, L. M. (2018). Towards a typology of tone system changes. In: Tonal Change and Neutralization, 27(7)., tone changes and "wandering" in multisyllabic environments leads to the tones being realized syntagmatically at the phrase level, and then it is an easy way for them to disappear completely.
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179 | How common is it for the creator of a conlang to be fluent in that conlang?
This was one of my example questions but I now am actually interested in the answer. I am an amateur conlanger; I have one pretty complete language and a couple in the process. But I can't construct a sentence in any of my languages without referencing the lexicon and grammar. How common is it for the creator of a conlang to be fluent in that conlang? (especially for languages that are not meant to be spoken like all of Tolkien's, where there is not a very significant fluent community).
I find the grammar in your last sentence confusing. Are you saying that Tolkien's languages are not meant to be spoken--"languages that are not meant to be spoken (like all of Tolkien's)"--or that Tolkien's languages are meant to be spoken--"languages that are not meant to be (spoken like all of Tolkien's)"? I think it's the former, but the wording could be clarified.
@DLosc The first one
It might be useful to look for the results of the various Lunatic Surveys conducted over the years on Conlang-L (certainly going back to 1998 or so). As I recall, the experiences of glossopoets in those far off days were little different than Adairain expresses: very few ever learn to speak their own invented languages! Ironically, I think any given invented language is far more likely to encounter someone other than the author who will take on the strange and beautiful burden of learning the language!
In March 2021, William S. Annis did an online survey about learning one's own conlang. The results can be found here: https://lingweenie.org/conlang/ConlangLearningSurveyResults.pdf I believe it is worth mentioning that only about two thirds of the respondents said they where actually intending to learn their own language(s). We should keep that in mind when discussing fluency -- for some creators, it's simply a non-goal.
From personal experience (active member in a large server of avid conlangers) very few people ever learn to speak their own conlangs. Language learning is a very time-intensive progress and there is not much gained from learning a language no one else speaks. The occasional exception tends to be found in group projects, in which sometimes at least to a part “creating by using” is used as a technique, which naturally leads to at least rudimentary command of the language. Some languages have also been developed exclusively by using them, such as Viossa, but this is an exception.
You may also be interested in this talk at LCC6, held by Jim Hopkins in his conlang (with an interpreter, of course). Summary of the talk:
In this presentation Jim Hopkins, creator of Itlani, will share his tips and techniques for recording, learning, and living the Language of your Soul. He will discuss the need for finding and ensuring stability in your language’s vocabulary and structure to facilitate easier learning, and how to immerse yourself in your language for mental and emotional engagement, even though you aren’t living full time among native speakers. The presentation will be done entirely in the Itlani language, with interpretation into English by Tony Harris.
The audio on the LCC6 recording gets stuck sometimes, hence I wrote a transcript to make the talk more accessible: https://tmh.conlang.org/organic-conlanging/
It's probably a lot more common for a person to be fluent in his own conlang when dealing with auxiliary languages. Esperanto, Ido, Interlingua, etc. all have large communities of speakers (relative to most conlangs), and I assume their creators also spoke them.
This is likely because the languages were designed for communication, and because the vocabulary is usually designed to be easily recognizable to as many people as possible, which makes learning it easier than learning an a priori vocabulary and grammar.
An example of a relatively recent auxlang is Lingua Franca Nova, created in 1998, which already has a lot of speakers. By contrast, a systematic "engelang" (engineered language) like Ithkuil would be extremely hard for anyone to master, and its creator is not fluent in it.
I'd quibble with wikipedia's assertion of 970 users based on Facebook group membership. I'd venture to say no one knows, except the number is probably small with 1 or 2 digits, maybe 3 if fluency was defined loosely enough.
@MatthewMartin Some people in the Wikipedia discussion here 10 years ago seem to agree with your skepticism
Ignoring that fluency means a wide range of things (reading, writing, conversing, conversing at a college educated level, etc)--
This is really rare. Outside of Esperanto, which as L1 speakers, the number of people who get to the lower levels of fluency is in the low two digits. Klingon, Na'vi, toki pona have up to tens of people who have various levels of fluency. Getting solid data is also really hard, the numbers you see in wikipedia are often wild ass guesses.
As a thought experiment, you can look at how many languages are even potentially speakable, ie. is the specification complete to say most or all possible sentences? Is there a community? Before the internet, this was usually an insurmountable problem, finding anyone who'd want to learn your language. Are there any "poison pills" in the language put there by the designer specifically to discourage humans from trying to use it? (Pedophilia in the conculture and absurdly difficult pronunciations come to mind)
John Henry did a study of this, targeting more recent personal conlangs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1HJfOPLXVY
Jim's talk is worth watching. Also, the original questionnaire can be found on his website: http://jimhenry.conlang.org/conlang/fluency-survey.html There's a summary of the collected data presented in the talk, too: http://conference.conlang.org/lcc3/talks/Jim_Henry-Fluency_Overall.html
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3 | How developed is the Old Tongue in the Wheel of Time series?
Robert Jordan's fantasy novel series The Wheel of Time includes a lot of short quotes in the Old Tongue, a fictional ancient language from a previous Age. Translations are provided for these, either in the text itself or in the glossary at the back of each book, but we never see more than a few sentences at a time.
How much was this language actually developed by Jordan?
Did he create an entire fictional language, as Tolkien did for his Middle-Earth books? Or did he just create some plausible-sounding fictional words and put them together to form the quotes he needed? Would it be possible, either from the text of the books themselves or from his unpublished notes, to actually learn the language properly to any extent?
From here on Theoryland:
Is there a complete language of the Old Tongue, and if so how long did it take you to develop it?
ROBERT JORDAN
There are basic 880 some words—maybe 900. I got a list of what is considered basic English—which are the 800 odd words of a basic English vocabulary. Removed the words that were of no use in the context of my world. Came up with words in the Old Tongue in each of those English words and then added those words that did have a specific context in my world.
Elsewhere on that page is an interview where he said this:
What language is the Old Tongue based on? Gaelic, Russian, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic and some additions of my own—bridging material, if you will. Grammar and syntax are a blending of English, German and Chinese, with some influences from a set of African languages, read about long ago and all but the oddities of structure long since forgotten. There are inverted constructions, for example (as in Mordero dagain pas duente cuebiyar!—literally, "Death fear none holds my heart!") and places where the article is omitted, especially where the word is a title or has gained enough importance to now incorporate the article; the absence of article indicates that it is the important or special meaning of the word that is intended. Though even then, it is not a hard and fast rule; the same inconsistencies of English are incorporated here. I am attempting to create a language which has grown, not one which was made.
It seems to be a complete enough language in terms of grammar and authentic enough for Jordan to use, though lacking in vocabulary. From these quotes I get the feeling that he created the language well enough at one point that he didn't have to spend hours conlanging to be able to put a few sentences into his novels.
In the Wheel of Time Companion there was an English-Old Tongue dictionary, which is uploaded on Tor.com here. At the beginning on the website (not sure if this is also in the book as I don't have it on me) this is written:
While it is reminiscent of Tolkien’s ground-up creation of Elvish languages for The Lord of the Rings, The Old Tongue differs in that Jordan took a top-down approach, creating a dictionary of terms from which some basic suffixes, roots, and usage rules emerged.
I didn't bother scrolling all the way down or counting the words, but it doesn't seem to have much grammar aside from the suffixes and stuff. Although we don't have access to this, Jordan seems to be implying that the grammar does exist. All I could find was this on the Tar Valon library.
Thanks for this! The English-Old Tongue dictionary is especially interesting, but do you know how much of it is based on Jordan's own notes and how much is expansion by Brandon Sanderson or Harriet, Alan, Maria, et al? (Or in SFF terms, what's its canonicity level?)
@RandalThor Not off the top of my head, but it could probably be figured out from a list of Old tongue phrases in the books, which I'm sure exists somewhere
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86 | How much Dwarvish did Tolkien actually devise?
The Dwarvish language in Tolkien's legendarium is famous for being virtually unknown to non-Dwarves. Apart from a few phrases, like Gimli's battle-cry "Baruk Khazad! Khazad ai-menu!" (from memory; please forgive the lack of diacritics), almost nothing of their language is known to other Middle-Earth dwellers.
But what about us in the real world? Did Tolkien actually develop the language beyong those few phrases, in any of his wider notes on Middle-Earth and its languages? Or did he focus more on the Elvish languages, and create the in-universe conceit of Dwarvish secretiveness just so that he didn't have to develop yet another language?
As per this (cited by "An Analysis of Dwarvish" in Arda Philology 1: Proceedings of the First International Conference, with a very nice glossary of the language, which can be found here):
Regarding Khuzdul, Tolkien stated that "this tongue has been sketched in some detail of structure, if with a very small vocabulary" (PM:300). It evidently came into being in the thirties.
Here PM refers to the Peoples of Middle Earth. The complete corpus of the language is described on the same site as being
a few names, like Khazad-dûm and Zirak-zigil, the inscription on Balin's tomb, and a battle cry: Baruk Khazâd! Khazâd ai-mênu! "Axes of the Dwarves! The Dwarves are upon you!"
A petty-dwarf, Mîm, is also named, in The Children of Hurin, though that is the only reference there. The names also include Chamber of Mazarbul [records].
(A complete glossary is given on the website; it is too long to copy here.) It also mentions Appendix D, E, and F in the Lord of the Rings (F primarily containing history, of course) and the Appendix in the Silmarillion also apparently contains a reference to Khuzdul:
At least one Khuzdul word made its way into Sindarin: kheled "glass", that appears in Grey-elven as heledh (see the Silmarillion Appendix, entry khelek-)
This appears to be all we know of Khuzdul. In spite of this, extensive analysis has been made, with a not insignificant amount of it guesswork. See "An Analysis of Dwarvish" for one example (provides a theory of language structure).
Of course, Tolkien did state that it was "sketched", but the question is where it was - there's a chance it may be unpublished:
Yes, there is some unpublished material concerning Khuzdul. However, it’s only a small amount, and as I recall, it consists mostly of phonological discussion, though inevitably there is in conjunction with this some discussion of the grammatical significance of various root modifications. But don’t expect anything like Etymologies or the "Early Qenya Grammar" for Khuzdul.
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249 | Are there concrete examples of slang developing within a conlang?
One of the unique challenges of a constructed language, in my mind, is how they handle the way in which language longs to break rules. In other words, how does constructed language handle slang?
For the most part, the entire notion of underground language runs entirely contrary to the notion of constructed language, where the rules are strictly prescribed.
However, in unique cases where conlangs have had time to brew with native speakers, such as with Esperanto, have we seen specific examples of slang develop within the language? What conditions seem to prompt the development of slang terms in such circumstances?
I wonder whether your question is general (as most of the wording including the title suggest) or concerning Esperanto (as the last paragraph and the tag suggests). I think, the answers would be quite different in both cases (although both may point to Esperanto; the former as an example.)
I would like to make the comment that “where the rules are strictly prescribed” is not necessarily true. This is certainly the situation in auxlangs and loglangs, but many creators of the more experimental or artistic conlangs don’t care or even encourage speakers (if there are any) to innovate idioms, slang etc, because those are part of any natural language, and so in striving to imitate natural languages you obviously have to come up with ways speakers break the rules. And what easier way to do so than just have the speakers decide themselves how they want to do it?
@Adarain thanks for making that comment, I think that's an important point.
Related question on the Esperanto SE: https://esperanto.stackexchange.com/questions/389/are-there-words-in-esperanto-that-are-occuring-only-in-esperanto-and-arent-draw
Wiktionary has a list of Esperanto internet slang but most of these I've never seen or heard used before (at least in the main esperanto chats on Telegram).
Esperanto slang terms I've heard or used
krokodili - to speak in a language other than esperanto in a group of esperantists. No one really knows where it originated but the most popular story seems to be that it's because crocodiles have big mouths and small brains. "Ne krokodilu" is a very commonly used phrase.
sal - hi (short for saluton)
kvf - how are you (abbreviation of kiel vi fartas)
mdr - lol (multe da ridoj)
mns - idk (mi ne scias)
Interjections
ho ve (occasionally just "ve") - oh geez
(according to this post on Esperanto SE the literal translation is "oh woe" but who says that)
8, ok, okej - k, ok, okay
("ok" is the word for eight in Esperanto, mdr.)
ho - oh
jes ja - yes, indeed
(according to this post on Esperanto SE "ja" can be used in other situations, but I have never heard or seen it used other than after "jes")
Fek' - f*ck
Kio la fek - what the f*ck
(This is an obvious anglicism and considered "grammatically incorrect" by many esperantists, who will tell you it's actually kio feke)
Volap*ko - "the v word". More offensive than all the offensive words you know combined.
(Just to be clear, the last point was nothing but a bit of banter. Volapük tried its best.)
krokodili is like Anc. Greek usage of thinking all foreigners say 'bar-bar', which were called bar-barians.
In Esperanto, the word knuflo is mainly used by young people, who participate in local meetings, around the dutch-speaking regions of Flanders and the Netherlands. It is almost not used in international context, like on the Internet ("knuflo" esperanto gives less than 12 results with Google), outside of groups that are community specific. Outside of these groups, the word is not understood.
Knuflo is like hugging, but longer, with more parts of the body. It is like cuddling, but it is hard to describe. Users say you have to receive a knuflo to understand it, and you have to experience it to understand why the word is needed in the language.
So here, you have three factors. People sharing the same factor tend to speak together. When people speak mainly within their own community, slang appear.
Age factor: Young people coin new words for the new environment, and for concepts that are felt important for the social group. It is exactly the same in Esperanto. But there is no clear barrier. Here is a footage of an older person using the word "knuflo".
Location factor: Not all Esperanto-speakers participate regularly in Esperanto events, in fact only a minority do. There is an event-slang, with words such as "gufujo", "stelo (mono)", etc. Esperanto events are often attended by people from neighboring countries. This way local slang is shared among people of different countries and age. Because of this, you can sometimes hear "knuflo" in French-speaking Belgium and Germany (near the Netherlands). The word is also shared in huge international youth events like JES and IJK, where a consequent number of participants come from the knuflo-region.
Language factor: "knuflo" comes directly from the Dutch verb "knuffelen". Dutch-speaking beginners who are not aware of similar words like "brakumo" "kareso" "dorlotado" are more likely to remember and understand "knuflo". This kind of beginner-slang tend to not go outside the local club, but "knuflo" is an odd exception. Maybe because some local experienced speakers think it brings new meaning.
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378 | Are there any rules of thumb for number of "steps" between two points in a language's natural development?
Let's suppose that you want to create Conlang B. You want this conlang to be derived from Conlang A. Let's also suppose that you have some arbitrary period of time in between A and B. Are there any rules of thumb for how many steps—how many major grammar/vocabulary alterations, etc.—would generally manifest between A and B as a general guideline? Is it entirely up to the conlanger's prerogative, or can patterns from natural languages be found?
It’s relatively hard to say. First, some general numbers:
Over 1000 years, Old High German split into the various southern German dialects, including Swiss German and Standard German. While differences are very noticable, many developments were parallel and speakers usually don’t take long to get accustomed to the differences. A similar time depth can be claimed for English vs Scots. Old High German itself is not readily intelligible to the modern speaker, but many words are recognizable.
2000 years ago, we had Latin and Proto-Germanic, the ancestors of the Romance and Germanic branches of Indo-European. While the modern languages all show clear similarities in most regards of the language, they are as a general rule not mutually intelligible and speakers need to invest a lot of time to learn another of those languages - but still much less than with an unrelated language. Proto-Germanic and Latin are both quite different than the modern languages, showing vast differences in morphology and syntax, as well as having undergone many sound changes since. Nevertheless, with some knowledge on etymology, words can readily be recognized for what they are in a written text.
About 4000-6000 years ago, we have PIE. At this point, the language is no longer immediately recognizable as being related to a modern European language. The grammar is very different - just as an example, PIE verbs inflect for three persons and three numbers, but not directly for tense or aspect, which are instead marked with various more-or-less productive derivational affixes. The phonology would also look very out of place in modern day Europe. And for most roots, even if they didn’t change much phonologically, there was probably a semantic shift somewhere between PIE and English. The average English speaker will understand exactly zero words in a passage in Serbian or Punjabi.
But there’s another side to this as well. General tendencies are fine, but what about individual languages? If you compare Italian and French to Latin, then it’s plainly obvious that French has changed more, at least with regards to phonology and morphology. Similarly, comparing English to Icelandic, the latter is clearly more conservative (though no where near as much as some people might make you believe). To me, French and English look like they are 500+ years further in the future than their contemporary siblings — in reality of course they just underwent some more drastical sound changes that in turn messed with their morphology, which in turn forced changes to the syntax. People try to ascribe those changes to various factors, usually external ones such as a large number of foreign learners, but most of this is not grounded in actual science and just speculation.
As such, no definitive answer can be given. I find the time depths I gave above to be good rules of thumb, but single languages may deviate from those quite a bit. To achieve such results, it’s important to apply changes not only to the phonology, but to all parts of the language — especially the lexicon.
As there is no one simple rule of thumb (or generally applicable rule at all), over history these have been messed up. If it would be practically doable, many linguists would want to rename those periods (but many intermediate forms would be lost because of undecided diachronics).
I'd recommend:
Languages never written (fully reconstructed) usually span a long period of time (PIE spans 2000 years from 4500BCE to 2500BCE). If you'd follow the rule of "many sound changes", we'd be able to split PIE into 10 or more language segments because of sporadic sound changes everywhere.
Usually before a big separation of languages. Proto-Germanic separated into many languages quite fast (for a hypothetical one, at least). Middle Dutch was a nontrivial influence to both English and French, including my favourite words: bodge and feague.
In our sample of the PIE western world, we see a recurring theme: PIE > sub > old > middle > modern. English, Dutch, German fit this perfectly, and with some fiddling (Counting Latin and proto-Italic as one sub, for no other proto-Italic still exists and Latin was quite early (Proto-Germanic even hypothetically borrowed some words)) the Romance languages. This theme can be also applied to Russian, with some bashing and bodging even the Chinese languages, if I recall correctly.
Big spelling changes, not by a regulation's suggestions (or laws—think France) but by linguistic fashion changes.
When a language sees itself as 'newer' and 'better' than its predecessor.
Just to fit. Calling Old and Middle English 'Old English' collectively would be 'weird' as too many changes have occurred for it to be one language. So they drew a line where they thought it would be applicable.
I don't think it can be reduced to one single rule of thumb, like in jknappen's answer. Some sound changes affect many words, but don't split the language. For example: when -e's at the end of words became silent, many words changed pronunciation (many underused words have an -e, which are less common but more numerous). Such 'common exceptions' make it difficult to have one single rule.
In my opinion, it contributes to the answer. A single rule of thumb does, IMHO, not exist and is misleading. If you downvote for personal reasons, please don't. If you want, I'll add my criticism to your answer too.
I've reworded my question to fit answer guidelines. Would you mind explaining your downvote or removing it?
The final -e in English is a spelling convention, nothing real in the language. The harmless looking loss of final -e can have major consequences for a language, see e.g. this anser on [linguistics.se]: https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/27252/where-did-the-use-of-the-two-auxiliaries-in-the-romance-languages-come-from/27258#27258
I'm referring to the fact that the sound change that made the -e silent (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_e) changed. Over 15% of words (including plurals, etc. thus being estimated 40%) have -e, of which most are silent. Thus ~35% of the words were changed from one sound change. A few more and you reach 67%. Nevertheless, we don't have another language between Late Middle and Early Modern English.
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649 | Is there anyone that has a conlang as their first/only language?
It seems that people generally use constructed languages in very limited circumstances, or within small communities that speak the language. Thus it seems to me unlikely that one of these languages would every be someone's first or only language.
Are there any documented cases of a child learning a conlang as their first language?
Related: https://conlang.stackexchange.com/questions/622/teaching-children-constructed-languages
Considering the size of local conlang speech communities, to try to make your child speak only the conlang and not be bilingual with the local natlang(s) would be close to child abuse. It's probably not possible either - children pick up the language of those around them naturally!
Today I happened upon a mention of second-generation Esperanto natives: the two children of Eliza Kehlet. (https://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliza_Kehlet)
Yes. According to Wikipedia, Esperanto has 350 native speakers (data 1996). There is also a story about a linguist only speaking to his son in Klingon, but even though the child picked it up somewhat, later in life the child stopped speaking Klingon. Currently, he doesn't.
Also, see Esperanto native speaker AMA on reddit and a blog I enjoyed about speaking Esperanto natively.
To be fair, most native Esperanto speakers learn another native language at the same time. Though I met one who only started his non-Esperanto language only with 3 years.
Yeah, that's true. But on the other hand, the average person is multilingual.
@DuncanWhyte Definitively not! Most people learn a portion of at least one other language, like English, that is fair. It is rare to have kids growing up multilingual.
@creativecreatorormaybenot have you got any supporting evidence? That statement is extremely Anglo-centric.
(no space) Angloc. fits - foreigners are forced into bilinguality. "A handbook on bilingualism & second language learning": half of young children are multilingual. [Page two](https://www.britac.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Multilingual Britain Report.pdf): multilingual children in England (15%), similar: US and Canada.
Again, your sources are based on US, Canada and Britain. The first source, "half of young children are multilingual" is exactly my statement: multilingualism is more normal.
In collaboration of Duncan, Papua New Guinea is more representative of the historical Norm, where language communities were small, and not just trade but exogamy guaranteed multilingualism.
I’m going to try to avoid any kind of argument about politics, religion or what does or does not count as a “conlang,” and just give this as a historical case that I think is relevant to the spirit of the question.
Biblical Hebrew was a natural language, and Rabbinic Hebrew a scholarly one, but modern Hebrew needed a vast number of neologisms, greatly exceeding the number of ancient words in the Bible. Since most of the early revivalists were native speakers of Central and Eastern European languages, those also influenced its development. So Eliezer Ben-Yehuda’s dictionary of modern Hebrew words, many of which he himself invented or extended the definitions of, bears some similarities to creating the vocabulary of a conlang.
He and his wife were famously the first parents in modern times to raise their child to know only Hebrew and nothing else. Their son Ittamar Ben-Avi, born in 1882, would later recall that he was sent to his room whenever any guests came over who did not speak Hebrew, so he would not hear another language, and that his father became enraged when he caught his mother singing lullabies to him in her native Russian.
Kim Henrickson is one example of a native speaker of Esperanto, however, I'm certain that there are hundreds of others.
According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Esperanto_speakers, the noted lists includes Daniel Bovet, Petr Ginz, Kim J Henriksen, Ino Kolbe, Carlo Minnaja, George Soros, & Paul Soros.
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38 | Does Dovahzul have the same grammar rules as English, or are they different?
I have recently been reading this page about the Dragon Language, and I was curious about whether if it and the English language share grammer rules. They seem to have similar bases (organized alphabets with words that derive from it), but I am unsure since Dovahzul seems to be primitive.
There are a lot of rules that are exactly the same. For instance, Dovahzul has the exact same parts of speech:
Nouns
Verbs
Adjectives
Adverbs
Articles
Conjunctions
Interjections
Prepositions
However, there are some rules that are different: for instance, in the Dragon Language, some words can be used either as an adjective, noun, verb, or adverb, such as the word Nahlot, which means officially "Silenced," but whose meaning can be expanded to mean "silent," "silently," or "silence."
So yes, it shares some rules with English, but no, its rules are not the same. If you had any specific questions about specific rules, you'd have to ask those in separate questions.
Zero derivation is incredibly common in English, so I'm not sure that's much of a difference.
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122 | Is Tolkien's Dwarvish really based on Hebrew?
Many sources say that Tolkien's Dwarvish resembles the Hebrew language. The Lord of the Rings Wikia states that:
It appears to be structured, like real-world Semitic languages, around the triconsonantal roots: kh-z-d, b-n-d, z-g-l.
Also, from folk.uib.no:
The basic structure of Khuzdul resembles that of Semitic languages, like Arabic and Hebrew. The stems from which words are derived are not by themselves pronounceable words, but consist of consonants only. Nouns, verbs, adjectives etc. are derived not only by prefixes and suffixes (if such devices are used at all), but also by inserting certain vowels between these consonants, sometimes also by doubling one of the consonants. Often the words are actually inflected by internal vowel-changes instead of adding affixes: Rukhs means "Orc", but plural "Orcs" is Rakhâs. The root consonants - the so-called radicals - remain the same, like *R-Kh-S in this case. In Khuzdul as well as in Semitic languages, there are usually three radicals in the root; several such roots are mentioned in TI:174 and RS:466: B-R-Z "red", B-N-D "head", K-B-L "silver", N-R-G "black". An example of a biconsonantal root is Z-N "dark, dim" (RS:466).
and:
Baruk Khazâd! is said to mean "Axes of the Dwarves!" Baruk is usually taken to be an example of something similar to the Hebrew "construct state": the state a word is said to be in when it is placed in front of a noun to express a genitival relationship: X Y meaning "X of Y" or "Y's X". (Compare Hebrew סוס (sûs) "horse", המלך (hammelekh) "the king", סוס המלך (sûs hammelekh) "the king's horse, the horse of the king".) Of course, we cannot be certain that baruk is the normal plural "axes" and not a specialized form meaning "axes of". It may be significant that all the other attested plurals contain a long vowel: Khazâd "Dwarves", Rakhâs "Orcs", tarâg "beards", shathûr "clouds", ûl "streams", dûm "excavations, halls", bizâr "valleys". Could the normal plural "axes" be *barûk? Shathûr "clouds" may represent a plural pattern in -a-û-. In Hebrew, the vowels of words in the construct state are often shortened.
Was it actually based on Hebrew / Semitic languages, or is that simply an impression?
See this for a meta discussion on this question/answer.
Yes.
According to this interview with Tolkien, he really did design it to be Semitic. He says,
The dwarves of course are quite obviously, wouldn't you say that in many ways they remind you of the Jews? Their words are Semitic obviously, constructed to be Semitic.
In other words, he did design their tongue to be very like the Semitic language, possibly since their history resembled that of the Jews.
Could you please expand on this answer to show more similarities and how it's demonstratively similar, instead of just relying on what the author said? Thanks! :)
@Mithrandir, I've added it to the question since it seems more pertinent there than in the answer, since the question is Did he or didn't he?
I'd argue that the question should include a couple points to show why you'd think that in the first place, and the answer should the provide some stronger arguments and a more exhaustive list of similarities. The focus of the site here is on the langues themselves; this approached the mindset of the creator but not how the language itself ended up - was he actually successful in creating a language similar to Hebrew?
Hmm, sounds like a discussion for meta. I don't find anything definitive supporting or denying that... Personally, I see no reason why the history of conlangs would be off-topic, but I don't know; you've been following the proposal longer than I. Anyhow, got to go study; feel free to edit if you like, but I don't have time right at the moment.
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335 | What are language concepts that could be considered to be based on human anatomy?
I'm in the early stages of creating an alien language for a personal writing project. I'm trying to avoid the aliens' language having properties that human languages do that are somehow linked to our anatomy. One of the most obvious examples of such a feature is a numerical system with base ten due to the number of digits.
What are language concepts that are linked to our anatomy in comparable ways that I should find alternatives for when creating a language for aliens who are not humanoid? Any references for links between our anatomy and such language concepts or features are much appreciated.
"One of the most obvious examples of such a feature is a numerical system with base ten due to the number of digits." Well lots of human languages don't use base 10, and an alien language could use base 10 for reasons other than the number of digits...
@curiousdannii you're correct, but those who use that base 10 have likely hand- and finger-based reasons. Cf. https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/8734
Also, humans have 20 digits, not 10. I wouldn't consider base-10 necessarily anatomically rooted any more than 20 or 5 or 4 or 8. In any event, if you're not against the aliens' language having properties based on alien morphology, then I would suggest not worrying about humans and focus on the nature of the aliens!
A lot, probably more than the format of an answer allows: Think of senses, life conditions, life span, body parts, rhythm (hart beat), sexuality and reproduction, ...
Re:Anatomy of numbers, It's even possible to have anatomical roots for as seemingly weird bases as 23 or 27, with an extended body-part system as seen in some Papuan highland languages, where one counts the five fingers, then 5 points up the arm (joints and segments), various paths across the face, chest or collarbone, and then 10 more points for the other arm and hand. This system can then be expanded beyond the base by counting backwards again (though many languages instead loan Tok Pisin numerals in practice).
I still think this question is too broad. For a discussion see https://conlang.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/89/a-very-broad-question
Some obvious ones:
Phonetics, be it of spoken or signed language, is obviously constrained by the body of humans - both in the channels (aural, visual) employed and also in how they are employed.
Metaphors often make use of body parts. Spatial prepositions and adverbs are often derived from relevant body parts: front from face, forehead, nose, chest; back from back or butt; up from head… you get the picture. Basically every organ has been referred to as being the cause of emotions etc as well in metaphors.
Words for directions in particular are also somewhat based on human anatomy. We have lateral symmetry (left-right) but an alien could likely have some form of radial symmetry in their bodies, which would make the concepts of leftness and rightness very weird to them. Aquatic beings would also likely have a different concept of directions altogether, probably based more on the orientation of their own bodies than relative to the ground.
Those are the things that come to mind. However, much more importantly, the inner workings of language as a whole would likely be different from a human’s. There are some things in human language that you really wouldn’t assume to be necessary. Just to make two examples:
It seems pretty clear that humans take the raw audio input, break it into segments (phones) then further abstract those phones into phonemes, which are then in turn used to build more complex words. One could just as well imagine skipping the segmentation step and going directly from audio to meaning. There appears to be evidence however that some songbirds also employ what could be considered phonemes in their songs, so perhaps it is to be expected.
Another thing is in syntax: human language does not appear to allow circular dependencies, that is word¹ A modifying word B, which in turn modifies word A again. From my fairly limited understanding of syntax, human sentences can be structured in a tree structure. It seems plausible that an alien language might have more or less freedom, perhaps allowing cyclic graphs in their syntax… or in the other direction, only linear dependence. An example of an alien conlang playing around with this is Europan, which I personally consider one of the most interesting conlangs I’ve ever encountered.
¹or clause
I think the question is not well formulated. Mostly because "language concepts" (e.g. tense-aspect-mood systems, animacy, verbal valence, case systems...) reflect the workings of the human mind far, far more than they could ever reflect the human anatomy. Anatomy/biology of course influences massive swathes of semantics, but I don't think anything other than pure phonetics or sign language is influenced by anatomy.
Facial expressions and body language probably belong there, but tend to have a huge cultural element. Position of the ears, for example, is not something humans make (or can make) use of, but maybe elves could.
Some more semantics example:
We make distinctions useful to us at our given size. We cannot tell apart things by smell, or by UV light the way other animals (or measuring instruments) can. We do not tell apart very tiny things by basic names (e.g. ants, mites, sand). If we could sense, say, gravitic variations or psychic energies, we might have entirely different ways to describe position or time.
Time is linear to us, cause precedes effects and so on, we cannot watch again a past event. This obviously affects how language models time and mood. Consider the Observers from Fringe or any other species with a different perception of time. Their possibly utterly alien perception of time may well be the reason their writing is (apparently) indecipherable.
"Fish" is not a proper biological class (and whether marine mammals are excluded from it in common parlance is debatable!) because we don't feel a need to be any more precise about it, but we would have better concepts for it if we were a marine species! Similarly, plants are divided, roughly, into, flowers, lianas, grass, trees and shrubs. This system is not even very efficient for Earth ecology!
Expanding on the UV thing, color words are constrained by our visual capacity, and typically distinguish a surprisingly limited number of basics. Forget the hierarchy part, nonderived terms usually stop around 6-8 words, why? A species with different color perception would do things differently. Mark Rosenfelder spends an entire chapter on this point in his Conlanger's Lexipedia.
As far as number base systems, decimal and vigesimal are most common in humans because we have 10 fingers, and 20 fingers and toes. (although a huge number of bases have been documented, I don't think any languages have a binary or ternary one)
Kinship terminology is based off our own reproductive biology (and our gregariousness). What of a species where the embryo must be incubated in a member of a different species? What about a species where reproduction requires gametes from more than two individuals?
Thank you for answering what you don't consider a well formulated question. If you have ideas how to formulate it better I'd appreciate it. You make some very interesting points and the Lexipedia sounds very intriguing as well :)
If you're interested in conlang, the Lexipedia the first stop you should be making.
@Heimar I took "anatomy" at face value. Our brain/mind structure clearly has major influence on the way language functions. However, the rest of our body , though it does affect language, doesn't really affect how syntax, word categories, valence operations etc. etc. function in human language as a whole besides the obvious case of phonetics and sign language.
Just a couple of sci-fi examples:
Niven and Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye has a race with two small manipulating arms on one side, and a large "gripping hand" arm on the other. Even the humans pick up the phrase "on the gripping hand" to mean a third alternative to two possibilities.
One of Spider Robinson's Callahan's Place stories has an alien species with trilateral symmetry. Having full 360-degree vision eliminates many ideas about distrust- "Blind-sided", "Stabbed in the back", etc.
And, going the other direction, L.Neil Smith's Converse and Conflict" has a scene where a human is explaining to an alien how Cold-War-ish Earth politics is causing friction among the multi-national human crew, and the alien observes that, if war breaks out on Earth, the captain
"...will have a headache on his hands. Can you really say that? What an amazing language!"
Much of by is based upon anatomy. Mostly that of Phonetics, and, by extension, phonological change and glottochronology. If you look at the IPA, the various phonemes are based upon point of articulation and such. Dental, Bilabial, Palatal, Glottal, etc. So I would recommend looking at the structure of the mouth of the aliens in question, and looking at the IPA in order to see what sounds would be possible with them and which would be impossible. For example, if they have no teeth, they would not be capable of dental consonants.
This by extension can effect the way in which their sounds change, based upon what sounds are easier for them in any given situation.
The amount of digits can also effect what the most common radix would be for the languages, for example, in Humans the most common radix is 10 due to us having ten fingers. But, it is still not the only one used. Look at:
Mesopotamian: Base-60
Mayan Languages: Base-20
Pamaen: Base-8
Yam Languages: Base-6
Chumashan: Base-4
And so on. But more languages use Base-10 than any other base, due to the ease of counting in Base-10 compared to other bases, due to our ten fingers.
Note: If you want better bases, it is easier to divide and multiply numbers in Bases with a greater amount of factors. This is the main reason behind the Duodecimal Movement, due to 12 being a superior highly composite number, with four non-trivial factors (2,3,4,6) compared to Base-10's two non-trivial factors (2,5). You can find multiple bases and their mathematical properties on wikipedia
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270 | In what ways are well-known a priori conlangs inadvertently eurocentric?
It’s well-known that among inexperienced conlangers¹, many times their conlangs turn out to be way more European than intended, often showing features found only rarely outside of European languages, because the creator is not aware there was even an option.
What I’m curious now is whether among the “big names” such as Klingon, Na’vi, Dothraki etc. there are any such accidental Europeanisms? We can disregard Tolkien’s works as he was actively taking inspiration from various European languages (such as Welsh or Finnish²). Obviously auxlangs meant to suit primarily Europe can also be excluded, and whatever Esperanto is meant to be I’m well aware of the situation there, so you can exclude that from answers as well.
¹ Who are native speakers of an European language, i.e. statistically probably English.
² While not Indo-European, Finnish does share many features with other European languages.
While it's true that languages like Na'vi and Klingon (can't speak for Dothraki) do contain quite a few explicitly non-SAE (Standard Average European) features, it's worth noting that both Paul Frommer and Marc Okrand have stated that they were deliberately using less common and lesser-known features in their respective conlangs to make them sound more alien. Since avoiding features that would be considered common or familiar to their audiences (typically comprised of speakers of English and other SAE languages) was a goal during their language creation. I'd argue that deliberately avoiding all SAE features to make your language sound "strange" and "alien" is a sort of eurocentrism (though perhaps a less obvious sort than unthinkingly including all SAE features) in that your language ends up very influenced by European languages and their features.
The Na’vi language for the movie Avatar was created from scratch by a linguistics PhD, Paul Frommer. In an interview available on Unidentified Sound Object, he details how the language was devised. The director, James Cameron, had created about 30 words many of which he needed as place names. These helped Frommer understand what kind of sounds Cameron had in mind. They discussed what the language would need to be and sound like in general and then Frommer was on his own. Most notably, the only input from the director was a set of isolated words and confirmation that the primary way to differentiate between them should be stress.
Frommer decided that he wanted to employ all sorts of features of various human languages in a unique combination. Thus:
verbs are inflected by infixes, not the more common prefix or suffix models (suffix inflection is a feature of Standard Average European)
the case system is tripartite, a feature which exists but is rarely found in natural languages; SAE would be nominative–accusative
the language features ejective consonantes. Again, these are found in about 20 % of the world’s languages but only the Caucasian languages feature them in Europe
All in all, it seems like any features present in Na’vi that are also present in European languages would be a conscious design choice to not make it too non-European.
Furthermore, the interview also briefly mentions Klingon:
USO: Is there a “gold standard” for constructed language that served as an inspiration to you?
Frommer: In terms of “alien” languages, that would have to be Klingon, the language developed by linguist Marc Okrand for the Star Trek series. It’s a very impressive piece of work—a rough-sounding language with a complex and difficult phonology and grammar that now has a devoted base of followers. There are Klingon clubs all over the world where people meet to speak the language, and there’s even a translation of Hamlet into Klingon! If Na’vi ever came close to that kind of following, I’d be delighted.
This hints that Klingon, which was also developed by a linguist, would similarly be free from eurocentric bias.
I only went into detail with what I (think I) know, so this answer is strongly Na’vi centred.
Would you happen to know whether Na’vi has any of the features listed here? The problem with your answer as of now is that it shows that Na’vi has non-european features, but not that it lacks distinctly European ones. Examples don’t prove a theorem and all.
In addition to Adarain's question, do you happen to be able to provide a judgement of the rough degree to which Na'vi differs from English in the somewhat less obvious categories of semantics and discourse pragmatics? IME natlangs often have this tendency of lulling one into a false sense of familiarity, then suddenly throwing something like "we have thought of you in out gall-bladders" or the same verb meaning two different things depending on some subtleties in the distribution of a particle or some radically different way of dealing with focussing, something conlangs often don't capture.
I had a look through the conlangs in Wikipedia and listed which ones I could see morphologically marked TAME categories. There are sure to be some mistakes in here.
Tense: Atlantean, Dothraki, Esperanto, Glosa, Idiom Neutral, Interlingua, Kalaba-X, Kēlen, Kotava, Láadan, Langue nouvelle, Lingwa de planeta, Loglan, Mondial, Na'vi, Neo, Novial, Quenya, Sambahsa, Sindarin, Solresol, Sona, Syldavian, Universalglot, Uropi, Valyrian, Verdurian, Volapük, Wenedyk
Aspect: Kēlen, Esperanto (participles only), Ithkuil, Klingon, Na'vi, Quenya, Wenedyk?
Modality: Atlantean, Esperanto, Ithkuil, Kēlen?, Langue nouvelle, Solresol, Sona, Syldavian, Uropi, Valyrian, Wenedyk?
Evidentiality: Láadan
What's the verdict? Not only does this show that the conlang community has a strong Eurocentric bias, I think it shows it has a massive Anglocentric bias! Because it is English which is so strongly tense prominent. Most other current European languages also mark aspect or modality, but English doesn't even have a full aspect inflectional system, just the continuous -ing. Some European languages arguably don't even have tense, such as Koine Greek (for the last decade this has been a huge debate among Biblical scholars.) And evidentiality, which is present all around the world, including some European languages (some Slavic) was only present from what I could see in a single conlang! If Anglocentric bias were not a factor I would expect to see conlangs with a much broader distribution of inflected TAME categories, but as it is, 80+% have tense, maybe alongside aspect or modality.
In addition, many languages had muddled/fusional verb paradigms. You've probably seen them before: they include tense, aspect, the perfect, mood, utterance type (question or command), all in one table, each affix marking some combination of these semantic categories, but the combinations aren't very visible when they're listed one-dimensionally. Where are the agglutinative conlangs? Don't forget that European languages includes Turkish and several Uralic languages! (I found one conlang which is agglutinative in its verbal morphology: Einodo.)
Furthermore, often even when I judged a language to have aspect or modality it was because they had something called a "conditional" or a "subjunctive", rather than a core division between the prototypical categories: realis/irrealis, or perfective/imperfective. Now maybe some of those languages do actually have what should be analysed as the simple core categories, but they have been given alternate names by those describing them in Wikipedia. This reflects the Eurocentric and Anglocentric bias which is a big problem in descriptive linguistics. A helpful and short book about the importance of being aware of your biases in relation to TAM categories is The Prominence of Tense, Aspect and Mood by D.N.S. Bhat.
The idea that English doesn't have a "full aspect inflectional system" and that its only marker of aspect is the continuous/progressive has no basis in fact. English does have much less aspectual marking than other European languages, true, but that does not mean that English lacks aspectual markers other than "-ing". English's perfect "tenses" for instance, are patently aspectual, and unlike many SAE languages, English has not replaced the past tense with this perfect aspect.
Also, your comment that "most other current European languages also mark aspect or modality" implies that English lacks markers of modality, which is also false. English has a wealth of modals, and really can only be said to lack modality if you limit that to inflectional mood/modality -- which should be specified in the comment if you mean that, with examples of how other European languages exceed English in such marking (English's ongoing loss of the subjunctive is the only real relevant thing I can think of here).
@Sparksbet Yes, I'm talking about inflectional TAME markers here. I thought that was clear enough from the first sentence :)
Even so, I think your statements about English lacking aspect and modality are misleading at best -- it very obviously does have both these things and your answer isn't specific enough to exclude those things. Also, given that the imperative is a mood, I think there should certainly be more languages listed as having "modality". Also, Esperanto, at least, certainly should be among the languages marking "modality", as it has both a morphological volitive and a morphological conditional/subjunctive (and it also morphologically marks aspect in participles).
@Sparksbet I think it's misleading to relate the imperative to modality, it's really a way of communicate illocutionary intent. In some languages it will be mixed with deontic necessity, but not in all. In any case, my point is really about the prominence of categories, and that Anglocentric bias has resulted in 80+% of conlangs having tense. I missed Esperanto having the subjunctive and imperfective participles, so I'll add that.
Certainly the imperative is related to modality, even if it doesn't always correspond with deontic necessity (and I'd be interested in links to languages where this is not the case, as I'm unfamiliar). Even excluding the imperative, surely other modal auxiliaries like "must" and "should" ought to be considered. No linguist would claim that English lacks modality just because these are marked using separate words rather than fusional affixes. I actually agree with your overall point, that conlangs are often Anglocentric, but characterizing English as lacking aspect and modality is inaccurate.
Even if your list is true for all conlangs you listed, I'm a bit dubious to class a conlang as eurocentrically biased just for that. Though I'm not knowledgeable in most of the languages mentioned, it would be false to say that Ithkuil and kēlen are eurocentric; they might share features like Aspect or Modality, but that's a drop in the ocean.
@prosopopee I'm not saying that every one of those languages is eurocentric, I didn't filter them, but included all I could. My point is that the uneven distribution suggests that the conlang community as a whole probably is biased because it looks like normal means having tense inflections. It's not a fatal flaw, but it is a bias.
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163 | Can programming languages be categorized as conlangs?
Would it be correct to say that the majority of computer programming languages (such as functional or procedural) are the form of constructed languages? If so, what makes it a constructed language in this case?
Let say a "Hello, World!" program as the example.
Hello World! by Brian Kernighan, from Artsy's Algorythm Auction based on a 1978 Bell Laboratories internal memorandum by Brian Kernighan, Programming in C: A Tutorial, which contains the first known version. 2 lines of C Code. -
Wikipedia
This is a rather interesting topic, but the way it's asked, it most likely be closed as too broad. By a naive definition, a programming language is, obviously, a language; and it is also constructed. Do you have any specific criteria in mind?
@bytebuster I'd like to confirm this claim (as I couldn't find it in the definition on Wiki) and have some brief 'why' explanation.
People consider Lojban a conlang, so why not? :P
Yep, 'Constructs in programming languages have been shown to be translated to Lojban'. Source: Wiki
@kenorb Just like any programming language could be translated into English. What matters is if arbitrary natlang sentences could be translated into the programming language.
I think this might make a good meta post if your intention is to see if you can ask about programming languages here (not their usage (SO) but other stuff), but otherwise I think this challenge is a bit too opinion-based to be on-topic for this site, unfortunately. It's a very interesting topic though!
No. From my understanding, computer languages encode human languages. If anything, a computer language should be considered a type of script (similar to Morse Code).
@Doorknob In all seriousness, I would like to see an answer to this question explaining why Lojban is a language while a logic programming language like Prolog is not.
@Nicole Morse code and programming languages are functionally very different. Morse code is just a text encoding, like ASCII or Unicode.
@DLosc Prolog has a syntax, but doesn't really have a vocabulary. As Wikipedia says, "An atom is a general-purpose name with no inherent meaning." Lojban has actual lexemes with fixed sound-meaning pairings.
@curiousdannii Ah, very good point. Maybe you could add to your answer a line or two about languages needing vocabulary.
Isn't this question a little pedantic? The definition of the word language varies a lot based on the context. Are apples vegetables? In any case, I want pineapple on my pizza.
No. "Constructed languages" on this site refers to artificially created languages for intelligent beings, not machine languages. In the absence of another qualifier a "language" is, as I wrote on another site, a system for communicating propositional and conceptual information to other beings. This is different from communication. Programming languages can definitely be used to communicate - and they carry meaning - but that doesn't make them languages. Purely referential communication (using symbols to directly refer to things in the world without metaphorical extension) is not enough to be a language, language must be able to communicate abstract concepts that are beyond any sensory or referential basis. Programming languages are systems for encoding instructions for machines, and not general purpose concept exchange systems.
Programming languages are constructed, but they are not languages, in the sense English or Esperanto or Klingon are languages, as curiousdannii shows. We cannot translate things like "I will be late for dinner" into a programming "language". And a characteristic of all "languages", properly speaking, is their mutual "translatability".
I dunno... logic programming languages like Prolog can come pretty close to representing facts like "I will be late for dinner," if you define the terms properly... something like "I expect to arrive home at a later time than the start of my family's next evening mealtime, but at an earlier time than the end of it" could be represented in Prolog in such a way that the computer could both report the information and make inferences from it.
Are languages actually mutually translatable? If a "language" were unable to translate something from another language (or vice versa), would it be disqualified as a language? If we say that a programming language isn't mutually translatable with accepted languages, are we talking about a difference of kind or of degree?
As a programmer and a conlanger, I'd say "no". As noted above, programming languages cannot convey metaphor, emotions, sensory impressions, and other such human-relevant messages. Abstraction they can handle, but only abstractions that are relevant to the processing going on inside the machine. Such languages have an extremely limited sphere of reference: bits, bytes, and data structures inside the machine, and operations upon them.
Languages are not required to convey metaphors and emotions - when did this become a requirement?
In the novel "Autonomy", when robots speak to each other, they author expressed it in a source code-like English, with a few things you'd see in coded implementations, like mentions of files, message headers and acknowledgements, and so on. Obviously this wasn't a full implementation. If a hobbyist did do a working implementation, I figure it would be a conlang.
In Star Wars, the droids are supposed to speak a language. The attested text can't possibly be anything like a conlang, except maybe as a language of just "oh!", "ah!" "ha-ha!" and other emotive exclamations. If someone hobbyist tried to make a droid language, it would be a nice feature if it could both work as a natural language and a programming language.
People have speculated that Lojban could serve as a programming language, as things like Prolog are programs made out of logical statements. I haven't heard of anyone doing so. Lojban syntax is describe with the same tools as are used for writing compilers, YACC.
Obviously, since this website doesn't need to reproduce Stack Overflow, things that are only programming languages and don't have a way to be used as a natural language (except maybe in jest?) are not only not conlangs, but off topic.
I'm trying to be Devil's Advocate here: In a way programming languages are constructed languages, but they are usually very specific and narrow in focus: one could view them as sublanguages aimed at expressing algorithms or annotating other information. An example for a human sublanguage would be the language of recipes. Words that have multiple meanings in English generally have only one specific meaning in a sublanguage. The syntactic structures are simplified, and often different from general English. Certain aspects of the range of human expressions are left out or limited (you might talk about emotions or feelings, but they would only relate to the food mentioned).
You could design a programming language that is suited to expressing recipes, and it could be used to drive a cooking robot. That programming language could also be read by humans, who would understand the meaning of it, and could translate it into other languages. In this sense 'programming language' is a bit of a red herring: it's just a formal representation of meaning. And (propositional) meaning can easily be expressed in predicate calculus or related formalisms. Is CD representation a conlang, or just an abstract representation of actions/states? It can certainly be transformed into any number of other languages (natural or constructed), and it can express a reasonable range of human activity.
Where do you draw the line? At what point does a constructed language cross the boundary between being simply a mark-up or programming language to being suitable for human communication? What is the essence that, say, HTML, is missing, but that toki pona, Klingon, or Esperanto have? Note: I'm not suggesting that HTML is a conlang, but it can be used to encode a specific kind of meaning, and XML can even encode semantic relationships. But they might not be very suitable for inter-human communication.
You could, though, envisage two people with no common language between them who use a programming language to work together on solving a problem. It would be tough, but should be possible.
In my view there is a continuum between 'fully formed' languages on the one hand, and restricted or sublanguages on the other. While it is difficult to formally represent the more complex languages (because they are so complex), the simpler end of the spectrum can be encoded in such a representation. Predicate calculus is one representation, and any programming language is another one. There is no hard boundary between the two, so in a way (even though nobody would really 'speak' in a programming language) the answer is: yes, programming languages can be categorised as conlangs.
Conlangs and programming languages are different things.
Conlangs are languages designed for human communication. For human to human communication.
No programming language can be regarded as a language in that sense.Riley Martine's example uses
python-like syntax. But at the same time it uses real English words to convey the meaning. Computer is not able to understand the meaning of these words, it just runs code.
Simple Python example:
greetingString = "Hello"
print(greetingString)
Computer just set string "Hello" to variable greetingString and prints it to the screen.
Computer does NOT understand the meaning of the word . For computer it's just a computer variable value, nothing else.
It doesn't matter if a computer understands the meaning. No computer understands the meaning of La suno brilas, but it is still a valid conlang sentence! Your python example can easily be translated into English as "Take the sequence 'Hello' and write it down", so you could argue it has a meaning that can be interpreted by an entity capable of doing so.
Going along curiousdannii's idea of languages for human idea exchange, there's an old joke that Python can be used in place of pseudocode, because of its use of English keywords, relatively little punctuation, and ease of understanding.
Here is an example of Kadane's algorithm, expressed in Python (from Wikipedia):
def max_subarray(A):
max_ending_here = max_so_far = A[0]
for x in A[1:]:
max_ending_here = max(x, max_ending_here + x)
max_so_far = max(max_so_far, max_ending_here)
return max_so_far
aruslanovych asserts that languages have to convey emotion, metaphor, sensory impressions, etc. but I think this is a Romantic view. Is the Greek Linear B was used to write not a language since it was used for administrative record-keeping and probably tax purposes?
I take a liberal view in that yes, programming languages can represent metaphors, abstraction, and idioms, just maybe not in the sense we're used to. In fact, computers are excellent at abstract concepts and generalizing, with duck typing, object-oriented programming and reflection. Off-topic, I daresay with deep learning, computers can generalize even better than humans can. And, sci-fi speculation, when robots become just as intelligent as humans, we have to consider their languages as "real".
Writing isn't language proper either ;)
I would say, to a very limited extent, that yes, they can be, but only as a proxy grammar for other languages. For example,
from sys import exit as stops ; import os
thing = [] ; me = can = remember = False ; this = open(__file__)
def terrible(v): return v
# ==== start song snippet
me = can = remember = not any(thing)
can = not this.tell(), [True, "dream"]
locals()["deep"] = {"down":{"inside":{"feel_to":"scream"}}}
if `this` + (terrible("silence")): stops(me)
# ===== end song snippet
(source: Coding in song - Representing music lyrics in a programming language of your choosing)
However, this isn't a great method of communication. Programming languages are not designed with the same intentions as conlangs.
-1: This isn't really an example of a programming language in use, but rather some English that's formatted in such a way that it doesn't cause any errors when run as a program. It's a bit like stitching together random Vietnamese words into a poem that can be read in English and calling it an example of Vietnamese.
That's fair. Thinking about it, I mostly just wanted to share something interesting I thought could push the edges of the other answers.
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170 | What is a constructed variety of a natural language called?
What would a conlang created to be an alternate version of an already existing natural language be classified as?
For example, a version of English that could have been spoken in an alternate steampunk-era Victorian England, or a conlang of the Finnish language in the year 2349. To be clear, I'm assuming that the conlang would be an actual, dedicated one, and not just a few "alternate" words thrown in for flavor; the examples I picked were just the first ones that came to mind.
(Bonus: is there a classification for a conlang created to be a conlang of a conlang in this same way?)
Related question on [linguistics.se] calling it constructed accent: https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/14586/we-have-constructed-languages-but-are-there-constructed-accents
@jknappen Such a conlang would presumably still be mutually intelligible with the source language if it is rightly called an accent. Which would apply to some, but not all, of what is asked about here.
That would be an a posteriori conlang, in contrast with an a priori one. Wikipedia. The process of changing a language through time is called diachronic conlanging.
An example of a very well-done a posteriori conlang would be Carisitt which has been developed as if it was a natural language deriving from PIE (that is, it is also an example of diachronic conlanging). Examples of an a priori conlang are abundant, for instance all of Tolkien’s works.
Reference to the Conlang Wikia show that "a posteriori conlang" is definitely a term used by the community.
It certainly is - I’m an active member of multiple conlanging communities. However, I’m not really sure what to link as a reference for the above terms.
@Adarain I'll wait a little bit to see if any more answers come, though it's a fairly simple question. In the meantime, I suppose links to specific languages that fit the criteria would be good examples/references. Just having the correct terminology helps the most with looking up additional info.
A posteriori conlang is much more generic than the thing asked for in the question. Essentially all naturalistic conlangs (including Esperanto) are on the a posteriori side.
I just noticed that wikipedia actually has a section on this topic. Editing in
@jknappen Esperanto, sure. But “essentially all naturalistic conlangs” is far from correct. Basically every conlang seen in popular media are a priori naturalistic conlangs. For example, Sindarin, Dothraki… An exception would be Trigedasleng in the TV show The 100, which is explicitly derived from English and therefore a posteriori. (also, Esperanto isn’t naturalistic)
For naturalistic languages placed in an Alternative History setting the term Altlang (short from Alternative Language) is used.
An example of such an Altlang is Alternese (an alternative history English) by Justin B. Rye.
Oh, very cool. Are all altlangs diachronic conlangs?
At least all that I am aware of.
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75 | Should adjectives agree with the noun in all aspects?
I am making a conlang in which the writing system is based off of Arabic but the grammar is not all that similar to Arabic or English(more justification for calling it a conlang if grammar has little similarity to the languages it is based off of).
I plan for it to be agglutinative but not necessarily to the degree that Hungarian has.
Anyway, I thought about it long and hard and decided to assign gender to words of at least these 4 parts of speech:
Nouns
Verbs
Adjectives
Pronouns
Not all verbs will I assign gender to. For example linking verbs like is or looks will not be assigned gender because they are used to link the subject to the action verb or to adjectives and adverbs.
Pronouns practically already have gender in them. For example "he" is masculine. However "he" could also be neuter, at least in English because it can be used to refer to someone of unknown gender. "it" is clearly neuter.
It does make sense though for all nouns and adjectives to have gender. And again, there are clear examples of where 1 gender makes far more sense. An example of that is the adjective "pregnant" It makes far more sense to say "pregnant" is feminine because male pregnancy, while possible, is extremely rare.
But as for the assigning of gender I figured it would be like this:
Feminine Masculine Neuter
Latin had this 3 gender system.
Now I am not so sure I would want inflections from grammatical case. I mean word order is a much simpler way to get across the same ideas as grammatical case. In other words for example instead of having the genitive case you could just use a possession marker on the possessor and either way, you get the same thing across, possession. But the possession marker is way simpler than inflecting every possessable noun for the genitive case.
But I was wondering, should adjectives agree with the noun in all aspects including gender or would a conlang where adjectives have inherent gender and don't have to agree with the noun when it comes to gender be just fine?
Note: I don't want to use the concepts in English except maybe the pronouns, I am just using it as an example language for those concepts partly because that is the only language I know to fluency. As for mixing up grammatical gender with biological gender, it isn't really a mix up. It is on purpose that I say that pregnant makes more sense as being feminine and he having 2 genders depending on how it's used. I think it makes more sense to have grammatical gender based on biological gender.
I'm voting to close this question because there are no right or wrong answers to this, as a designer you just have to make a decision.
You’re mixing up gender, the grammatical concept, with gender/sex, the biological concept. The two have little in common. For example, the German word for girl — Mädchen — is neuter, not feminine. Likewise, he is always masculine but not necessarily always male. It is always neuter but sometimes male or female (‘This is my cow. It gave milk. This is my ox. It doesn’t give milk.’). And she can also refer to objects that are neither male nor female: ‘This is my Rolls Royce. She’s a real beauty.’
I don't understand how this question is "opinion based". I think Caters is asking a legitimate question about the creation of an invented language. I'm also thinking that this Stack will stagnate if we keep closing actual language invention related questions. Because this: every "how to" question that has ever been asked about making a language is a question with no right and no wrong answers. I think we're getting off on the wrong foot here. We need to be more open to different kinds of questions, some of which will not have easy answers. Our topic is not like those of other stacks!
@Jan: perhaps this language will not treat things like grammatical gender and biological sex the same way as other languages we're familiar with. For now, I'm giving the benefit of the doubt!
@elemtilas I was talking about the bit where OP talks about the concepts in English. Whether or not their conlang wants to use these concepts is not clear enough from the question. (Incidentally, I voted unclear).
I have clarified that I don't want to use most of the concepts in English except possibly the pronouns and am just using English as an example language for the concepts.
@elemtilas I think the best parallel for this site is [worldbuilding.se]. "Should I do this?" questions are not allowed there. Instead questions should ask what factors should be considered when making decisions.
@curiousdannii Fair enough! I sit corrected!
Caters: Still, you have not changed the actual text, your question remains unclear to me as you mix up the biological and grammatical concepts in your question. I think you may want to refer to the grammatical ones and have some misconceptions, but I prefer to ask for clarification rather than base an answer on what I think.
To me, it makes more sense for grammatical gender to be based off of biological gender(thus me saying that "pregnant" makes more sense as being feminine) than being completely arbitrary like it is in all natural languages that have gender. So this "biological vs grammatical" is like nothing to me.
@Caters It may make sense to you a posteriori but that is not where the feminine grammatical gender in Indoeuropean languages comes from. In a very, very short summary it is a singularised plural marker. The oldest branches of Indoeuropean do not feature a feminine gender but only something akin to masculine and something akin to neuter.
So what? My conlang wouldn't even fall under Indo-European, it would most likely fall under unknown because the script is based off of the Arabic script but grammar would be a mixture. Who knows, some grammar might be based off of Russian or Swahili, or Arabic or English. But the grammar would tend towards less Arabic and less English. Plus, a singularized plural makes zero sense to say it is even a plural. And since it makes sense to me for grammatical gender to be based off of biological gender, I think there would most likely be gender markers that are written but not spoken.
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475 | Are there any constructed languages designed for legal agreements / country constitutions?
A few weeks back i've watched a talk of Stephen Wolfram. I think was this video. Plus this article is also relevant.
The idea discussed was: how to build a language for formalizing every day discourse.
A language that can be understood and acted upon by both humans and computers. With the advancements in AI, crypto-currencyes, decentralization etc.. i feel this problem has become more then just the philosophical curiosity that Leibniz had.
What is our general status on this issue?
What are some successful / failed attempts of building languages specially designed for handling legal matters ? Are there any?
So far I have not been able to find any language of this nature - maybe I'm looking in the wrong places.
Legalese (in any natural language) sounds like a conlang or a secret code to the lay people.
Most auxlangs were for "uniting humanity", thus they were made also for legal agreements, etc.
Is this asking about language for legal agreements or for communication with machines? It's unclear from the question which you're asking.
It would aactuallybe interesting to have a conlang in the spirit of Loglan and Lojban but designed for legal precision and reasoning rather than scientific precision. For example verbs might have a mandatory marker indicating the level of intent associated with the act (e.g. specific intent, general intent, recklessness, or negligence, or strict liability/absence of intent). Likewise, possessive structures could require that the level of possession be specified (e.g. ownership in full, joint ownership, tenancy in common, lease, formal trust, constructive trust, possession of stolen property).
For example, John [legal adult citizen] discarded [specific intent] his [stolen property] gun [loaded, operational] into the lake [municipal parkland, other than parkland covered by special nature conservation laws].
It strikes me that, while this is not precisely what you're asking, Law French I think it might be argued fits the bill.
While French, of course, was the everyday language of the upper class in England from the mid-11th to the late 14th century, and was therefore naturally the language of the Law, it can hardly be called a "constructed language". But after this time, it might be said that, divorced of all real connexion with French or Anglo-French culture, Law French came to be something like an invented language based on natural French. It was certainly a group project (lawyers and judges, all others need not apply).
Later examples are both humorous and instructive:
Richardson Chief Justice de Common Banc al assises de Salisbury in Summer 1631 fuit assault per prisoner la condemne pur felony, que puis son condemnation ject un brickbat a le dit justice, que narrowly mist, et pur ceo immediately fuit indictment drawn per Noy envers le prisoner et son dexter manus ampute et fix al gibbet, sur que luy mesme immediatement hange in presence de Court. -- Sir George Treby
ahem
Perhaps Law French might best be called a deconstructed language?
About all that's left in modern times are a few set phrases, mostly in Parliament:
La reyne (or le roy) remercie ses bons sujets, accepte leur benevolence, et ainsi le veult -- (The Queen/King thanks her/his good subjects, accepts their bounty, and wills it so)
La reyne (or le roy) le veult -- (The Queen/King wills it)
La reyne (or le roy) s'avisera -- (The Queen/King will advise)
Soit fait comme il est désiré -- (Let it be done as it is desired)
Even in the USA, we still hear oyez, oyez, oyez when court comes to order.
Some interesting notes on Law French, especially pertinent to the question:
"The effort of reporting English speech in French was not merely an expression of affection for the past, for in the long run it probably saved a lawyer more time and trouble than was taken to learn it. ... The formalised French phrases used in the year books gave him a shorthand ready made and adapted for legal purposes."
"To the linguist, Law French is a corrupt dialect by definition. Anglo-French was in steady decline after 1300. ... (That English lawyers could seriously complain that French, spoken in France, had deteriorated considerably as compared to its use in England) is in itself a clear demonstration that by the middle of the fifteenth century there was a marked difference between the French of English lawyers and the French of France."
A Frenchman living in England during Elizabeth I's reign noted of Law French "...now it seemeth that almost there is no language more far from the true French, then the French of our lawes: There being almost no word, which either by intermingling, or adding, or diminishing, or changing of a letter into another, they have not altered and corrupted."
"The lawyers also took what seemed to be a perverse delight in pronouncing Law French as if it were English: indeed, 'their pronunciation differeth so much from ours (French) as it is impossible for a Frenchman to understand them'.
"Few of those who used French paid the slightest attention to grammar or vocabulary."
All taken from J.H. Baker's Manual of Law French
To Anton Sherwood: I saw that suggested an edit for s'avisera. I chose to reject the edit because Black (et al) define the term as "shall advise" --- https://blacks_law.en-academic.com/15591/le_roy_s%27avisera.
I am not aware of an attempt on legal language (legal terms tend to differ very much depending on national traditions and culture), but in the technical domain there is Eugen Wüster's Terminologieschlüssel as a basis for standardised technical terminology.
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210 | Are there conlangs which compel their users to speak with honesty?
George Orwell's novel 1984 introduced us to
Newspeak,
a language devised by authorities to be entirely misleading.
Languages that attempt to guide knowledge have been termed Orwellian
and, more technically, relativistic or Sapir-Whorf.
Any examples of languages that are opposite of Newspeak,
compelled to be genuine?
I was wondering if eventually we'd need a sapir-whorf tag
I think the problem I have with this question is that you can be deceptive even if every statement you say is factually true, something called "paltering". And I don't think that would be limited to humans, so even with alien psychology I don't see how a language could wield such power. But suppose someone has created an alien species with a conlang, and they claim the language does compel the aliens to be honest, how could they prove it, and how could anyone else argue otherwise? I fear this question will just be an invitation for unfalsifiable claims.
@curiousdannii, I would checkmark your comment were it posted as an answer
I've seen languages where the meaning of words changed so that regardless of choice, you are always telling the truth, for example the word for lizard was /palo/ but it was also a synonym for all the traits of a lizard; green, alive, solid, etc. Every word worked like this.
@TrEs-2b What if the lizard I wanted to talk about was brown or dead? Even if there was a separate word for lizard, brown, dead, solid, I could still lie by using the wrong word (or is there something I'm missing?)
@as4s4hetic it was more of an example really. the basic principle they used was that any two objects share a trait, even a trivial one. So a language which reprograms lying to synonyms relies of those traits.
take two opposites, light and dark. Both are things we see, both are shades of brightness [not scientifically, but close enough], both are things that an object can be. So if I said it's dark out during a sunny day, the context of the language would instead change my meaning to it's a shade of brightness today.
ah I see, I misinterpreted then. That's really interesting though, what's the name of the language(s) that do this?
I don't think that languages, whether natural or constructed, have this power.
The fact is that there are numerous ways to be deceptive. You can straight out lie, you can speak as if there is uncertainty when really there is not, you can be deceptive through what you don't say, and you can be deceptive by saying true facts that are not actually strictly relevant, something called "paltering".
Like most linguists now, I think that the weak Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, that our language influences our thoughts and decisions, is surely true, but I am sceptical about the strong version, that language completely determines and limits our thought categories. Either way, I don't think it's really relevant to the aspect of human psychology which makes deception possible. Lying through omission or distraction is possible because our minds can generate multiple possible statements to make to others, each disclosing a different level of truth, but none of us are compelled to speak every thought that enters our minds.
Perhaps someone has invented an alien species with an alien psychology and an alien language to speak, and maybe in their universe their language does compel them to speak honestly. But what would it mean to prove such a thing, and how could anyone else present an argument to refute their claims? So for humans I say the answer is no, and for fictional creatures it's not a useful question for us to ask.
One example of this would be the massively more complex Ithkuil, whose author says this:
As for a hypothetical community of Ithkuil-speakers, I do not think Ithkuil would serve the purpose of being the primary day-to-day language, as I agree the language would quickly degenerate into a “vulgar” form due to its complexity. I see Ithkuil’s hypothetical usage as being a specialized language for specific purposes where exactitude and clarity of cognitive intention is called for, and to make deliberate obfuscation difficult, e.g., political debate, the teaching and discussion of scientific disciplines, the discussion of philosophy, the written presentation and preservation of history. As such, it would be a “learned” language (like learning a computer programming language or the predicate calculus) whose structure would be consciously preserved by its speakers. An analogy might be the way that Classical Latin continued to be used for over a milennium after the death of its last native spearker for academic and religious purposes. A similar analogy is the use of Modern Standard Arabic (essentially a modernized version of Classical Arabic) in official and academic contexts.
emphasis mine
Due to the nature of the question, it's highly inconcievable that we could answer it exhaustively.
What features of Ithkuil make deliberate obfuscation difficult?
The Ca affix, which is already overprecise for basic/simple needs (e.g. by bounding the speaker to say how several subparts of an object interact together, if they are different between each other, if they are fused, ..); and Sanction and Validation, which both deal with evidentiality. If the Ca affix is required for quasi every word, Sanction and Validation aren't, but can still be mentioned optionally. That would not prevent necessarily prevent obfuscation, but that can help, I'd say
Is it impossible to translate the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion into Ithkuil?
Quechua is a natural language that also has this feature.
@NicoleSharp [Citation required], what feature exactly?
A built-in ability to express the certainty of statements. It has been used in computer science for this reason. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quechuan_languages#Evidentiality
@NicoleSharp evidentiality is neither rare nor special.
All languages, natural or constructed, must have verbal negation. So, in any language, it must be possible to say something and to negate that same thing:
Sidney is in Australia.
Sidney is not in Australia.
Since only one of these can be true, it follows that any language makes possible to say at least as many falseties as truths (in practice, many more, as we can lie that Sidney is in Russia, Gabon, or the Middle Earth). And so, no. A language cannot compel its speakers into honesty.
Did you mean a person called Sidney or the largest Australian city, Sydney? ;)
@Jan - good point. Which highlights the fact that sentences are always uttered, and can only be properly understood, within a given context. "Sidney is in Australia" is true in a Geography class; if answering a question on the whereabouts of a common friend, it is untrue - a misunderstanding or a pun, more probably. In other words, pragmatics will eat away any grammatical constraint on disnhonesty, even if such a thing was theoretically possible.
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250 | Are there any good programs out there to help when constructing languages?
Are there any tools out there to keep track of which works you have already defined, managing your lexicon easily, and storing conjugations and the like?
Barring that, what are some good strategies to keep everything organized in text files?
Polyglot is a piece of software made specifically for the organisation, and management of conlangs as a whole. I haven't used it personally (preferring pen and paper to a large extent), but I've heard a fair few positive things about it.
Conworkshop includes a bunch of different tools for storing and organising things, but I've personally not found it particularly useful, and I have heard from people who have looked at the backend that you do not want to look at the backend, though I think they are doing a rewrite.
SIL Fieldworks is a vocabulary management program, and while developed for natlang lexicographers, it's also useful for conlangs. It's a rather powerful tool, but it has a significant learning curve to it. SIL also publishes other potentially useful free software such as Toolbox: https://software.sil.org/products/
Lexique Pro is a piece of software for making and editing presentable dictionaries. I haven't used it but it apparently offers compatibility with Fieldworks.
In addition to these, a regular spreadsheet program and a text editor can be quite useful, and there is a sea of both web and downloadable word generators (e.g. Gen, Awkwords, Lexifer) and sound change appliers (e.g. SCA2, GSCA), and for writing publishable materials, LaTeX, combined with a variety of packages for extra functionality such as Lingmacros and TikZ can produce fantastic results.
I'd like to note that Polyglot is a lot of hard work filling in all conjugations, crashes easily and doesn't appeal to the eye. Some conlanger should create a guide for SIL Fieldworks conlanging. Nevertheless, pencil and paper is always the best. Drawing pads quite handy, too.
I use SIL Toolbox. I tried switching to SIL Fieldworks but it is notoriously unstable on linux. Toolbox runs very well in Wine.
As one answer pointed out, Polyglot is a useful tool, but quite hard.
I just used Word for my vocabulary and Excel for my phonology.
Personally, I use (Xe)LaTeX, as well as a Perl6 script to convert a custom-made dictionary format into LaTeX markup. Don't really need anything else, other than the occasional pen and paper for jotting down ideas.
You could also do everything on paper as Isoraķatheð does.
Like bb94, I use XeLaTeX, but I want to specifically mention the glossaries package (\usepackage[xindy]{glossaries}), which lets you use Xindy to automatically sort your words. Use XeLaTeX+Xindy because it supports Unicode. This lets you include glosses (\usepackage{gb4e}) and charts of irregular declensions right in your dictionary. It's a little technical, but you get really nice output and don't have to worry that you've put entries in the wrong order.
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214 | What types of words should one start with when creating a language from scratch?
Is it more appropriate to start by creating nouns, verbs, general sentence structure words ie "the, a, or", or from somewhere else, when creating a language from scratch? Would it be more proper to start constructing the rules? Note that this is in general cases, when one isn't creating a language which explicitly rules out usage of any speech element.
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484 | How to make good analogy in one's constructed language?
What steps can be taken to reproduce analogy in a constructed language? Which parts of grammar are more likely to evolve with analogy, and why? Are there rules for what analogy does to which words, or rules that show where analogy may take place?
What kind of "analogy" are you talking about that it involves phonetic rules?
I'm not meaning phonetics, but analogy falls into the domain of diachronics and I showed it in (forgive the pun) analogy.
Sorry, but I have literally no idea what you're asking about. Can you give a link to this type of "analogy"?
It's some sort of diachronical change that is responsible for a big part of grammatical evolution, such as Latin neuter disappearing in French and the English plural of octopus being octopuses, including the reason you can pluralise garbage words like jibbledinoss > jibbledinosses. I'm looking for a link right now
See Trask's Historical Linguistics
Let's look at a made-up example. Assume that we want to apply a sound change from /g/ to /d͡ʒ/ before /e/ and /i/ in Esperanto. Then, the conjugation of the Esperanto verb pagi "to pay" suddenly becomes irregular:
paĝi, pagas, paĝis, pagos, pagus (The infinitive and the past tense have a different consonant (ĝ) than the rest).
Analogy will force one consonant for all forms but we cannot predict which one. In this respect, analogy is quite irregular, and we can end up either with the original Esperanto paradigm, or with all forms shifted to the new consonant (paĝi, paĝas, paĝis, paĝos, paĝus).
Analogy affects usually inflected or agglutinative word forms, such as verbs and nouns, but it can also be applied to derivational morphology.
Another type of analogy tries to level out differences between conjugations or declensions. Assume, your language features two different conjugations. Than borrowing an ending (or prefix, or vowel change) from one conjugation to the other is also an analogy.
What sense of "analogy" are you writing about here?
LIke in the first bullet point in this wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Analogy&oldid=824245148#Linguistics
Ahh. I'd missed that. Odd that levelling is called an analogy, but I get why the form of dive->dove arising from drive->drove would be called an analogy.
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303 | Self-reflexive verbs and pronouns in Vulcan language
I'm stumped - I'm sorta confused getting the proper phrasing svi'Vuhlkansu because the English grammar seems self-referencing for me to get the order right. The quote is:
"The one self-knowledge worth having is to know one’s own mind." by FH Bradley
"worth having is" seems like three verbs in a row, then "one's own" seems like I could omit "one's" and nam-tor can be stated by describing the noun, is it
Kerik ma fai-tukh t’shai goh fai-tor kashek t’du.
or am i missing it?
I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because this question is mainly about the interpretation and analysis of an English sentence. Any relation to constructed languages is only accidental here.
I don't know Vulcan, however I might be able to help you with your interpretation of the English:
"worth having is" isn't quite the string of verbs you might think it is.
Firstly, "worth having" is modifying the preceding noun phrase, rather than being part of some grouping with "is". This can most easily be shown by rearranging the sentence as such:
To know one's own mind is the one self-knowledge worth having.
Furthermore, "worth" here is an adjective¹. It might help to expand the phrase out to the following:
"The one self-knowledge that is worth (one's) having."
¹ - "worth" is most commonly described as an adjective, however it does have some qualities which lead some to classify it as a preposition. For more detail see Joan Maling, 1983, "Transitive Adjectives: A Case of Categorial Reanalysis", pages 268-269.
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345 | Can features in the physical environment meaningfully affect the development of a local language's phonology?
Imagine that I'm creating phonemic inventories for multiple conlangs, each of which is spoken by a people settled within (or roaming about) a very different physical environment from the others. Assuming that these different civilizations developed their languages completely apart from one another and haven't simply drifted apart from one original root language, is there any consensus that certain phonemes work better or worse in different environments?
For instance, do certain phonemes perform better or worse:
over choppy waters being sailed by a seafaring people?
through a jungle or heavily wooded area populated by a tree-dwelling people?
in a mountainous area frequently traversed by various groups settling near or even on the mountains?
carrying over a vast inland plain or a placid lake?
cutting through the ambient noise of a swamp or jungle (or even a city)?
These are just examples. I'm not specifically asking about any of those scenarios. I just want to make sure that any language I create would be as plausible as possible, down to the very last detail I can think of. Any reliable resources on the subject would be great, but as a complete novice, I haven't been entirely sure what to search for and have come up short on my attempts so far.
No need to apologise. We're all here to learn.
Related question on [linguistics.se] https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/25864/how-would-the-ocean-affect-language
@jknappen That link has some great resources. Per this comment on that question, do you think a "geolinguistics" tag might be appropriate here?
@curiousdannii I noticed that your edit removed the [tag:comparative-linguistics] tag. Do you think that tag would be relevant if, in the question, I made a more explicit point that answers could very easily include research comparing various extant (or recently extinct) natural languages?
@Aporia Geolinguistics could be a good tag. But unless you tell us which languages you want compared, I don't think comparative-linguistics is needed here.
There has also been evidence that suggests that ejectives tend to occur more frequently in areas of higher elevation, perhaps due to their being easier to produce in these regions:
We present evidence that the geographic context in which a language is spoken may directly impact its phonological form. We examined the geographic coordinates and elevations of 567 language locations represented in a worldwide phonetic database. Languages with phonemic ejective consonants were found to occur closer to inhabitable regions of high elevation, when contrasted to languages without this class of sounds. In addition, the mean and median elevations of the locations of languages with ejectives were found to be comparatively high. [...] we offer two plausible motivations for [this correlation's] existence. We suggest that ejective sounds might be facilitated at higher elevations due to the associated decrease in ambient air pressure, which reduces the physiological effort required for the compression of air in the pharyngeal cavity–a unique articulatory component of ejective sounds. In addition, we hypothesize that ejective sounds may help to mitigate rates of water vapor loss through exhaled air. [...] Our results reveal the direct influence of a geographic factor on the basic sound inventories of human languages.
(emphasis mine)
The "Cited by other articles" section to the right of your linked paper (and identically located on the articles linked in that section) looks like a gold mine. If you wish to flesh out your answer more with that other research, I think we'd have a great resource for many a future question here on this site. I'd try a self-answer myself if I wasn't such a complete novice on the subject. Either way, thank you for this.
Here is another researcher (Prof. Ian Maddieson) suggesting exactly such correlations:
In a presentation on Wednesday at the Acoustical Society of America fall meeting, Maddieson showed that consonant-thick languages like Georgian are more likely to develop in open, temperate environments. Meanwhile, consonant-light languages like Hawaiian are more likely to be found in lush, hot ecologies.
The complete article even includes a world map showing consonant heaviness per region. Generally speaking there certainly seems to be a relation but the research is not very far into how exactly the impact of surroundings are on the languages.
Other researchers say this is just the beginning of a line of research into how nature rules our speech. "This is the first of its kind, and there are several others coming now. It's becoming increasingly clear that the way we speak is shaped by external forces," says Sean Roberts, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands who was not involved in the study.
There have definitely been serious linguistic theories about environment affecting features like this - the ones I can remember off the top of my head are that certain sound changes in Proto-Germanic were because its speakers had thicker phlegm or something and that tonogenesis is more likely to occur in certain tropical climates. The latter was a relatively recent paper. These are taken relatively seriously by many linguists, but most I've met are highly skeptical. They haven't reached widespread acceptance, so I would certainly not say there's any consensus about it.
That said, if you'd like your conlang to contain certain phonemes because you personally think they'd work better in a certain environment, there's nothing stopping you.
I find the phlegm theory very interesting and that's certainly something else that I'd like to take into account. But since that isn't perfectly aligned with the question that I asked, have you thought about self-answering a question on that topic? I think that would be a great topic in its own right.
Also, since I'm fairly new to using any SE sites at all, do you think my question would benefit from removing the part about any consensus and replacing it with a question explicitly about existing theories?
If you're looking for parallels in animal communication, there's plenty of good evidence that environment shapes the kinds of sounds used. For instance, Henry & Lucas (2010) showed that birds in forest habitats (more absorption) were more sensitive to frequency changes (FM), as modulated narrowband sounds (essentially, vowels) are more reliably transmitted in that cluttered environment. Birds living in open habitats had more temporal resolution, and tended to use more amplitude modulation. https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1365-2435.2009.01674.x
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586 | What do double consonants specify in Esperanto?
The Esperanto word for 'Finland' is Finnlando. What does the doubled consonant specify? The Esperanto alphabet is phonemic. Why are there two consonants? Is it gemination (which doesn't appear often elsewhere in Esperanto)?
Is it very rare for a root to have a double consonant and they are avoided. Most double consonants are just the result of affixation (mal-longa, mal-larĝa, ek-koni...), and agglutination of roots together (sen-noma...).
There are two questions (with answers) on the Esperanto stackexchange dealing with this problem (and yes, it is perceived as a problem even among Esperanto speakers):
Double letters in Esperanto
Asking specifically about Finnlando
The conclusion is: The double letter should be pronounced differently from the single letter, and it should be a true double consonant (not just a long consonant). Finnlando becomes hard to pronounce by these rules, and Esperantists are in fact shifting to the word Suomio.
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285 | List of conlangs whose goal is to minimize ambiguity
Which conlangs have a primary goals of avoiding ambiguity?
I know Lojban had that as a goal (and is in fact syntactically unambiguous), but are there others?
Here are the top five best-known (see footnote 1).
Lojban at lojban.org is the better-known successor of Loglan.
Loglan at loglan.org is based on formal logic and is to some extent not unlike a transcription of formal logic (see footnote 2).
Ithkuil at ithkuil.net is like the two above but is as compact as possible, allowing to read, write, say, and hear complex thoughts and ideas in a matter of seconds.
Ceqli at http://ceqli.pbworks.com/w/page/5455970/FrontPage is originally inspired by Loglan but later a bit more naturalist
CycL at http://www.cyc.com/documentation/ontologists-handbook/cyc-basics/syntax-cycl/ is a lot like a programming language intended mainly for neural networks. It's more suitable for expressing knowledge than for communication.
All these have Wikipedia articles under their name, except Ceqli (available on Dutch Wikipedia) to which you can go via the link given.
Footnotes: 1) These languages (except Lojban and possibly Ithkuil) don't actively disambiguate phonemic ambiguity. That's the difference between 'an app' and 'a nap'. It resulted in English a nickname, from an ekename.
2) An example of formal logic, using prerequisite axioms [PERSON(a) 'A is a person', HAVE_ALIENABLE(a, b) 'A has B alienably', HEAD(a) 'A is a head'], is ∀ x: PERSON(x) → (∃ y: HAVE_ALIENABLE(x, HEAD(y))) ('Everyone has a head', 'For every X, if X is a person, there exists some Y which X has alienably and which is a head').
"1) These languages (except Ithkuil, AFAIK) don't actively disambiguate phonemic ambiguity." Lojban does explicitly try to; hence the use of "." as a phoneme, for proper names, which are going to violate the built-in phonotactics most readily.
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