Polysynthetic Conlang

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Post by Drydic »

Eddy the Great wrote:Do these langs have something like -ism or -ment or un-?
If someone else has more correct answers, I'll defer to them, but I'd say <-ism> and <-ment> wouldn't be used much, given the polylang emphasis on verbs. I'd suggest , as an example, something like <we-hold-all-things-collectively> for Communism, and <We-charge-more> for Capitalism.
As for <un->, yes. but they are much more likely to have an irregular formation there, because I'd think that a negative formation is one of the most common things in a language, and should therefore accumulate a large number of variations. ::Goes and throws this into his conlangs::
Of course, being common also is a extreme levelling factor.
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Post by jburke »

If someone else has more correct answers, I'll defer to them, but I'd say <-ism> and <-ment> wouldn't be used much, given the polylang emphasis on verbs.
Quite right.
I'd suggest , as an example, something like <we-hold-all-things-collectively> for Communism, and <We-charge-more> for Capitalism.
You got the spirit right here.
As for <un->, yes. but they are much more likely to have an irregular formation there, because I'd think that a negative formation is one of the most common things in a language, and should therefore accumulate a large number of variations.
I don't know about the irregularity, but, yes, Mohawk and Cheyenne both have ways of expressing un-. Mohawk has several ways, in fact; one interesting one is by using the reflexive/detransitivizing affix, which can have the effect of reversing the meanings of certain stems (e.g., wakhni:nu 'I-bought-it' vs. wa?katvhni:nu 'I-unbought-it' or 'I-sold-it'; the addition of the reflexive affix -at- introduces some further phonological changes, but the two verbs are identical except for -at-).

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Post by Aurora Rossa »

How would Mohawk or Cheyenne express something like "You can't take away my right to build buildings."? How are preverbs made negative, as in "want to build" and "not want to build"?
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Post by Drydic »

Eddy the Great wrote:How would Mohawk or Cheyenne express something like "You can't take away my right to build buildings."? How are preverbs made negative, as in "want to build" and "not want to build"?
Not sure about permit pulling, but I'd think that preverbs, whihc IIRC behave somewhat like preposed and fused adverbs, would be negated in the same way that the normal verb is. Of course, any good conlang could turn that on it's head.
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Post by jburke »

Drydic_guy wrote:
Eddy the Great wrote:How would Mohawk or Cheyenne express something like "You can't take away my right to build buildings."? How are preverbs made negative, as in "want to build" and "not want to build"?
Not sure about permit pulling, but I'd think that preverbs, whihc IIRC behave somewhat like preposed and fused adverbs, would be negated in the same way that the normal verb is.
Well, no. The term "verb" properly applies to an entire construction containing a root, preverb, pronominal markers, etc. Some people mistake the root to be the "verb" because it usually translates as an English verb. Preverbs are not negated in isolation; if you want to negate a preverb, you negate the entire construction.

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Post by Aurora Rossa »

So "You can't take away my right to puild a house" would something like:

Elx`a!'imlatq?k'?la'ik?f?lame
E-lx`a-!-'i-mla-tq?-k'?la-'ik?-f?-la-me
incapable-cause-have.right-I-notrans-building-make-not-3SOI-2SSA
You can't take away my right to make a building.

Does that look good?
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Post by Drydic »

Eddy the Great wrote:So "You can't take away my right to puild a house" would something like:

Elx`a!'imlatq?k'?la'ik?f?lame
E-lx`a-!-'i-mla-tq?-k'?la-'ik?-f?-la-me
incapable-cause-have.right-I-notrans-building-make-not-3SOI-2SSA
You can't take away my right to make a building.

Does that look good?
Eddy, it looks fine. Just a question: is the sequence -k'?la- the root 'build', a nominal 'building', or the inflected <it-was-built>?
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Post by Aurora Rossa »

Eddy, it looks fine. Just a question: is the sequence -k'?la- the root 'build', a nominal 'building', or the inflected ?
k'?la is building or house.
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Post by Aurora Rossa »

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Post by jburke »

A preliminary comment:

Why have separate markers for subjects and objects? You could save yourself some inflections here and use a bit of morphosyntax. To wit, have one set of markers; when, e.g., -sa- appears alone with an intransitive verb root, or appears first with a transitive root,
it's a subject marker; when it appears second with a transitive root, it's an object marker. A compound marker like sase, composed of -sa- and -se-, would signify 1st person subject and second person object; but reverse it, so that it's sesa, and it's 2nd person subject and first person object. Noyatukah does this for its intransitive markers (but its transitive markers are fused units denoting agent and patient and aren't analyzable into separate components).

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Post by Aurora Rossa »

Why have separate markers for subjects and objects? You could save yourself some inflections here and use a bit of morphosyntax. To wit, have one set of markers; when, e.g., -sa- appears alone with an intransitive verb root, or appears first with a transitive root,
it's a subject marker; when it appears second with a transitive root, it's an object marker. A compound marker like sase, composed of -sa- and -se-, would signify 1st person subject and second person object; but reverse it, so that it's sesa, and it's 2nd person subject and first person object. Noyatukah does this for its intransitive markers (but its transitive markers are fused units denoting agent and patient and aren't analyzable into separate components).
I didn't know affix order could be used like that. It's an interesting suggestion.
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Post by Rik »

Hi, Eddy. Just a few initial comments ...

Specifically:
  • What purpose does the passive voice play?
  • With free word order, what happens when the subject and object share the same class, number and person - how can a listener tell which is the subject and which the object?
  • Noun incorporation strikes me as a bit vague - what does the speaker imply when a noun gets incorporated (or is it just a whim)? When does incorporation happen, when can it not happen? Is there a preference for objects to be incorporated, or subjects? etc
  • Why can locational morphemes only be used with incorporated nouns? What happens if the sentence doesn't include the noun?
More generally:
  • The background makes the text too hard to read
  • The grammar descriptions are too short to be useful to a casual visitor
  • I think you need some substantial examples to give added meaning to the grammar descriptions
For me, conlanging always used to be a private thing. But with the advent of the internet (and cheap webspace) it became possible to share my interest with a wider audience. But inviting an audience in to view the creation leads to a host of new problems - how to best display the language, how to explain it, how to attract an audience in the first place and then keep them interested.

To be blunt, this website is doing your conlang, and all your hard work in creating that conlang, a disservice. If you truely care about your language, then I would advise you to take some time and effort in devising a website which showcases your work in the best possible way to meet both your aims, and the needs of your audience. There's a lot of good examples of how to approach (and how not to approach) this difficult task

Best of luck with your endeavours.

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Post by jburke »

I can answer a few of these questions, from the point of view of someone who knows a good deal about the languages that inspired Eddy.
With free word order, what happens when the subject and object share the same class, number and person - how can a listener tell which is the subject and which the object?
This is the beauty--one might even the say the raision d'etre--for the 4th (obviative) person. In the Algonquian languages, which are head-marking in the way Eddy's is, there can never be two third persons in an expression: one will always be obviative, usually the object. Thus, you will never have 3rd-person + third-person sentences. And reflexives are done, at least in the natlangs, by using a reflexive marker and detransitivizing the verb root. (I've mentioned before that the obviative tends to be pooly understood; here is the major reason it came about, and why it exists, and the context in which it makes sense.)
Noun incorporation strikes me as a bit vague - what does the speaker imply when a noun gets incorporated (or is it just a whim)? When does incorporation happen, when can it not happen? Is there a preference for objects to be incorporated, or subjects? etc
Incorporation can serve a semantic or purly aesthetic function. E.g., Mohawk speakers consider it inelegant to use free-standing nominals when they can be incorporated; you can also "background" a nominal by incorporating it. The rules of various languages vary on what can and cannot be incorporated; Mohawk allows many objects to be incorporated, but also allows subjects to be incorporated in certain kinds of intransitive expressions.
Why can locational morphemes only be used with incorporated nouns? What happens if the sentence doesn't include the noun?
This, I think, is Noyatukah influence on Eddy. In my language, all non-subject and non-object nominals are always incorporated; and so locatives only ever appear attached to incorporated nominals. The reason is largely that non-subjects and non-objects are never direct participants in an action; they are always, to one degree or another, background information.

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Post by Aurora Rossa »

I wonder how Australian polysyntheticism works. Jburke mentioned that it is more noun-centered.

The show you are talking about sounds quite stupid. I'm glad I never watched it.
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Post by Mecislau »

Eddy the Great wrote:I wonder how Australian polysyntheticism works. Jburke mentioned that it is more noun-centered.
Look through the sites here: http://www.dnathan.com/VL/eMUcat_22.htm

I haven't looked through them all though, so I'm not sure what you'll find.

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Post by Jaaaaaa »

Yo be honest I can't see how a "verb" like "they regularly speak it" is any different from a noun, if it's used as such. It probably is, I just don't get it meself.

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Post by jburke »

Jaaaaaa wrote:Yo be honest I can't see how a "verb" like "they regularly speak it" is any different from a noun, if it's used as such. It probably is, I just don't get it meself.
Depends on what you mean by "noun."

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Post by Shinali Sishi »

jburke wrote:Depends on what you mean by "noun."
What if you use the grammar-class definitions of "A noun is a person. place, thing, or idea" and "a verb is an action or state of being"? Then what's the answer?
the question wrote:To be honest I can't see how a "verb" like "they regularly speak it" is any different from a noun, if it's used as such. It probably is, I just don't get it meself.
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Post by Aurora Rossa »

What if you use the grammar-class definitions of "A noun is a person. place, thing, or idea" and "a verb is an action or state of being"? Then what's the answer?
Isn't speaking an action?
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Post by Jaaaaaa »

It is, but a language is a thing.

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Post by jburke »

What if you use the grammar-class definitions of "A noun is a person. place, thing, or idea" and "a verb is an action or state of being"? Then what's the answer?
That's a very IE-centered definition; as I said in another thread on this topic, it reflects our fencing of the world into (roughly) things that exist and things that occur. But Mohawk (e.g.) doesn't recognize this semantic distinction. It has some morphological nouns, but they are not nouns by the semantic definition above.

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Post by jburke »

Jaaaaaa wrote:It is, but a language is a thing.
Depends on who you ask. Ts?ts?h?st?hese is not, to a Cheyenne, a thing.

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Post by Jaaaaaa »

Depends on who you ask. Ts?ts?h?st?hese is not, to a Cheyenne, a thing.
Don't see how that works, sorry. Speaking a language is an action, a process; but I don't see how a language itself can be thus.

Okay, from a grammatical/morphological point of view, then, "they speak regularly" when used as a noun isn't a grammatical verb any more so than, say, "accomplishment" or "caretaker" or even "language" is, so far as I can see.

The polysynthetic langs, at least those I've seen, are certainly more "verby", and (@Eddy) if by verbs being used where nouns would be in English you meant that it uses grammatical nouns that are derived from verbs more than English does, then yeah, than makes sense.

*begins musing on an all-noun language... again*

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Post by jburke »

Don't see how that works, sorry. Speaking a language is an action, a process; but I don't see how a language itself can be thus.
These kinds of distinctions are not culturally universal--viz, actions vs. things. We're so used to making the distinction that it seems impossible to analyze the world in any other way.

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Post by Shinali Sishi »

jburke wrote:
What if you use the grammar-class definitions of "A noun is a person. place, thing, or idea" and "a verb is an action or state of being"? Then what's the answer?
That's a very IE-centered definition; as I said in another thread on this topic, it reflects our fencing of the world into (roughly) things that exist and things that occur. But Mohawk (e.g.) doesn't recognize this semantic distinction. It has some morphological nouns, but they are not nouns by the semantic definition above.
I was well aware that it was IE centered, I actually used it to figure out the difference, because you need a scale in order to have mesurement. Hence the specification "grammar-class definition" :P
I think it makes a lot more sense now...
So they view e.g. language as an activity (which I won't deny it is) rather than an object? Kind of like "swimming" which (in the sense of "I like swimming ") is a noun for us, but to them it is a verb ("I like moving-through-water")?
So if we in our IE mindset interpret a lot of our nouns as verbals (language=communicating), are we far closer to understanding the system of e.g. Mohawk?
Do I have it right? Close? :mrgreen:
Are most poly languages "verby"? I remember something about at least some being nouny, I think...
Dude, I shouldn't try to understand an entirely different worldview when exhausted! :wink:
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