Polysynthetic Conlang

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Aurora Rossa
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Post by Aurora Rossa »

The problem is that you're projecting your English thinking habits onto your very different language; and even trying to mimick English syntax with it. If 'speak' is the root of the word, speakers will identify _that_ as the main idea, as the emphasis, esp. if you incorporate 'Terps' (effectively backgrounding it). Now, if you were to use a free-standing noun for Terps, and place it before the verb, suddenly you draw more attention to that noun than to the verb (and its root 'speak').
Your advice is noted:

K?t?l@u?kn?t?m?
K?-t?l@u-?-kn?-t?-m?
habitual-Terp/person-plural-speak-3SOI-3PSA
The Terps speak it.

Earthworm would be tilatğsuqul?mi.
Last edited by Aurora Rossa on Sat Sep 13, 2003 8:17 am, edited 1 time in total.
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"There was a particular car I soon came to think of as distinctly St. Louis-ish: a gigantic white S.U.V. with a W. bumper sticker on it for George W. Bush."

jburke

Post by jburke »

Eddy the Great wrote:
The problem is that you're projecting your English thinking habits onto your very different language; and even trying to mimick English syntax with it. If 'speak' is the root of the word, speakers will identify _that_ as the main idea, as the emphasis, esp. if you incorporate 'Terps' (effectively backgrounding it). Now, if you were to use a free-standing noun for Terps, and place it before the verb, suddenly you draw more attention to that noun than to the verb (and its root 'speak').
Your advice is noted:

K?t?l@u?kn?t?m?
K?-t?l@u-?-kn?-t?-m?
habitual-Terp/person-plural-speak-3SOI-3PSA
The Terps speak it.
This brings up another issue: how you distinguish transitives and intransitives. A given root will trigger a certain kind of agreement--subject agreement, or subject and object agreement (Mohawk and Noyatukah both have three classes of agreement, but you can get by with just two).
To make a transitive root intransitive, you use a detransitivizing morpheme. I'm assuming that the root here triggers transitive agreement, since the head marking shows an object ('it'). So, if you wanted to say "I speak slowly," and thereby use the root as an intransitive, you'd affix a detransitivizer. Just something to consider working into your system.

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Post by Aurora Rossa »

This brings up another issue: how you distinguish transitives and intransitives. A given root will trigger a certain kind of agreement--subject agreement, or subject and object agreement (Mohawk and Noyatukah both have three classes of agreement, but you can get by with just two).
To make a transitive root intransitive, you use a detransitivizing morpheme. I'm assuming that the root here triggers transitive agreement, since the head marking shows an object ('it'). So, if you wanted to say "I speak slowly," and thereby use the root as an intransitive, you'd affix a detransitivizer. Just something to consider working into your system.
Intransivity is indicated by having only one agreement suffix.
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"There was a particular car I soon came to think of as distinctly St. Louis-ish: a gigantic white S.U.V. with a W. bumper sticker on it for George W. Bush."

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Post by Mecislau »

jburke wrote:
Eddy the Great wrote:
The problem is that you're projecting your English thinking habits onto your very different language; and even trying to mimick English syntax with it. If 'speak' is the root of the word, speakers will identify _that_ as the main idea, as the emphasis, esp. if you incorporate 'Terps' (effectively backgrounding it). Now, if you were to use a free-standing noun for Terps, and place it before the verb, suddenly you draw more attention to that noun than to the verb (and its root 'speak').
Your advice is noted:

K?t?l@u?kn?t?m?
K?-t?l@u-?-kn?-t?-m?
habitual-Terp/person-plural-speak-3SOI-3PSA
The Terps speak it.
This brings up another issue: how you distinguish transitives and intransitives. A given root will trigger a certain kind of agreement--subject agreement, or subject and object agreement (Mohawk and Noyatukah both have three classes of agreement, but you can get by with just two).
To make a transitive root intransitive, you use a detransitivizing morpheme. I'm assuming that the root here triggers transitive agreement, since the head marking shows an object ('it'). So, if you wanted to say "I speak slowly," and thereby use the root as an intransitive, you'd affix a detransitivizer. Just something to consider working into your system.
Are those the prenominal prefixes in Mohawk I asked you about earlier?

jburke

Post by jburke »

Maknas wrote:
jburke wrote:
Eddy the Great wrote:
The problem is that you're projecting your English thinking habits onto your very different language; and even trying to mimick English syntax with it. If 'speak' is the root of the word, speakers will identify _that_ as the main idea, as the emphasis, esp. if you incorporate 'Terps' (effectively backgrounding it). Now, if you were to use a free-standing noun for Terps, and place it before the verb, suddenly you draw more attention to that noun than to the verb (and its root 'speak').
Your advice is noted:

K?t?l@u?kn?t?m?
K?-t?l@u-?-kn?-t?-m?
habitual-Terp/person-plural-speak-3SOI-3PSA
The Terps speak it.
This brings up another issue: how you distinguish transitives and intransitives. A given root will trigger a certain kind of agreement--subject agreement, or subject and object agreement (Mohawk and Noyatukah both have three classes of agreement, but you can get by with just two).
To make a transitive root intransitive, you use a detransitivizing morpheme. I'm assuming that the root here triggers transitive agreement, since the head marking shows an object ('it'). So, if you wanted to say "I speak slowly," and thereby use the root as an intransitive, you'd affix a detransitivizer. Just something to consider working into your system.
Are those the prenominal prefixes in Mohawk I asked you about earlier?
Mohawk has three classes of pronominal prefixes: subjective, objective and transitive. Each root triggers a certain kind of agreement; the agreement that is triggered can be changed by a detransitivizing morpheme. An upshot of having roots do this is that you can incorporate the subjects of intransitive roots without worrying about a speaker thinking it's the direct object--if the root can take only a subject (hence is intransitive), the incorporated nominal must be the subject.

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Post by Aurora Rossa »

Do I need a detransitivizing morpheme? Doesn't having only one agreement suffix indicate intransitivity?
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"There was a particular car I soon came to think of as distinctly St. Louis-ish: a gigantic white S.U.V. with a W. bumper sticker on it for George W. Bush."

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Post by jburke »

Eddy the Great wrote:Do I need a detransitivizing morpheme? Doesn't having only one agreement suffix indicate intransitivity?
Well, some roots will by default be transitive--e.g., 'kill'. But if you wanted to say 'I kill slowly', you'd have to make it instransitive; in English, we do this by simply omitting an object, but Mohawk does not allow this (nor does Cheyenne). Mohawk uses a detransitivizer to make transitives into intransitives. There are some deeper and complicated reasons for this, but its flows naturally from the rest of the morphology (just as Mohawk makes all reflexives intransitive--it uses a reflexive affix on the root, which functions as both a reflexivizer and detransitivizer; you never say 'I X me' in the head marking--just 'I X+reflexive'.)

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Post by Aurora Rossa »

Well, some roots will by default be transitive--e.g., 'kill'. But if you wanted to say 'I kill slowly', you'd have to make it instransitive; in English, we do this by simply omitting an object, but Mohawk does not allow this (nor does Cheyenne). Mohawk uses a detransitivizer to make transitives into intransitives. There are some deeper and complicated reasons for this, but its flows naturally from the rest of the morphology (just as Mohawk makes all reflexives intransitive--it uses a reflexive affix on the root, which functions as both a reflexivizer and detransitivizer; you never say 'I X me' in the head marking--just 'I X+reflexive'.)
It seems redundant to me. Do I have to include it?
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"There was a particular car I soon came to think of as distinctly St. Louis-ish: a gigantic white S.U.V. with a W. bumper sticker on it for George W. Bush."

jburke

Post by jburke »

Eddy the Great wrote:
Well, some roots will by default be transitive--e.g., 'kill'. But if you wanted to say 'I kill slowly', you'd have to make it instransitive; in English, we do this by simply omitting an object, but Mohawk does not allow this (nor does Cheyenne). Mohawk uses a detransitivizer to make transitives into intransitives. There are some deeper and complicated reasons for this, but its flows naturally from the rest of the morphology (just as Mohawk makes all reflexives intransitive--it uses a reflexive affix on the root, which functions as both a reflexivizer and detransitivizer; you never say 'I X me' in the head marking--just 'I X+reflexive'.)
It seems redundant to me. Do I have to include it?
You don't have to include anything; but it has its uses. E.g., to distinguish active from passive.

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Post by Aurora Rossa »

You don't have to include anything; but it has its uses. E.g., to distinguish active from passive.
Given that the system I have works well without them, I don't see much reason to add them. How regular are verbs in Mohawk and Cheyenne?
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Post by Mecislau »

This is a little off topic, but I need to know this for my conworld. Jburke, since you know the most about Native American languages and cultures, What do you think would have happened to Native American development if they weren't contacted by an outside culture for another 300 years?

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Post by Glenn »

I definitely want to hear the answer to Maknas' question, but I have a quick question for Jeff as well: can you provide an example of the use of the detransitivizing morpheme in Mohawk and/or Noyatukah?

(Actually, I'm interested in all three forms of agreement; I assume that the nature of the agreement in a particular case is clear from the head marking itself.)

I'm interested in hearing your predictions for possible Native American developments (so to speak), but I also want to ask again about the world you created for them in Daszeria: you've said a little about the cultural and political setup, but what are the material culture and "technology" like? (I know you've said it's like the 18th century without firearms, but I have trouble picturing exactly what that implies.)

p@,
Glenn

jburke

Post by jburke »

Here's a response to all of you:

How regular are verbs in Mohawk and Cheyenne?

Depends on what you mean. All the verbs in both languages use the same head-marking, and there is nothing analogous to the strong/weak verb distinction you see in IE languages. But verbs in both languages do change shape by sandhi when affixes are added; Mohawk has the more
complex and pervasive sound change rules, about as complex as Noyatukah's.

This is a little off topic, but I need to know this for my conworld. Jburke, since you know the most about Native American languages and cultures, What do you think would have happened to Native American development if they weren't contacted by an outside culture for another 300 years?

Hard to say for every tribe and nation. In 1492, the Iroquois Confederacy was the greatest power on the continent--with guns, they could have repelled Europeans, disease or not; there were so many of them and they were so fierce when defending their territory that no one would have stood a chance (they remained widely feared and undefeated until the French and Indian War). The Confederacy, given 300 more years of evolution, would no doubt have grown and gotten stronger, absorbing more tribes of the Northeast into the Iroquois nation. Looking west, the Sioux and Cheyenne were struggling for control of the area below Lake Superior; but the Great Plains were pretty quiet and relatively empty. I susupect that if not for European encroachment, neither tribe would likely have gone to the Plains, and we would not today think of them as classically Plains tribes (and neither would the classic Indian war-bonnet exist--that was a Plains innovation of the Sioux).

can you provide an example of the use of the detransitivizing morpheme in Mohawk and/or Noyatukah?

Sure. Here?s a Mohawk reflexive:

wakate?nikuhlisa? 'I-made-up-my-mind'

wa = aorist prefix

k = first-person pronominal prefix

ate = reflexive

?nikuhlisa? = 'make-up-a-mind, decide'

Here's the use of the reflexive to make a transitive into an intransitive:

tewakatehnuhukyu:ne? 'I had my door open'

te = duplicative prefix

wak = first person object

ate = detransitivizer/reflexive

hnuhukyu:ne? = stem for 'open-door'

Actually, I'm interested in all three forms of agreement; I assume that the nature of the agreement in a particular case is clear from the head marking itself.

Yes; Mohawk has three distinct classes of head-marking, and prefixes of each class only combine with roots of that class.

Daszeria: you've said a little about the cultural and political setup, but what are the material culture and "technology" like? (I know you've said it's like the 18th century without firearms, but I have trouble picturing exactly what that implies.)

I should clarify that: the East of Daszeria resembles early 19th century America in arcitecture, clothing styles and general feel. Lots of hide and fur. The West is totally another world. In terms of material culture, they have metallurgy and are adept and stone work especially; their greatest architectural achivements are of a natural kind: a titanic building carved from solid bedrock in the Northwest; adobe-like dwellings that cover entire mountainsides in the desert; and, further south, along the coast, a city enclosed by a ring a mountains, through which tunnels have been bored, creating a barrier against the area's savage storms. There's no sign at all of fortifications, except ancient ruins from the Starlit War; the West has never been invaded, nor feared invasion.

[MODERATOR EDIT: clarification on active/passive. I've deleted the posts in which Eddy was very confused about this, since they took up too much space.]

A verb is passive--or "unaccusative" to use technical term--if its subject does not actively initiate the action of the verb. E.g., Noyatukah _asonowovamanasho_ 'they-mark-alabaster', the name for the angular syllabics. The root _woma_ is 'active cutting, etching, marking, shaping', and thus transitive, but becomes passive when the -va- is infixed. The letters themselves don't actively do any cutting or marking to the alabaster; they 'mark' it in a passive sense.

jburke

Post by jburke »

Before I forget it: the Mohawk reflexive/detransitivizer also allows you to reverse the meaning of certain roots. E.g., wakhni:nu? 'I-bought-it' vs. wa?katvhnhi:nu? 'I-sold-it'.

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Post by Aurora Rossa »

I see. What other voices are there in Mohawk, Cheyenne, etc.?
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Post by jburke »

Eddy the Great wrote:I see. What other voices are there in Mohawk, Cheyenne, etc.?
Just active and passive--but it's probably not best to describe them as having "voices" in the traditional sense.

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Post by Aurora Rossa »

So the reflexive voice is combined with the passive voice. Interesting.
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"There was a particular car I soon came to think of as distinctly St. Louis-ish: a gigantic white S.U.V. with a W. bumper sticker on it for George W. Bush."

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Post by jburke »

Eddy the Great wrote:So the reflexive voice is combined with the passive voice. Interesting.
No; the detransitivizer/reflexive morpheme just has a variety of different roles. What it means varies from context to context.

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Post by Aurora Rossa »

Xisl?ksama :!: I made this awesome sample of my lang and had a gloss ready and I lost it.

Xisl?ksama.
Xisl?-ksa-ma
See.below-is-1SSA
I am [no translation].

xisl?- means basicly: having worked hard on something and then lost what was being worked on and doesn't want to start over due to the dissapointment. The not wanting to start over is the main part here.
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"There was a particular car I soon came to think of as distinctly St. Louis-ish: a gigantic white S.U.V. with a W. bumper sticker on it for George W. Bush."

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Post by Glenn »

Eddy the Great wrote:xisl?- means basicly: having worked hard on something and then lost what was being worked on and doesn't want to start over due to the dissapointment. The not wanting to start over is the main part here.
That's good; as discussed in a thread a while back, it's good to have words and concepts in your conlang that don't translate easily or automatically into (say) English. Such "untranslatable" words can often hold deep meaning in the culture of a language's speakers.

p@,
Glenn

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Post by Aurora Rossa »

L!ak?ts@itl!aak?ma sfim?le. M@oksami mi!maksaalas? @askit@al. Fstaft?ami uakialama mlu!i k?nts?!il!ak?tuni.
I saw a monster in the forest. It was round and it's size was a basketball. It flew quickly before I could use a camera on it.

What do you think of that?
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"There was a particular car I soon came to think of as distinctly St. Louis-ish: a gigantic white S.U.V. with a W. bumper sticker on it for George W. Bush."

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Post by Glenn »

Eddy the Great wrote:L!ak?ts@itl!aak?ma sfim?le. M@oksami mi!maksaalas? @askit@al. Fstaft?ami uakialama mlu!i k?nts?!il!ak?tuni.
I saw a monster in the forest. It was round and it's size was a basketball. It flew quickly before I could use a camera on it.

What do you think of that?
Could you provide a morpheme-by-morpheme breakdown? Without it, we can really only comment on how the passage sounds, not its internal structure.

(With regard to the former, I like the way some of the clicks are integrated with the phonemes around them, articulation-wise: M@ being a bilabial cluster, for instance, and L! (and tl!) a dental/alveolar one. I also noted @askit@al as a transcription of "basketball." :wink: )

p@,
Glenn

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Post by Aurora Rossa »

(With regard to the former, I like the way some of the clicks are integrated with the phonemes around them, articulation-wise: M@ being a bilabial cluster, for instance, and L! (and tl!) a dental/alveolar one. I also noted @askit@al as a transcription of "basketball." )
Well, there's no bilabial stop in this lang, so a biabial click is used.

L!ak?ts@itl!aak?ma sfim?le. M@oksaami mi!maksaalas? @askit@al. Fstaft?ami uakialama mlu!i k?nts?!iukts?tuni.
L!ak?-ts@i-tl!a-a-k?-ma sfim?le.
forest-inside-see-past-3SOA-1SSA monster
M@o-ksa-a-mi mi-!ma-ksa-a-la-s? @askit@al.
round-is-past-3SSA it's-size-is-past-3SOI-3SSS basketball
Fsta-ft?-a-mi u-a-ki-a-la-ma mlu-!i k?-nts?!i-u-kts?-tu-ni.
quick-fly-past-3SSA before-capable-use-past-3SOI-1SSA it-dative habitual-image-plural-record-3POI-3SSI

I saw a monster in the forest. It was round and it's size was a basketball. It flew quick before I was able to use that which remembers images to it.

Notes: The dative and benefitive cases are not distinguished in this lang.
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"There was a particular car I soon came to think of as distinctly St. Louis-ish: a gigantic white S.U.V. with a W. bumper sticker on it for George W. Bush."

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Post by Aurora Rossa »

What about questions? Do these look good?

@tomeq?
@to-me-q
be.alive-2SSA-question.mood
Are you alive?

Qtaksak?meq?
Qta-ksa-k?-me-q
who-is-3SOA-2SSA-question.mood
Who are you?

Xeqtaql'?lameq?
Xe-qta-ql'?-la-me-q
want-what-own-3SOI-2SSA-question.mood
What do you want?
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"There was a particular car I soon came to think of as distinctly St. Louis-ish: a gigantic white S.U.V. with a W. bumper sticker on it for George W. Bush."

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Post by Aurora Rossa »

i]Qtek'?la'ik?alameq?[/i]
Qte-k'?la-'ik?-a-la-me-q
where-building-make-past-3SOI-2SSA-question.mood
Where did you build the building?

Qtik'?la'ik?alameq?
Qti-k'?la-'ik?-a-la-me-q
why-building-make-past-3SOI-2SSA-question.mood
Why did you build the building?

Qtok'?la'ik?alameq?
Qto-k'?la-'ik?-a-la-me-q
when-building-make-past-3SOI-2SSA-question.mood
When did you build the building?

Qtuk'?la'ik?alameq?
Qtu-k'?la-'ik?-a-la-me-q
how-building-make-past-3SOA-2SSA-question.mood
How did you build the building?

Tqaik'?la'ik?alameq?
Tqai-k'?la-'ik?-a-la-me-q
how.much-building-make-past-3SOA-2SSA-question.mood
How much of the building did you make?

Tqaok'?la'ik?alameq?
Tqao-k'?la-'ik?-a-la-me-q
using.what-building-make-past-3SOA-2SSA-question.mood
You used what to make the building?

Tqauk'?la'ik?alameq?
Tqau-k'?la-'ik?-a-la-me-q
what.resulted.when-building-make-past-3SOA-2SSA-question.mood
What resulted when you made the building?

Tqaek'?la'ik?alameq?
Tqae-k'?la-'ik?-a-la-me-q
whom-building-make-past-3SOA-2SSA-question.mood
Whom did you make the building for?

Why is this thread so umpopular?
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"There was a particular car I soon came to think of as distinctly St. Louis-ish: a gigantic white S.U.V. with a W. bumper sticker on it for George W. Bush."

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