zompist bboard

Posted: **Sat Jun 04, 2011 8:48 pm**

Tivari wrote:Because he wanted it to be there.

Well, it just seems like an odd choice to set your futuristic story.

Posted: **Sun Jun 05, 2011 3:27 pm**

Eddy wrote:
Tivari wrote:Because he wanted it to be there.
Well, it just seems like an odd choice to set your futuristic story.

I did the Midwest because I live here and speak the local dialect, it makes doing the initial batch of sound changes much easier. it also fits with the future political and economic systems I am developing for this area in my sci-fi universe.

Posted: **Fri Jun 10, 2011 8:12 pm**

NOTE: I decided to put in another sound change around AD 3500 turning /ye/ into /i/, /yE/ into /e/, /wo/ into /u/, and /wO/ into /o/

Verb inflection in Interrogative sentences

Polar Questions

Polar (yes-no) questions are marked by a distinct set of subject inflections derived from assimilation of "did" with the subject pronouns, followed by analogy to all verb forms.

Jügihmii d'bagh?
jü-gih-mi-i d=bagh
2SG.NOM.POLQ-get-1SG.DAT-3SG.N.ACC ACC=ball
"Are you getting me the ball?"

Non-Polar Questions
In non-polar (who-what) questions one of the arguments of the verb is replaced by an interrogative inflection, If the "who" or "what" in question is genitive an independent genitive Interrogative is used. There is a distinction between animate and inanimate forms:

Code: Select all

            | Animate | Inanimate
----------------------------------
Nominative  | hu-     | o-
----------------------------------
Accusative  | -hu     | -oh
----------------------------------
Dative      | -tu     | -toh
----------------------------------
Benifactive | -fro    | -froh
----------------------------------
Genitive    | fu      | voh
----------------------------------

Huhezi? "Who has it?"
Shinooh? "She knows what?"
Ügevtui? "You gave it to whom?"
Ümedfrohi? "You made it for whom?"
Fu bagh izi? Whose ball is it?

Posted: **Fri Jun 10, 2011 8:52 pm**

Marking of Verbs in Relative Clauses

Mekoshan distinguishes morphologically between 2 different kinds of relative clauses, those whose subject is identical to it's head ("John, who worked all day..."), and those whose subject is not identical ("John, who Jane loves..."). In the former the subject inflection slot of the subordinate verb is filled only by the relative marker de-. In the latter, de- is fused with a subject personal inflection.

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            | Singular | Plural
----------------------------------
1st        | dei-    | dwi-
----------------------------------
2nd        | döö-    | dyaaz-
----------------------------------
3rd Masc.  | dehi-   | dede-
----------------------------------
3rd Femi.  | deshi-  | dede-
----------------------------------
3rd Indef. | dede-   | dede-
----------------------------------
3rd Neut.  | dee-    | dede-
----------------------------------
Impersonal | don- 
----------------------------------

Hiz Jan, devwaqi agh de... "John, who woked all day, is..."

Hiz Jan, deshilov Jen..."John, who Jane loves, is..."

Posted: **Sun Jun 12, 2011 7:47 pm**

More Relative Clause Morphology

When a relative clause immediately follows the verb the Relative inflection is placed in the Accusative or Dative slot of the head verb

Ünodeh hizim d'bed shiku.
ü-Ø-no-deh hiz-im d=bed shiku
2SG.NOM-IMPFV-know-REL.ACC be.3SG.M.NOM-3SG.M.ACC ACC=bad young.boy
You know that he's a bad little boy.

Note that shiku, "young boy", is a borrowing from Spanish (chico) and has a more precise meaning (male youth under the age of 12) than bö, "boy", which has a wider meaning (any youthful male, also used as a term of affection).

Posted: **Sun Jun 12, 2011 9:08 pm**

Question re: sound changes.
In your list of changes, under Rhotic Pharyngealization, you have:

/pʕ tʕ ʧʕ kʕ/ > /pˤ tˤ ʧˤ q/
/pʰʕ tʰʕ ʧʰʕ kʰʕ/ >/pˤʰ tˤʰ ʧˤʰ qʰ/

You have a pharyngealized /t/ there, and I can't figure out what happens to it. If it's meant to be part of the final product, there's not a letter in the orthography to represent it. But if it's meant to turn into something else later (like the rest of the ones on those lines, I'm not seeing where it changes to something else.

Is there something I'm just not seeing?

Posted: **Sun Jun 12, 2011 9:42 pm**

justin wrote:Question re: sound changes.
In your list of changes, under Rhotic Pharyngealization, you have:
/pʕ tʕ ʧʕ kʕ/ > /pˤ tˤ ʧˤ q/
/pʰʕ tʰʕ ʧʰʕ kʰʕ/ >/pˤʰ tˤʰ ʧˤʰ qʰ/
You have a pharyngealized /t/ there, and I can't figure out what happens to it. If it's meant to be part of the final product, there's not a letter in the orthography to represent it. But if it's meant to turn into something else later (like the rest of the ones on those lines, I'm not seeing where it changes to something else.

Is there something I'm just not seeing?

/tˤ tˤʰ/ is spelled <dr tr> when syllable-initial and <rd rt> when syllable-final. Sorry for the goof.

Posted: **Sun Jun 12, 2011 9:54 pm**

Evidentiality

Mekoshan has optional evidentiality marking on verbs that indicate if something was witnessed directly by the speaker (I saw that...), was learned about from someone else (I heard that...), was learned from reading (I read that...), is based on what the person knows (I know that...), or is based on inference (I think that...). This is marked by their own set of subject inflections.

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           | see    | hear    | read    | know   | think    |
-------------------------------------------------------------
1SG        | see-   | hera-   | reda-   | nou-   | diika-   |
-------------------------------------------------------------
2SG        | süü-   | herü-   | redü-   | nuu-   | diikü-   |
-------------------------------------------------------------
3SG.M      | sihi-  | herh-   | reti-   | nohi-  | diikki-  |
-------------------------------------------------------------
3SG.F      | sish-  | hers-   | resh-   | nosh-  | diiksh-  |
-------------------------------------------------------------
3SG.N      | sii-   | heri-   | rii-    | nüü-   | diik-    |
-------------------------------------------------------------
1PL        | siwi-  | herwi-  | rewi-   | nowi-  | diikwi-  |
-------------------------------------------------------------
2PL        | seez-  | hereez- | reez-   | nweez- | diikeez- |
-------------------------------------------------------------
3PL        | side-  | hedre-  | rede-   | node-  | diikde-  |
-------------------------------------------------------------
Impersonal | sion-  | heron-  | redon-  | noon-  | diikon-  |
-------------------------------------------------------------

Noshogo. "I know she was going."
herübigo "I know you'll be going"

If the person doing the seeing, knowing, hearing, etc. is not the speaker than the personal inflection of the speaker is added before the evidential inflection.

ühedreogo "you heard they were going"

Posted: **Wed Jun 22, 2011 3:32 am**

English descendants are a great idea.
Once I thought about adaptating of Nadsat to English.
i. e. droog (friend) - thrug
moloko (milk) - mulk
horosho (good) - corshaw

Posted: **Fri Jul 01, 2011 9:17 pm**

I've been revamping the sound changes and the phonology. I'm retaining nasalized vowels, marked by ogoneks, rather than having then become long vowels.

I'm adjusting the verb morphology a bit. "Dynamic" (as opposed to "stative" and "experiential") verbs in the imperfective aspect obligatorily have a suffix -n, derived from English "-ing". This is a development of English's usage of the Present Progressive as the default non-past form in dynamic verbs.

Some verbs can have both dynamic and stative meanings depending on if they have the suffix or not. So, for example, the verb -hev "have/get", an aspect-supplentive verb derived from a fusion of "have" and "get", means "have" when stative and "get" when dynamic.

aahevi
aa-hev-i
1SG-have-3SG.N
"I have it"

aahevni
aa-hev-n-i
1SG-have-DYN-3SG.N
"I am getting it"

I'm also ditching tense distinctions in the perfective aspect. Aspect-supplentive verbs omit the regular perfective inflection.

So, the perfective of -hev would be:

aagahi
aa-gah-i
1SG-have.PFV-3SG.N
"I got it"

Posted: **Thu Jul 14, 2011 7:41 pm**

I've decided to totally revamp how case and definiteness work in Mekoshan. Essentially I will have some prepositions (including the Accusative clitic derived from "the") merge with a reduced demonstrative to form a definite article that inflects for case. the plain prepositions are then reanalyzed as forms of the indefinite article, except in the plural, in which the prepositions fuse with "some".

Code: Select all

            | Def. SG | Def. PL | Indef. SG | Indef. PL
---------------------------------------------------------
Nominative  | de      | do      | Ø         | som
---------------------------------------------------------
Accusative  | dse     | dso     | da        | dsom
---------------------------------------------------------
Dative      | tse     | tsi     | tu        | tsom
---------------------------------------------------------
Genitive    | ove     | ovi     | ov        | osm
---------------------------------------------------------
Locative    | ęne     | ęni     | ę         | ęsm
---------------------------------------------------------
Benifactive | fadre   | fadri   | fa        | fasrm
---------------------------------------------------------

An example:

Šivkokhi de madra da jena ęne kyešn fadri kyedz.
[ʃif.ˈkʰo.çi de ˈmɑ.dˤɑ da ˈʤe.na ˈẽ.ne ˈcʰje.ʃn̩ ˈfɑ.dˤɪ ˈcʰjeʦ]

Code: Select all

   ši-     v-   kokh-     i       de    madra     da     jena     ęne    kyešn    fadri    kyed-  z
3SG.F.NOM- PFV- cook  3SG.N.ACC DEF.NOM mother INDEF.ACC supper DEF.LOC kitchen DEF.BEN.PL child- PL

"The mother cooked supper in the kitchen for the children"

Posted: **Tue Jul 19, 2011 12:14 am**

Well, I can see the logic in having case marking being done with prefixes, despite it not seeming to be common among the Indo-European languages up to the present, from reading aloud what you have written. I won't comment on phonology as I will be the first to admit that it is not an area that I am as comfortable with as I'd like to be. One question I do have is what led you to decide to give Mekoshan polypersonal agreement? Under what circumstances could you envision a language like this developing? All in all, I consider it very interesting and I would be interested to learn more about the thought processes behind the project.

Posted: **Thu Jul 21, 2011 10:14 pm**

Latinist13 wrote:Well, I can see the logic in having case marking being done with prefixes, despite it not seeming to be common among the Indo-European languages up to the present, from reading aloud what you have written. I won't comment on phonology as I will be the first to admit that it is not an area that I am as comfortable with as I'd like to be. One question I do have is what led you to decide to give Mekoshan polypersonal agreement? Under what circumstances could you envision a language like this developing? All in all, I consider it very interesting and I would be interested to learn more about the thought processes behind the project.

The inspiration came from the French Canadian poster Yuiel, who has analized his native Quebec French as starting to develop agglutination and polypersonal agreement.

Essentially the development of polypersonal agreement in Mekoshan comes from how the shift from SVO to VSO happened. People developed a habit of phrasing things like "I gave her it, that ball" instead of "I gave her that ball". This lead to the elements of the verb phrase to become agglutinated.

Posted: **Sun Jul 31, 2011 11:16 pm**

I know the word is much overused of late, but I have to say that, in my opinion, this is epic.

One question, though, about your sound change scheme.

TaylorS wrote:Initial and intervocalic /θ ð/ > /t d/
[. . .]
Intervocalic /t d/ disappear when preceding an unstressed vowel

Does your dialect have intervocalic alveolar flapping of /t d/, and, if so, what happens to it in the process of sound change? Or are those situations just analyzed as /t d/, whereby /θ ð/ merge with them, and then the sound changes proceed as written?

Posted: **Mon Aug 01, 2011 9:21 pm**

Rorschach wrote:I know the word is much overused of late, but I have to say that, in my opinion, this is epic.

One question, though, about your sound change scheme.
TaylorS wrote:Initial and intervocalic /θ ð/ > /t d/
[. . .]
Intervocalic /t d/ disappear when preceding an unstressed vowel
Does your dialect have intervocalic alveolar flapping of /t d/, and, if so, what happens to it in the process of sound change? Or are those situations just analyzed as /t d/, whereby /θ ð/ merge with them, and then the sound changes proceed as written?

Yes, my dialect has flapping. I made a mistake in that /θ ð/ > /t d/ makes [ɾ] phonemic, and it is [ɾ] that disappears intervocalically.

so "mutter" becomes /moːʕ/ [mɔːʕ] <moor> while "mother" becomes /motˤa/ [mɔdˤɑ] <modra>.

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Mekoshan, an English descendant

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Re: Mekoshan, an English descendant

Re: Mekoshan, an English descendant

Re: Mekoshan, an English descendant

Re: Mekoshan, an English descendant

Re: Mekoshan, an English descendant

Re: Mekoshan, an English descendant

Re: Mekoshan, an English descendant

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Re: Mekoshan, an English descendant