Xurnese

[Salmoneus]

Hans*:
Sorry, but if you think that that construction is on the level of 'thou Xest', you need to brush up on your English. It's perfectly contemporary, in casual speech as well as in literature. If you don't like that example, how about something like "I demand that you enter!"? [You can see its the subjunctive because it's "I demand that he enter", not **"I demand that he enters" - the latter is just uncommon because the situation is uncommon, as its only in third-person demands (and the like) that the morphological difference is visible].
Or "I suggest that the meeting be postponed"? (Not **"is postponed")
Or "It is very important that he not take the gun"? (Not **"takes not")

These are perhaps not found in the language of the street - but then the language of the street often doesn't have subjunctives at all, and we should say that "were" is the the standard past-tense form for all persons.

The subjunctives of "will" and "shall" are "would" and "should" - which may have originated as past tense forms, perhaps, but are no longer valid as such. The subjunctive of "can" can also be used as its past tense, I'll admit.

The past subjunctive is also perfectly common, if not more so: "If I had the money, I would buy it" (compared to the indicative "If I have the money, I will buy it").


[A quick and very small questioning on irc has reassured me that "that he take", "that it be postponed" "I demand that I be told!", and "If I had the money" are all accepted by other native speakers, as is "however they be chosen" and "we request that you be here tomorrow". "Thou liest", however, is not accepted]





Zomp:

"Were" is not morphologically distinct either: "they/you were". The specific form used isn't used in the first and third person singulars except in the subjunctive - but that's exactly the same as with the normal present subjunctive for all verbs. Why is "I were" any more distinct than the subjunctive in "I recommend that he take two pills per day"?

I think a better case is for the subjunctive "be", which is distinct from all finite forms, and from the infinitive, if you believe the infinite is 'to be' rather than 'be'.






*Sorry, I'm from a culture without double-barrelled forenames, so I never know how to deal with them. Does one address someone by the first name only, as if the second were an ordinary middle name, or by both, as though they were one name?
(This is based on my recollection than your H and W are hyphenated; apologies if they're not)

[zompist]

"Were" is not morphologically distinct either: "they/you were". The specific form used isn't used in the first and third person singulars except in the subjunctive - but that's exactly the same as with the normal present subjunctive for all verbs. Why is "I were" any more distinct than the subjunctive in "I recommend that he take two pills per day"?

You're mixing past and present subjunctive there... the present would be "I recommend that he be sedated". This form doesn't differ in any way from the infinitive, so to my mind it is the infinitive. It's only the fact that other languages have a distinct morphological present subjunctive that tempts us to find one in English.

(To be clearer: I don't think English morphology contains a present subjunctive. English syntax does.)

And the past subjunctive is identical to the past: "If I took the 5:00 train, I'd arrive late." Except for 'be': "If I were rich, I wouldn't need to take the train."

The past of "will" is "would", as we can see from constructions that require the past tense: compare "John says he will go / John said he would go", parallel to "John says he is tired / John said he was tired." So it doesn't have a distinctive subjunctive either.

"Shall" isn't used much in American English-- mostly in laws, contracts, and documents resembling them... one of my co-workers used it in designs: "A confirmation dialog shall appear." I'd say the past tense is "should": "The design said a confirmation dialog should appear."

I think a better case is for the subjunctive "be", which is distinct from all finite forms, and from the infinitive, if you believe the infinite is 'to be' rather than 'be'.

I don't, since the infinitive appears without 'to' after many auxiliaries ("I can walk"). Considering 'to X' as a single form would also make it difficult to understand constructions like "I want to."

[PyroKinetic]

Historically, yes, preterite verbs like "should" and "would" (and "could" and "might") evolved out of the past tense of their respective modal verbs (their cognates serve the same functions in German, mostly, that they do in English, for instance), but especially with "should" and "would," they're no longer used as past tense. "I could go" isn't the same as "I was able to go," which would be its essential meaning if it was still actually a past tense form.

As nearly as I can tell, in a sentence like "John said he would go," "would" remains a preterite modal verb, while the tense of the entire construction is conveyed by "said;" or in a phrase like "I should have eaten earlier," "should" causes the "had" in the "I had eaten" portion of the sentence to change to its infinitive form, "have;" it is simply the preterite present form of "shall."

Couldn't it be argued that the morphological subjunctive of "should" and "would" is the repurposed past tense form?

[Salmoneus]

I think you're mixing up your subjunctive there. "I recommend(ed) that he take two pills" is called a 'present subjunctive' (because it has the form of a present indicative). "that he be sedated" is also a present subjunctive, it's just the subjunctive of 'to be'.


I don't understand the justification for your analysis.

You seem to be saying:"present subjunctives take the infinitive form; past infinitives take the past indicative, except 'to be', which takes a special subjunctive form not found with any other verb and that is coincidentally the same as a few forms of the past indicative; pluperfect subjunctives take the pluperfect indicative"

I say: "subjunctives in all tenses take the form of the 1st person plural indicative; 'to be' is irregular in the present tense".

Frankly I don't see that your analysis is that much simpler or more appealing than mine.


In any case, I don't see that you're really managing to do away with the subjunctive. So what if you don't have a single morphological form that you can say is 'subjunctive'? You still have to know, in your analysis, which times require a subjunctive to know whether to use the infinitive rather than a finite verb, so you still need the subjunctive category - why not call it subjunctive? It seems like you want to say "there is no morphological genitive in English - to indicate possession, the plural is used". Since you still need to explain when 'possession' applies (probably under a heading 'the 'genitive' use of the plural'), why not just say that there is a genitive that happens to share a form with the plural?


EDIT: also, I agree with Pyro. Easier to say that 'can' has a subjunctive that shares a form with its past indicative than to say that it suffers compulsory suppletion in the past tense in some but not all settings, but that it is not suppleted if it retains the meaning historically described as 'subjunctive', and only optionally in all other past tense settings.

[zompist]

I think you're mixing up your subjunctive there. "I recommend(ed) that he take two pills" is called a 'present subjunctive' (because it has the form of a present indicative). "that he be sedated" is also a present subjunctive, it's just the subjunctive of 'to be'.

Yes, precisely; I'm not sure why you think I'd disagree. You compared past subjunctive "I were" with present subjunctive "he take".

You seem to be saying:"present subjunctives take the infinitive form; past infinitives take the past indicative, except 'to be', which takes a special subjunctive form not found with any other verb and that is coincidentally the same as a few forms of the past indicative; pluperfect subjunctives take the pluperfect indicative"

I say: "subjunctives in all tenses take the form of the 1st person plural indicative; 'to be' is irregular in the present tense".

I have just one morphological rule: 'to be' has a past subjunctive 'were' which is distinct from the past tense.

(Note that we already have morphological forms that only appear for this verb-- namely, the 1s present indicative.)

In any case, I don't see that you're really managing to do away with the subjunctive. So what if you don't have a single morphological form that you can say is 'subjunctive'? You still have to know, in your analysis, which times require a subjunctive to know whether to use the infinitive rather than a finite verb, so you still need the subjunctive category - why not call it subjunctive?

I did. As I said, we talk about the subjunctive in syntax.

Morphology is separate from syntax, and we can't create morphological categories because they exist in syntax (or in the morphology of other languages). They have to be justified on morphological grounds.

It seems like you want to say "there is no morphological genitive in English - to indicate possession, the plural is used".

I don't say that because it's false. (Cf. mouse's, men's.)

[zompist]

Historically, yes, preterite verbs like "should" and "would" (and "could" and "might") evolved out of the past tense of their respective modal verbs (their cognates serve the same functions in German, mostly, that they do in English, for instance), but especially with "should" and "would," they're no longer used as past tense. "I could go" isn't the same as "I was able to go," which would be its essential meaning if it was still actually a past tense form.

But it is a past tense form. What's the past tense of "I can swim"? What would you say if you were writing a narrative in the past? "I could swim", no? "I was scared that they'd throw me in the water, because I couldn't swim."

Rather messily, English has turned should/would/might/could into extra auxiliaries as well. Intuitively, "could" in "We need $100. I could get my Dad's credit card" is, whatever its history, a separate verb from "can".

[zompist]

I was in a rush earlier, so I wanted to explain the procedural point a little more. Sorry for the length. If the discussion continues I'll move it to L&L.

To some extent it's a matter of preference— multiplying forms just bug me. To me, for instance, the morphology of the verb 'take' is this: take, takes, took, taken, taking. That's it, five forms.

Some people like a long neatly labelled list instead:

to take - infinitive
take - alternate infinitive?? whatever appears in "I can take"
take - 1s present indicative
takes - 3s present indicative
take - 1p present indicative
take - 3p present indicative
took - 1s past indicative
took - 3s past indicative
took - 1p past indicative
took - 3p past indicative
take - 1s present subjunctive
take - 3s present subjunctive
take - 1p present subjunctive
take - 3p present subjunctive
took - 1s past subjunctive
took - 3s past subjunctive
took - 1p past subjunctive
took - 3p past subjunctive
taking - present participle
I have taken - 1s present perfect
I had taken - 1s past perfect
I have taken - 1s present perfect subjunctive
I had taken - 1s past perfect subjunctive
I will take - 1s future
I would take - 1s conditional

And so on. Some people just love these tables, perhaps because they can put them in big books and sell them to students, perhaps because they make English look like Latin. But fine, if you like it that way, you're welcome to it.

You can even expand the list if you like. I left out "thou" forms as antiquated; maybe you want to put them back. Put in the "you" forms if you like— twice, for singular and plural. Put in all the forms of all the auxiliaries as well. Heck, why not put in the negative forms too? It's pretty arbitrary.

What's not arbitrary, however, is the fact I started with: modern English has just 5 morphological forms for 'take'. Most verbs, in fact, have just 4. 'Be' is the eccentric with 8. But for any other verb in English, including borrowings and ad hoc inventions, I never need more than 5 forms.

That's an interesting fact about English, especially as it's somewhat distinctive among IE languages. Clearly there's something different between English and French morphology, something that's lost if we just generate those long lists of often-identical lexical forms.

It may be a little disturbing that some distinctions are made with some verbs but not others; but that's English's fault, not mine. Again, it's just a fact about English that only 'be' has separate 1s and 1p forms "is" and "are". I don't remove that fact— I only hide it— if I posit that every other verb also has those two separate forms, which happen to be identical.

Dictionaries have the right idea: mine has a relatively full conjugation table for "be", and for no other verb.

It's not OK to use syntax to define our morphological forms, not only because syntax isn't morphology, but because English syntax is enormously complex. If you tried to do that, you'd end up not with the dozens of forms of Latin grammar, but with hundreds of forms— all the tricky little cases fifty years of syntactic study has discovered.

And syntax is more likely to reject than accept Latinate analyses. There's no good reason, for instance, to say that English has a "future tense". It has a very complex modal system which includes a future auxiliary (and we have other ways to refer to the future anyway). It's debatable whether we have a "past tense"; some have said that we have present and non-present instead.

It can be tricky when a morphological distinction is on its way out. Salmoneus's question on whether we have a genitive case is a good one— though the problem isn't that it's merging with the plural, it's that it's becoming a particle. In "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" or "the king of England's head", the -s is applied to an NP, not a noun.

Does Latin have a locative? A few words do-- e.g. Romae 'at Rome'. But even Latin grammarians don't pad their paradigms with an extra row for all nouns based on these exceptions.

Finally, it's worth worrying about language acquisition. I very much doubt children learn any form of the English subjunctive early on. When they do, do they revise their entire lexicon so that all verbs acquire a new set of forms? Or do they just add a few new rules? This ought to be an empirical question: errors they make would be a clue as to what rules they are applying. (There's evidence that people's internal grammars are actually messier than grammarians'. I was surprised to note, for instance, that many francophones mix up infinitive and past participle in written French— e.g. parler and parlé. The rule here is pretty easy, after all. But to mix them up, they must not be aware of the rule, or be using a different rule.)

[PyroKinetic]

Point taken. And yes, I think the lists of twenty-odd forms for a verb for various persons, tenses, and aspects do spring from the school of prescriptivist grammar that holds that English ought to be modeled after Latin (I had a grammar teacher in junior high that had us make lists like that; it was the single most idiotic exercise in the world, not least because there's no point in declining verbs in a language you already speak; but then, she also insisted that "shall" was the only correct auxiliary to use in the first-person future tense).

[hwhatting]

Hans*:
Sorry, but if you think that that construction is on the level of 'thou Xest', you need to brush up on your English. It's perfectly contemporary, in casual speech as well as in literature. If you don't like that example, how about something like "I demand that you enter!"? [You can see its the subjunctive because it's "I demand that he enter", not **"I demand that he enters" - the latter is just uncommon because the situation is uncommon, as its only in third-person demands (and the like) that the morphological difference is visible].
Or "I suggest that the meeting be postponed"? (Not **"is postponed")
Or "It is very important that he not take the gun"? (Not **"takes not")

These are perhaps not found in the language of the street - but then the language of the street often doesn't have subjunctives at all, and we should say that "were" is the the standard past-tense form for all persons.

As a non-native speaker, I'll certainly have to defer to your experience. I'd only like to state that I hear, speak, read, and write English a lot, also in formal contexts. I just couldn't remember good contemporary examples, and the example you gave sounded contrivedly archaising, but now that you've given a few more examples, I have to admit that it's more frequent than I remembered, see also e.g. wordings like "I demand that he apologize". You're right, the form is still in use in contemporary English even outside conscentiously archaising style, so I was too hasty here.

The subjunctives of "will" and "shall" are "would" and "should" - which may have originated as past tense forms, perhaps, but are no longer valid as such. The subjunctive of "can" can also be used as its past tense, I'll admit.

The past subjunctive is also perfectly common, if not more so: "If I had the money, I would buy it" (compared to the indicative "If I have the money, I will buy it").

The point here was mainly that there are no morphologically distinct forms except for the 1st and 3rd person sg. of "to be", i.e. you define whether e.g. he had or he would is a past tense or a subjunctive based only on meaning or the surrounding syntax, while "I / he / she / it were" can only be correct if used as a past subjunctive, not as a past indicative.

*Sorry, I'm from a culture without double-barrelled forenames, so I never know how to deal with them. Does one address someone by the first name only, as if the second were an ordinary middle name, or by both, as though they were one name?
(This is based on my recollection than your H and W are hyphenated; apologies if they're not)

In Germany, the polite way with persons whose preferences you don't know (e.g. you're in an environment where informal addressing is expected but you don't really know the person well) is to use both names. Some people will then tell you to use only one of the names - I for my part am called Hans by most of my friends and relatives, so no need for apologies. Others go with a shortened name made up of the first syllables of both names (e.g. Hajo for Hans-Jochen or Hans-Joachim; NB, an originally shortened name like Hajo can also to be used as a given name in its own right). Not a few people will insist on being addressed by the full two names.

[So Haleza Grise]

In "Semantics" the opposite of "hyperbole" is listed as "litotes". I looked this up, and my reference says it's understatement through contradicting the opposite (ie. "not unattractive"). Is there a broader meaning than this in the semantic context?

[Yiuel Raumbesrairc]

In "Semantics" the opposite of "hyperbole" is listed as "litotes". I looked this up, and my reference says it's understatement through contradicting the opposite (ie. "not unattractive"). Is there a broader meaning than this in the semantic context?

Well, in French, it is also used as a "figure de style", that is a litterary device. I'd say :

Je ne suis pas méchant,
Je ne suis pas vilain,
Je ne te déteste pas,
Tu ne me dégoute pas...

(I am not mean,
I am not vile,
I do not hate you,
You do not disgust me...)

[zompist]

I got that from F.R. Palmer's book on semantics, and he got it from Leonard Bloomfield.

[Mornche Geddick]

A couple more typos.

Syu laum - shouldn't that be syu lumú?
rili eyka - shouldn't that be rile eyka?

Oh, and is Xurnese consistently head-final when adjectives go before the noun but postpositions after it?

[Miekko]

A couple more typos.

Syu laum - shouldn't that be syu lumú?
rili eyka - shouldn't that be rile eyka?

Oh, and is Xurnese consistently head-final when adjectives go before the noun but postpositions after it?

Yes, because Ns are heads of NPs and Ps are heads of PPs.

[hwhatting]

Once again on the -udo/-audo suffix; according to the grammar, the form after a front vowel is -audo, but in the Almeopedia article on Endajué I find:

illusion (beriludo)

Is this a typo in the article or is this word an exception?

[BGMan]

Or, in my case, how frightening the Slavic languages look to beginners. Especially Polish, which looks scary as hell for people raised on Western European languages. And it's interesting how both Xurnese and Polish seem to be heavy on hissing sounds such as sh, ch, ts, and so forth. I expect the Grimm brothers got more than their fair share of Germans who swore that Polish could NOT possibly be related to German in any way...

And in case you're wondering:

Polish: Moja siostrzenica datowa rzeźbiarza.

[Niedokonany]

Moja siostrzenica datowa rzeźbiarza.

Out of curiosity, what is it supposed to mean?

[BGMan]

Moja siostrzenica datowa rzeźbiarza.

Out of curiosity, what is it supposed to mean?

I was trying to type "My niece is dating a sculptor" in Polish, but apparently I got it wrong.

[vec]

Here come my comments and suggestions.

1) The pictures of the letters are on a lighter background than the actual background of the page. I'm using Firefox. This tends to happen if you don't use a picture background in the same colour as the other pictures. I speak from experience here.

2) I find the pronoun chapter slightly confusing and I think it lacks some sort of overview at the beginning or conclusion in the end. Do the anaphora in the "Person" column have genetive forms? Or is a postposition used? This might be mentioned, just to please us Eurocentricists, especially since the personal pronouns have genetives.

3) The verbal system is good, as is the derviational morphology section.

4) If the absolute negative is a verbal auxiluary, how do you express thoughts such as "bearly", "slightly", "almost", "just about" or "almost not"? Are those covered by adverbs? If so, is the negative auxiluary used too or not?

5) Regarding the pro-drop element, isn't it a bit unusual for a language to be only partly pro-drop? Icelandic has personal conjugation with no ambiguity present in the plural but most often in the singular and it has made it pro-keep if you will. Same with French. Just as the singular collapsed, the language became "pro-keep". Spanish is going about it differently where the second person is disappearing, they use the 3.person polite, as you probably know, but Usted is usually not omitted anyway and never has been. Just wondering.

6) Are there no left-overs from the previous system of prepositons? Latin had three prepositions usually used postpositionally (cum, tenus and causa (if it is interpreted as a preposition)) and Icelandic has one (vegna). Are there no variations in postpositional placement allowed? Is it common to repeat them (I came with enemies, with friends, with family) or is it more common to only use them once (I came with enemies, friends and family). Speaking of that, how about conjunctions? Do you use conjunctions between the first and second or penultimate and ultimate phrase or between all of them or between first and second AND penultimate and ultimate? I see you mention "nu li pido li japwe li rec cats and dogs and goats and rabbits" but is such usage common? What significance does it have? What else is possible?

7) What happens if you use the negative auxiluary in the subjunctive? EDIT: Sorry. Doesn't exist. Might want to include that in the chapter on the subjunctive.

I love all the rest and don't have any comments there.

Good job. It's an interesting read, though overall I'd like to see some more syntax. Now what I most want to see is Čia-Ša. That's something I'm looking forward to. But once again, good job!

[zompist]

Thanks, vecfaranti-- excellent questions. I'll get to them (and other people's corrections) soon.

The background colors are due to the infamous Mac/Windows gamma difference. They match perfectly on the Mac. I may change more of them to use transparent gifs, but with the smaller pics it doesn't seem worth it.

There are a few survivals of prepositons, most notably in the innovated pronouns, as well as some lexical items like tegendi or dzunan.

Spanish pronouns are actually similar to Xurnese, in that tú is usually omitted while Usted can't be. If I'm correctly understanding Li & Thompson, Mandarin is also partly pro-drop.

[Niedokonany]

Moja siostrzenica datowa rzeźbiarza.

Out of curiosity, what is it supposed to mean?

I was trying to type "My niece is dating a sculptor" in Polish, but apparently I got it wrong.

Well, "datować" does mean "to date" but in the sense "to assign a date/age to something" like this. As for "My niece is dating a sculptor" I'd translate it as "Moja siostrzenica chodzi z rzeźbiarzem" (assuming it's your sister's daughter). BTW, 3sg of datować is datuje (most verbs in -ować have endings -uję/ujesz/uje/ujemy/ujecie/ują in the present or how I like to call it: non-past tense).

[BGMan]

Moja siostrzenica datowa rzeźbiarza.

Out of curiosity, what is it supposed to mean?

I was trying to type "My niece is dating a sculptor" in Polish, but apparently I got it wrong.

Well, "datować" does mean "to date" but in the sense "to assign a date/age to something" like this. As for "My niece is dating a sculptor" I'd translate it as "Moja siostrzenica chodzi z rzeźbiarzem" (assuming it's your sister's daughter). BTW, 3sg of datować is datuje (most verbs in -ować have endings -uję/ujesz/uje/ujemy/ujecie/ują in the present or how I like to call it: non-past tense).

Ah! Thanks!

I just had a year of Russian (the only commonly available Slavic language at university), and I remember that -ować (-овать) verbs do the same thing in Russian (-ую, -уешь, -ует). But having learned some Russian, I find that Polish is not so scary any more... despite the fact that Russia and Poland have not gotten along too well in the past. (I think it's interesting how related people can hate each other more than anything else... just look at Northern Ireland for another example...)

I like Polish.

[Niedokonany]

That's the right attitude (so here we could stop spamming this thread).

[BGMan]

I noticed something about the writing system: it appears that Xurnese writing is like the Japanese, combined with the Tibetan (i.e. hundreds of years out of date, leading to phenomena like the Wylie Romanization system). Do they have a bopomofo or furigana type of deal for helping learners of their language? If so, what sort?

In addition, I'm now rather curious about what sort of writing system is used in Ceiy... if they use the Xurnese system, with out-of-date sound values like in Tibetan (suggested by the Historical Atlas of Almea on page 3480C), I could imagine a situation where Teosi and Xurnese sentences would look identical or very similar to the eye but pronounced totally different -- like Cantonese and Mandarin!

[zompist]

Some corrections have been uploaded-- thanks, Mornche and vecfaranti.

Adverbs generally apply to the verb + auxiliary complex. Adverbs like "pesh ga" 'almost' don't require a negative verb, however.

To answer Hans-Werner's question, beriludo is not an exception because the i derives from Axunashin ei, which doesn't trigger the use of -audo-.

I noticed something about the writing system: it appears that Xurnese writing is like the Japanese, combined with the Tibetan (i.e. hundreds of years out of date, leading to phenomena like the Wylie Romanization system). Do they have a bopomofo or furigana type of deal for helping learners of their language? If so, what sort?

The syllabary is described here: http://www.zompist.com/axunwrite.htm

When desired (as in a dictionary), the syllabary can be used more rigorously to indicate the phonemes-- e.g. Inegri can be written <i-ne'g-ri> instead of <wei-ne'x-ri>.

I'm not sure how conservative Cheiyu spelling is yet.