Attempting to justify the Proto-Eastern verbal endings

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Attempting to justify the Proto-Eastern verbal endings

Post by Neek »

Looking at the Proto-Eastern verbal morphology, I'm noticing a (rather obvious) lack of correlation between the verbal endings, and the personal pronouns. I believe there should be no attempt to correlate the pronouns and the verbal endings--the verbal endings might entirely be from a seperate system!

Code: Select all

  1st      2nd      3rd
*-awV  | *-ewVs | *-et
*-Vwmu | *-Vwsi | *-Vntu
Note wisely the relationship: the 1st and 2nd person singular only differ by vowel quality and by an *-s, but third person seems closer to the 3rd person pronoun *taw than any other ending. Even in the plural, there is *-Vw- in 1st and 2nd, but a simple -V- for 3rd. This may imply that we're looking at two seperate systems: the 1st and 2nd person endings being based on the archaic system, and the 3rd person system being based on a more recent development.

The similarities between the endings and nominal endings leads me to speculate the source of the system: Pre-Proto-Eastern might have used a directional system, having more adverbial force than pronominal, which was later reinterpreted to be a personal system.

This directional system may have yielded three types: locative (here, there), dative (hence, thence) and ablative (hither, thither), and these morphs may have at one point related themselves to the nominal endings of those cases. The most prominent is -aw-, finding itself in 1st and 2nd person singular. The order of the morphemes was never set, and might have originally been *-aw-V, where V was a themantic ending, based on the type of verb (cf. this). We'd then have three directional infixes, *-aw- for the locative, *-mu- or *-nu- for the dative, and -si- for the ablative, giving us the endings: *-aw-V-, *-nu-V-, and *-si-V-. When these became pronominal in force, they lost both the directional and adverbial force, being loosely refered to the antecedent. A plural, by analogy to nouns (with a marker in *-u- or *-w- which possibly might be from *-uy-. The morpheme order may have been regularised in the plural, or perhaps -V-directional- was seen as a plural construction, while -directional-V- a singular one).

The history of this system is thus:

Code: Select all

*-awV, *-ewVs < *-aw-V
*-Vwmu        < *-V-uy-nu
*-Vwsi        < *-V-uy-si
The -s in *-ewVs is formed in analogy with the plural: that is, the plural favors open syllables, while the singular prefers closed. *-et < *-a-to, and *-Vntu < *-V-nu-to, in analogy with the plural system.

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Post by Aurora Rossa »

I should point out to Mark that the argument of all langs in a family being similar is not necessarily true. IE langs range from isolating(English) to polsynthetic(French). There is even an IE lang with implosive consonants. I'm not bashing Mark's conlangs, only pointing out that they could be more varied and be from the same family.
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Post by Mecislau »

Eddy the Great wrote:I should point out to Mark that the argument of all langs in a family being similar is not necessarily true. IE langs range from isolating(English) to polsynthetic(French). There is even an IE lang with implosive consonants. I'm not bashing Mark's conlangs, only pointing out that they could be more varied and be from the same family.
Eh? What does that have to do with anything?

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Post by Jaaaaaa »

Eddy the Great wrote:I should point out to Mark that the argument of all langs in a family being similar is not necessarily true. IE langs range from isolating(English) to polsynthetic(French). There is even an IE lang with implosive consonants. I'm not bashing Mark's conlangs, only pointing out that they could be more varied and be from the same family.
*cannot see the relevance to this*

Could be, should be, might be, aren't.

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Post by Aurora Rossa »

Eh? What does that have to do with anything?
Should I have put it in a new thread?
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Post by Jaaaaaa »

Eddy the Great wrote:
Eh? What does that have to do with anything?
Should I have put it in a new thread?
If at all, yes. But I'd say don't. It sounds like a flame foundation.

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Post by Mecislau »

Eddy the Great wrote:
Eh? What does that have to do with anything?
Should I have put it in a new thread?
I don't understand why you said this at all. When did Mark say this?

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Post by Whimemsz »

Eddy the Great wrote:I should point out to Mark that the argument of all langs in a family being similar is not necessarily true. IE langs range from isolating(English) to polsynthetic(French). There is even an IE lang with implosive consonants. I'm not bashing Mark's conlangs, only pointing out that they could be more varied and be from the same family.
Trust Mark's judgement. He has 20 years of linguistic knowledge.

And, God, Eddy, stop saying things like this, please. This has never ended well. Learn from the past.

Nikolai: very intriguing. :)

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Post by Aurora Rossa »

I don't understand why you said this at all. When did Mark say this?
He says it every time I point out that his conlangs are all similar to each other.
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Post by Neek »

Whimemsz wrote:Nikolai: very intriguing. :)
Thank you. I just hope it finds value among the Almean philogists. :mrgreen:
Eddy wrote:I should point out to Mark that the argument of all langs in a family being similar is not necessarily true. IE langs range from isolating(English) to polsynthetic(French). There is even an IE lang with implosive consonants. I'm not bashing Mark's conlangs, only pointing out that they could be more varied and be from the same family.
Then again, the grammatical features of French are no different from the features in Spanish or Italian, even if Spanish is agglutinating and French polisynthetic. But this isn't the place for this kind of discussion...

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Post by Mecislau »

Eddy the Great wrote:
I don't understand why you said this at all. When did Mark say this?
He says it every time I point out that his conlangs are all similar to each other.
Because the human languages he has up now are all descended from Ca :dh inor, so its like comparing Latin with older Spanish, French, and Italian. They'll be quite similar.

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Post by Aurora Rossa »

Because the human languages he has up now are all descended from Ca?inor, so its like comparing Latin with older Spanish, French, and Italian. They'll be quite similar.
So the others derived from proto-Eastern will show some variety?
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Post by Jaaaaaa »

Eddy the Great wrote:
Because the human languages he has up now are all descended from Ca?inor, so its like comparing Latin with older Spanish, French, and Italian. They'll be quite similar.
So the others derived from proto-Eastern will show some variety?
Most likely.

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Post by Whimemsz »

Jaaaaaa wrote:
Eddy the Great wrote:
Because the human languages he has up now are all descended from Ca?inor, so its like comparing Latin with older Spanish, French, and Italian. They'll be quite similar.
So the others derived from proto-Eastern will show some variety?
Most likely.
Look at *proto-Eastern's page, where Zomp has some sound changes into other langs. Some of them look quite different.

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Post by Aurora Rossa »

Look at *proto-Eastern's page, where Zomp has some sound changes into other langs. Some of them look quite different.
He did put a lot of work into this.
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Post by Jaaaaaa »

Eddy the Great wrote:
Look at *proto-Eastern's page, where Zomp has some sound changes into other langs. Some of them look quite different.
He did put a lot of work into this.
No kidding ^_^

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Re: Attempting to justify the Proto-Eastern verbal endings

Post by jburke »

I believe there should be no attempt to correlate the pronouns and the verbal endings--the verbal endings might entirely be from a seperate system!
Or it might be the case that verbal endings do originate from pronouns, but that the two systems have been separate for so long, and have been evolving separately for so long, that sound changes have obscured any commonalities. This is seen in the Mohawk intransitive vs. transitive prefixes; the latter originate from the former, but you couldn't tell that by looking at them now. The transitives look like a chaotic mess compared to the intransitives.

jburke

Re: Attempting to justify the Proto-Eastern verbal endings

Post by jburke »

Here are some samples from the Mohawk transitives:

1,2,3= person
S,D,P =singular, dual, plural
M,F,N,I = masculine, feminine, neuter, indefinite
A, PT = agent, patient

3SFA + 1SPT: wak-
3FSA + 1DPT = yukeni-
3FSA + 1PPT= yukwa-

3SFA + 2SPT: sa-
3SFA + 2DPT: seni-
3SFA + 2PPT: sewa-

3SFA + 3SMPT: luwa-
3SFA + 3SFPT: yutat-
3SFA + 3SNPT: kuwa-
3SFA + 3PMPT: luwati-

At first glance, you think you can discern some relationships, but this turns out to be an illusion; it's impossible to construct a consistent synchronic set of morphemes from the above that analyze neatly into agent and patient components.

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Post by zompist »

Nikolai, I find your speculations to be quite brilliant, and a real advance in Proto-Eastern studies. I very much like the link between the verbal and nominal systems, all the more so since you've found it like a linguist rather than a conlanger, by examining data and finding patterns. Very nice work!

Eddy, you have a lot more to learn before you can offer useful criticism. You're enamored of labels right now; linguistics (among other disciplines) should teach you to see labels as sometimes-useful human inventions. English is not "isolating"; French is not "polysynthetic". (To the extent that it is, note that Verdurian is as well. though perhaps lagging a century behind.)

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Post by Glenn »

zompist wrote:Eddy, you have a lot more to learn before you can offer useful criticism. You're enamored of labels right now; linguistics (among other disciplines) should teach you to see labels as sometimes-useful human inventions. English is not "isolating"; French is not "polysynthetic". (To the extent that it is, note that Verdurian is as well. though perhaps lagging a century behind.)
In other words, labels like these are not absolute black-and-white categories that languages can simply be slapped into, any more than (say) biological categories like family and genus are, or racial or ethnic categories; there are always many shades of grey involved (no pun intended, Grey :wink: ).

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Re: Attempting to justify the Proto-Eastern verbal endings

Post by Neek »

Nikolai, I find your speculations to be quite brilliant, and a real advance in Proto-Eastern studies. I very much like the link between the verbal and nominal systems, all the more so since you've found it like a linguist rather than a conlanger, by examining data and finding patterns. Very nice work!
Thank you. I hope that it may find equal acceptance among the Almean philologists, and may point to a stronger directional system for nouns than previously thought.
jburke wrote:Or it might be the case that verbal endings do originate from pronouns, but that the two systems have been separate for so long, and have been evolving separately for so long, that sound changes have obscured any commonalities.
I have considered this, but sadly I find it too ad-hoc. I don't think we can just throw our hands up in the air when we can't see the relation between the endings and the pronouns, and just claim "They're too far gone." I am willing to accept the fact that Mohawk intransitive and transitive prefixes are beyond internal reconstruction, but I'm not as willing at accept that for Proto-Eastern.

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Re: Attempting to justify the Proto-Eastern verbal endings

Post by jburke »

I have considered this, but sadly I find it too ad-hoc. I don't think we can just throw our hands up in the air when we can't see the relation between the endings and the pronouns, and just claim "They're too far gone." I am willing to accept the fact that Mohawk intransitive and transitive prefixes are beyond internal reconstruction, but I'm not as willing at accept that for Proto-Eastern.
While your ideas are very well thought out, I tend to consider this kind of speculation like a philosophical exercise: it helps us develop skills, but is unlikely to give us any definite answers. Sometimes we have admit there are walls we can't climb; and while the magnitude of this particular wall is ultimately up to Mark, it would seem to me a tad too easy to have it all work out neatly like that, considering the immense age of the language in question. (But, as a conlanger, if I were in Mark's position, I would definitely be tempted to borrow your analysis. This would put my realist side and my side that desires order and explanation at war. )

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Re: Attempting to justify the Proto-Eastern verbal endings

Post by zompist »

jburke wrote:While your ideas are very well thought out, I tend to consider this kind of speculation like a philosophical exercise: it helps us develop skills, but is unlikely to give us any definite answers. Sometimes we have admit there are walls we can't climb; and while the magnitude of this particular wall is ultimately up to Mark, it would seem to me a tad too easy to have it all work out neatly like that, considering the immense age of the language in question. (But, as a conlanger, if I were in Mark's position, I would definitely be tempted to borrow your analysis. This would put my realist side and my side that desires order and explanation at war. )
I probably will snarf up this analysis, without however creating any data to support it. I admire it precisely because Nikolai couldn't (as I could) make the language match the analysis, but had to work with the data just like someone attempting internal reconstruction on a natural protolanguage.

My plan for the Western languages is to start with a protolanguage, but not publish it, leaving it as a puzzle for people like Nikolai. :)

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Re: Attempting to justify the Proto-Eastern verbal endings

Post by Dudicon »

zompist wrote:My plan for the Western languages is to start with a protolanguage, but not publish it, leaving it as a puzzle for people like Nikolai. :)
Oh my, that will make for some incredible debate, to be sure.

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Post by Delthayre »

By the time Mark has the western languages up I should be far enough along in my linguistics study (collegiate) to fully join the fray.

I must admit I do look forward to the experience.
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