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I was curious as to how many verbs are in Verdurian? So far i have roughly 100, but i feel i need more, so the person can express location, emotions, senses, etc.

Verdurian has about 1100 verbs (out of 6000 words).

Mark, you... you... CONLANGER!!!

Ahem. K???la, ac...
He has been working on Verdurian for his whole life... you can't work on a conlang your whole life and not have a bajillion words.

I know, I was just playin around.

Though 6000 words is a lot... considering the Oxford English Dictionary has something in the region of 2,631.

oooookay....

(btw, english has the most extensive lexicon of any language in the WORLD... though it never has the words you need... *sniff*)_

Okay, since we're on the topic of Verdurian, I have a question about the language itself. Mainly over phonology, dialect developments, and things like that.

Firstly, is the open/closed of nouns (particularly e and o) distinction phonemic? If so, on the stress, would it ever occur in any of the dialects for there to be a diphonging of these two open vowels (through the lengthening of the open vowel, then a collapsing at some point)? That is, e ë or ei, o uo or ou (or both vowels could be centered into yî and uî)? Or was this a feature of Cadhinor Verdurian sound changes that I am not aware of? (This feature is founded mainly in Romance langauges, however, it occurs to a slight, remote variance in English. That is, bitch biatch.

I would find this feature so common throughout whichever dialect may have it, considering Verdurian opens its syllables. A lot.

Secondly, upon deriving various terms of Verduria into Barakhinei, how is there a certain paradigm of changes and morphological variance? (like how in Nahuatl Spanish, -tl into -te, -xtli > ch, &c.)

Nikolai wrote:Okay, since we're on the topic of Verdurian, I have a question about the language itself. Mainly over phonology, dialect developments, and things like that.

Firstly, is the open/closed of nouns (particularly e and o) distinction phonemic? If so, on the stress, would it ever occur in any of the dialects for there to be a diphonging of these two open vowels (through the lengthening of the open vowel, then a collapsing at some point)? That is, e ? or ei, o uo or ou (or both vowels could be centered into y? and u?)? Or was this a feature of Cadhinor Verdurian sound changes that I am not aware of? (This feature is founded mainly in Romance langauges, however, it occurs to a slight, remote variance in English. That is, bitch biatch.

Mazhtane dialect doesn't have open and closed e/o, but this is characteristic of the central-western region: Ct?sifon, Curiya, Viminia, as well as Barakhinei.

One of my many projects that's on hold is a more thorough investigation of Verdurian dialects. I thought about this after seeing the Romance dialects found on my numbers page, and realizing that a pre-modern language should really be divided into a rather large number of subtly differing dialects.

There's at least one example of the sort of diphthongization you're talking about: the word luom 'apple', which is from Svetla dialect. The Cadhinor is LOMOS and would normally have become lom. I'm sure this isn't an isolated example...

Secondly, upon deriving various terms of Verduria into Barakhinei, how is there a certain paradigm of changes and morphological variance? (like how in Nahuatl Spanish, -tl into -te, -xtli > ch, &c.)

Hmm, I'm not sure I worked out rules for this. You might look through the list of Verdurian loanwords in Barakhinei (on baralex.htm) to see how the adaptations were made.

zompist wrote: Mazhtane dialect doesn't have open and closed e/o, but this is characteristic of the central-western region: Ct?sifon, Curiya, Viminia, as well as Barakhinei.

One of my many projects that's on hold is a more thorough investigation of Verdurian dialects. I thought about this after seeing the Romance dialects found on my numbers page, and realizing that a pre-modern language should really be divided into a rather large number of subtly differing dialects.

There's at least one example of the sort of diphthongization you're talking about: the word luom 'apple', which is from Svetla dialect. The Cadhinor is LOMOS and would normally have become lom. I'm sure this isn't an isolated example...

Hence my asking if it's a dialectal feature. It would be interesting to see if Svetla's word base had that dipthongisation. Would be part of a branch off from Verdurian, maybe in the future it may gain lingual identity by becoming so unintelligent to the Mazhtane.

Then again, the printing press allowed a lingual identity to be stabalised. It's a lot easier for everyone to speak a uniform language when they're all exposed to the same uniform literary standard.

Hmm, I'm not sure I worked out rules for this. You might look through the list of Verdurian loanwords in Barakhinei (on baralex.htm) to see how the adaptations were made.

So far I've been pulling them into appropriate declensions, but how would a Barakhinei know what a Verd word was feminine or not? I'll figure something out.

It would be interesting to see if Svetla's word base had that dipthongisation. Would be part of a branch off from Verdurian, maybe in the future it may gain lingual identity by becoming so unintelligent to the Mazhtane.

I think you mean inintelligable

Nikolai wrote:So far I've been pulling them into appropriate declensions, but how would a Barakhinei know what a Verd word was feminine or not? I'll figure something out.

It probably depends on the Barakhinei, but I can think of a few methods:

1. The borrower knows enough Verdurian to know the gender. (Not really that hard for Verdurian!)
2. The borrower knows enough Cadhinor to know the gender there.
3. Analogy: the borrower treats it like a particular existing word.

I looked through the -a borrowings, and they're all feminine except angia. Barakhinei has both masculine and feminine declensions in -a, so this looks like a case of analogy.

So, if the majority of words ending in -a from Verdurian are adopted into the feminine gender, even if it was masculine in Verdurian, it would be feminine in Barakhinei.

What about sound changes? I'm guessing c and k would just become k? Also, Barakhinei has a wider variety of sounds, so I don't think that'll be a problem. Now, for verbal morphology, I have trouble in Barakhinei figuring out the difference of types 1, 3, 5. Other than knowing what they were in Cadhinor, of course. I would think that such a system would merge them all into the same class (like in Vulgar Latin, how both the -e:re and the -ere verbs combined, due to loss of vowel length. However, there came a new difference: between verbs stressed on the root, and those stressed on the infinitive).[/quote]

Nikolai wrote:What about sound changes? I'm guessing c and k would just become k?

Right.

Nikolai wrote:Now, for verbal morphology, I have trouble in Barakhinei figuring out the difference of types 1, 3, 5. Other than knowing what they were in Cadhinor, of course. I would think that such a system would merge them all into the same class (like in Vulgar Latin, how both the -e:re and the -ere verbs combined, due to loss of vowel length. However, there came a new difference: between verbs stressed on the root, and those stressed on the infinitive).

I don't think anyone would worry to much to keep the conjugation class the same. The easiest thing is probably to look at the infinitive:

V. -an Bar. -a (e.g. impriman impia)
V. -ir Bar. -i
V. -er, -ec, -en Bar. ? (3rd conj., the commonest)

Thanks. It'll help when I continue Lhib?li's story and need to borrow verbs/nouns through derivation.

Also, could I get some information, or notes, on Vetla? I'm wondering if it's alright if I can't flesh out that dialect...?

Nikolai wrote:Also, could I get some information, or notes, on Vetla? I'm wondering if it's alright if I can't flesh out that dialect...?

Sorry, what's Vetla?

Sorry =P that's my mistake, I left out the S. Svetla, I had meant.