Uyse Grammar up!

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So Haleza Grise
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Post by So Haleza Grise »

The vocative particle a - is that another exception to the initial ʔ rule, as it's an exclamation? Or does it cliticise onto the previous word (but wouldn't this need a ʔ in the case of final vowels?)
Last edited by So Haleza Grise on Tue Apr 06, 2010 1:08 am, edited 1 time in total.
Duxirti petivevoumu tinaya to tiei šuniš muruvax ulivatimi naya to šizeni.

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Post by zompist »

Yes, a acts as a clitic (thus no glottal stop).

Ran's right about ancient phonetics... but then, the examples were cleverly chosen to work with modern forms.

(I did think about this while working out the script, but I don't have ancient versions of Uyseʔ anyway. If I'm feeling ambitious I'll describe some non-matching phonetics.)

(IIRC, though, Old Chinese rhymes were much stricter than present-day ones, since so many phonetic distinctions have been lost.)

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Post by 4pq1injbok »

For a language with such a restrictive root shape, Uyseʔ seems to have an insanely small number of homophones. I count only two sets (pwan, tsun), and both of them are in parts of the lexicon where the alphabetisation has gone wonky, i.e. are plausible mistakes...

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Post by zompist »

It's really not so restrictive. Mandarin has something like 3000 possible syllables including tone. A quick calculation shows over 9000 for Uyseʔ. That's enough that a very substantial vocabulary could be constructed without a single duplication.

(But as well, the lexicon I've given has about 1100 words, and a smaller number of roots. It's only a fraction of the real vocabulary.)

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Post by CaesarVincens »

Perhaps 4pq1injbok is referring to the matter of homophones occurring more than statistically expected.

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Post by 4pq1injbok »

Some fair points. And I was mentally contrasting Uyseʔ to a Chinese lang without tones when I remarked it was restrictive; mildly surprising to see the numbers go the other way.

But yeah, I was making a statistical point. While you certainly could fit 9450 monosyllables in there (modulo phonotactics I missed), languages don't IME tend to be that fastidious about avoiding clashes.

It's a reasonable model to imagine that each word of a language is chosen independently randomly from all the possible forms. I'll assume uniform distribution; that's probably not an accurate assumption, but changing it biasses in the direction of more clashes. You've got 723 meanings assigned to monosyllables now. If those were assigned randomly, the chance that one particular form would be hit by at least two of them is 1 - (9449/9450)^723 - 723*(1/9450)*(9449/9450)^722 = 0.002778. So if this was independent for each form (of course it's not, e.g. you can't hit every form twice, but I think it's not a horrible approximation) you'd expect 0.002778*9450=26 and change collisions.

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Post by zompist »

I'm afraid it's not a reasonable model at all-- languages do avoid homonyms. There are quite a few cases where ways are sought to 'fix' homonyms that have developed; and the increased level of homonyms created by sound change in Mandarin has led to a widespread use of disambiguating two-syllable forms.

(Admittedly I didn't use the SCA to derive Uyseʔ... if I had I would likely have produced more homonyms.)

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Post by Spandaux »

I just noticed this on the last page of the writing.
wor lord
I bet you got wor from warlord :? ?

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Post by Bunnycatch3r »

I love the grammar and the lexicon. The language is so different and to me so unusual that I have to almost completely climb outside my native English in order to do it right. And the words! -attempting "siw", "sraus", "nwai", etc. is like relearning to speak~ again both fun and challenging. But you guessed it..."However", I'm finding that "R"
a rolled post-alveolar fricative, like Czech ř
quite over-powers all other sounds within its proximity. Here's a video on how it's apparently supposed to be pronounced:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhp2Von- ... xixTmg8ODU

Anyone else having similar problems or can offer advice on how to make it work?

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Post by Skomakar'n »

I feel really stupid, because you are all commenting on the language, but I can't see any link anywhere.

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Post by Nortaneous »

Siöö jandeng raiglin zåbei tandiüłåd;
nää džunnfin kukuch vklaivei sivei tåd.
Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei.

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Post by Skomakar'n »

Why isn't the link in the OP and how did you all find out about it without asking?

Is it actually somewhere in the OP or not?
I feel blind.

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Post by Hakaku »

Skomakar'n wrote:
Why isn't the link in the OP and how did you all find out about it without asking?

Is it actually somewhere in the OP or not?
I feel blind.
It's not mentioned, but can be found off zompist.com, first link under April. That, or just search Uyse7 on Google.
Chances are it's Ryukyuan (Resources).

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Post by Dewrad »

Skomakar'n wrote:Why isn't the link in the OP and how did you all find out about it without asking?
Look at the top of the page. Right at the top. Go on, just above the line which says formerly d.b.a. Virtual Verduria Message Board. That's right, the zompist bboard.

The name isn't megalomaniac eponymy by the boardlord. It describes what the original function of this board was: comment on materials posted at zompist.com. Of course, it's moved on somewhat since then, to become probably the primary locus of conlinguistic discussion on the internet, but ultimately it's likely that a significant proportion of the users here (the more established ones at least) keep close tabs on what gets uploaded to zompist.com. To my knowledge, zomp has never actually had to announce any of his conlangs here: we've always found out pretty much as soon as he uploads them because the membership keeps on reading his site.
Some useful Dravian links: Grammar - Lexicon - Ask a Dravian
Salmoneus wrote:(NB Dewrad is behaving like an adult - a petty, sarcastic and uncharitable adult, admittedly, but none the less note the infinitely higher quality of flame)

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Post by zompist »

Dewrad wrote:The name isn't just megalomaniac eponymy by the boardlord.
FTFY

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Post by Skomakar'n »

Dewrad wrote:
Skomakar'n wrote:Why isn't the link in the OP and how did you all find out about it without asking?
Look at the top of the page. Right at the top. Go on, just above the line which says formerly d.b.a. Virtual Verduria Message Board. That's right, the zompist bboard.

The name isn't megalomaniac eponymy by the boardlord. It describes what the original function of this board was: comment on materials posted at zompist.com. Of course, it's moved on somewhat since then, to become probably the primary locus of conlinguistic discussion on the internet, but ultimately it's likely that a significant proportion of the users here (the more established ones at least) keep close tabs on what gets uploaded to zompist.com. To my knowledge, zomp has never actually had to announce any of his conlangs here: we've always found out pretty much as soon as he uploads them because the membership keeps on reading his site.
I suspected so; I just wanted confirmation.

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Re: Uyse Grammar up!

Post by BGMan »

Atom wrote:It should be Uyseʔ but the board has issues with this.
If we were Malay-speakers we could call it "Bahasa Uysek". ;) Oh well...
4pq1injbok wrote:Some fair points. And I was mentally contrasting Uyseʔ to a Chinese lang without tones when I remarked it was restrictive; mildly surprising to see the numbers go the other way.
Uyse7 has the logograms and the monosyllabic structure which it does have in common with Chinese, but that seems to be about it. It appears to lack tone, like Korean (although the Belesao languages do have it). In addition, it lacks the velar nasal -ng which is so distinctive for Chinese. I do think it sounds a little like Cantonese, or Thai; at least, much more so than it does Mandarin.

Chinese seems to actually be genetically related to the Western languages like Nanese and Bekkayin, in a way similar to how Indo-European languages are related to Eastern languages.
Last edited by BGMan on Sat May 08, 2010 3:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Uyse Grammar up!

Post by hwhatting »

BGMan wrote:Chinese seems to actually be genetically related to the Western languages like Nanese and Bekkayin, in a way similar to how Indo-European languages are related to Eastern languages.
Are you channelling Octaviano? :wink:

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Post by rotting bones »

I like the improbable absence of homonyms. It's obvious that Zompist had a lot of fun compiling this lexicon. I'm not even sure which associations are real anymore.
If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way. - Mark Twain

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Post by dhok »

I keep trying to think of a joke that rests on the similarity between the perfective prefix yu- and the word yuʔ, but I can't think of one.

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Post by rotting bones »

Can I back adverbs for emphasis in Uyse7, or is the word order too strict for that?
If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way. - Mark Twain

In reality, our greatest blessings come to us by way of madness, which indeed is a divine gift. - Socrates

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Post by zompist »

I think it would sound very odd, except as an afterthought. (The SOV languages I know seem to be pretty insistent on the verb or a particle being final.)

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Post by rotting bones »

zompist wrote:I think it would sound very odd, except as an afterthought. (The SOV languages I know seem to be pretty insistent on the verb or a particle being final.)
Thanks, that will do. I'm trying to translate a song with a lot of semantic back-flips such as afterthoughts.
If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way. - Mark Twain

In reality, our greatest blessings come to us by way of madness, which indeed is a divine gift. - Socrates

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