orI am free
You are not a coward!
陳第 wrote:蓋時有古今,地有南北;字有更革,音有轉移,亦勢所必至。
Read all about my excellent conlangsR.Rusanov wrote:seks istiyorum
sex want-PRS-1sg
I don't know of any real-world language that does this, but you might throw it into one of those languages spoken by people who differ linguistically from humans only in one or two very small ways. Those seem to be all the rage now.The one who speaks, that one is free.
The one who listens, that one is not a cow.
陳第 wrote:蓋時有古今,地有南北;字有更革,音有轉移,亦勢所必至。
Read all about my excellent conlangsR.Rusanov wrote:seks istiyorum
sex want-PRS-1sg
instead ofSingular wants water
I/ You/ He/ She/ It wants water
linguoboy wrote:So that's what it looks like when the master satirist is moistened by his own moutarde.
is, in fact, quite correct.Sir Gwalchafad wrote:abusing terminology
陳第 wrote:蓋時有古今,地有南北;字有更革,音有轉移,亦勢所必至。
Read all about my excellent conlangsR.Rusanov wrote:seks istiyorum
sex want-PRS-1sg
IIRC that is not attested in "some languages". It is attested in "a language", and that language is not a full language - it's a semi-ritual register of another language, viz. Damin (which is a register of Lardil).2+3 clusivity wrote:I think remember reading somewhere that some languages don't differ 2d and 3d person.
So the difference is between speaker and non speaker. (Perhaps, to quote a movie, "it puts the lotion on its skin.")
I guess you could have 1st/2d v. 3d and have a speech act participant v. non-speech act participant distinction.
Eliminating any sort of distinction seems difficult, other than, perhaps, having people going around saying existential nothings.
Now that I think about it. that is a good idea; but it reminds me of how mothers speak to babies.Maybe i'm missing something, but couldn't you just refer to everything by its name? My name is Kris, so i would say 'Kris wants a cookie'; your name is Steve, so i would say 'Steve wants a cookie'; etc. A language like this (that never developed (conventional?) pronouns) would have some interesting ways of expressing and getting around ambiguity.
陳第 wrote:蓋時有古今,地有南北;字有更革,音有轉移,亦勢所必至。
Read all about my excellent conlangsR.Rusanov wrote:seks istiyorum
sex want-PRS-1sg
That's getting pedantic though. It's only really useful to talk about person as it manifests in the grammar, and since you can have a language without personal pronouns or markings for person, you can effectively have a 'personless' language.Sir Gwalchafad wrote:The point of what I was saying is that regardless of how ambiguous or intransparent it is there is always a way to mark person as long as you can pinpoint the agency. Therefore, there are two types of languages:
1. Languages that in any form whatsoever communicate who participated or was affected by an action.
2. Personless languages.
is untrue, asValkura wrote:you can have a language without personal pronouns or markings for person
does not depend on whether you decide to call something person marking or not, but on whether person information is transmitted, and that therefore, unless you delete participant information entirely,Valkura wrote:person as it manifests in the grammar
THIS. IS. WRONG.Valkura wrote:you can effectively have a personless language
陳第 wrote:蓋時有古今,地有南北;字有更革,音有轉移,亦勢所必至。
Read all about my excellent conlangsR.Rusanov wrote:seks istiyorum
sex want-PRS-1sg
I know that all languages talk about things that are either yourself, something you're talking to, or something else. Person is defined in such a way that, yes, it's impossible to have a real personless language, because person is omnipresent — that's why it's only useful in a conlanging context to talk about person as it relates to surface forms. If you don't have pronouns or inflection for person or anything like that, then you don't have words that are only distinguished by their person. Steve might be the second person, but 'Steve wants a cookie' doesn't reflect that. A language lacking any marking for person, while still having person because it's impossible not to, could effectively be called personless. You could find better terms for it, but it's a short and easy label, and informally i think it works fairly well.Sir Gwalchafad wrote:Jesus Christ people why is this so hard?
陳第 wrote:蓋時有古今,地有南北;字有更革,音有轉移,亦勢所必至。
Read all about my excellent conlangsR.Rusanov wrote:seks istiyorum
sex want-PRS-1sg
Good points. Alien languages most of the time aren't nearly alien enough for my liking (although i understand how hard it is to think outside the box when you're using the box itself to think). It would be really interesting to see an actual personless language.Sir Gwalchafad wrote:I am pedantic about this because of three reasons: first off, the practice of half-assedly removing marking for something and then going "I have made an X-less language" is as widespread as it is horrible. Second, it IS possible to have a personless language, and it is one of these features of pervasive reorganization of information that characterize a good alien lang. Third, just say "person marking-less language". That's ten more characters. If you're in a hurry you can abbreviate to PML, but there's no reason to say "personless" unless you mean it, because it might lead people to assume that you are dumber than you are.
Addendum to points one and two above: removal of surface marking or any other half-assed violations of linguistic universals are instant demotions of your conlang to "horrible". Either you're making a human language, and then if you please you should obey the laws of the natural world (and by extension be able to come up with original features within these constraints), or you're making a deliberately alien language, in which case, if this sort of thing is the best you can come up with, it isn't very good either.
Hungh! Never thought of that. That's a pretty interesting idea. Keep up the discussion.Salmoneus wrote:The other is to use relative properties. So, "the tallest one punched the third-tallest one". This has the fun feature of being highly context-dependent (a taller person walks into the room and everyone else's "name" changes!), but it isn't person-dependent (the utterance does not vary if you change the speaker or the listener), so it's not a form of grammatical person.
linguoboy wrote:So that's what it looks like when the master satirist is moistened by his own moutarde.