Proto-southern: the minimalist conlang

[sirdanilot]

I have not been conlanging in a while. But I really had the urge to make this, because I think it can show with how little resources a language still can get by. Language is a uniquely human (probably) capability of communication that comes in endless varieties; from 'kitchen-sink' very complex languages (phonologically and/or morphologically) to languages with minimal sound inventories and/or very little actual morphology.

This language is one of the latter. It has a very minimal phoneme inventory of 10 truly contrastive phonemes (though with all the allophonic realizations the amounts of actually used sounds are a bit higher, say 16 or so). The language is designed to have no word classes of verb, noun and adjective as we know them, instead having modifying and modified words. Morphology is limited to some affixes and particles, but no elaborate inflection is present. Unnecessary person, gender/noun class, number and case marking is not used. Still I believe that if this language would have happened to exist (though it's all fantasy sadly), it would be equally as able to express all sorts of meanings as any other language with a larger phonological inventory or morphological apparatus.

This thing is still in its infancy; I have a phonology and a short beginning on syntax. And of course the numerals, so that I don't get PMs from that slovene (?) guy who wants all the conlang numerals. So yes Janko I only have numbers 1 to 5 for you !
Please feel free to comment and point out mistakes (for example I might just have used a phoneme that shouldn't occur in the language somewhere).
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/294 ... uction.pdf

Numerals. The numerals of Proto-Southern go from one to five in older texts, with larger numbers being described with adjectives such as ‘many’; some examples of this are listed below though this is not an extensive list. In later texts, we see numerals above five borrowed from several other languages.
Interestingly, the number system was never extended for more than five, e.g. *niw-x-tar (to mean ‘seven’) is not attested. There was probably little need in Proto-Southern societies to express these concepts with one word. However, sentences such as below are attested. Once this need arose, enough contact with other languages was already established and loanwords for higher numbers were preferred.

tifp a niw-a uk k-a uk k-sar
fruit.sp 1s hand-MOD take and-1s take and-pair
‘Take five tifp fruit then take two more.’

kxi ‘one’
tar ‘pair’ ‘two’
kxi-x-tar ‘one-and-pair’ ‘three’
tar-tar-a ‘pair-pair-MOD’ ‘four’
niw ‘hand’ ‘five’
iruj ‘many’
iruj-iruj ‘many-many’ ‘a whole lot’
tsasa ‘horde, swarm’
pfiri-xa ‘star-SIM’ ‘like the stars’

[masako]

You should feel honored and accepted to receive an email from Janko. It's almost like a virtual blessing from the Pope.

[sirdanilot]

Well yes that's true but now he can just take the numerals for himself

Any comments on the conlang?

[masako]

Well yes that's true but now he can just take the numerals for himself ;)

[sirdanilot]

Well yes that's true but now he can just take the numerals for himself

What is unclear?

[masako]

What is unclear?

How you could make such a lame ass joke...well, on second thought, that's not unclear, you're you.

Srsly, tho, Janko is way awesome.

[Ryan of Tinellb]

Should I assume that you have read about Toki Pona? I realise that there's more than one way to skin a minimalist cat, but that's what I was reminded of as I started reading.
Edit:
page 2:

‘aha’aha

Your quote marks here are facing opposite ways. It may not matter to you, I've just gotten used to fixing them for my conlang.
page 3:

.../a/ is the [-low –round] vowel...

I think that's either "-high" or "+low".

The particle t, does that have a schwa somewhere in its pronunciation, or is it joined to the words on either side? Or am I missing a third option?

Is there a dictionary? What is HS in the gloss? You say that there are no verbs or nouns. Does <pap> mean 'hit' / 'a hit' / 'hitter' / 'one-who-is-hit', etc?

[sirdanilot]

Should I assume that you have read about Toki Pona? I realise that there's more than one way to skin a minimalist cat, but that's what I was reminded of as I started reading.

I have not heard about Toki Pona, no, but I will look it up thank you

Edit:
page 2:

‘aha’aha

Your quote marks here are facing opposite ways. It may not matter to you, I've just gotten used to fixing them for my conlang.
page 3:

.../a/ is the [-low –round] vowel...

I think that's either "-high" or "+low".

thanks for pointing out the mistakes !

The particle t, does that have a schwa somewhere in its pronunciation, or is it joined to the words on either side? Or am I missing a third option?

Hmm maybe I should turn it into /ti/. In most of these cases, it can be joined to an adjacent word (as in slavic one-phoneme particles), but it doesn't really fit the rest of the phonology because it would often turn into [s] actually.

Is there a dictionary? What is HS in the gloss? You say that there are no verbs or nouns. Does <pap> mean 'hit' / 'a hit' / 'hitter' / 'one-who-is-hit', etc?

HS is Hearsay, an evidentiality marker. I have not made a dictionary yet though this is also part of the to-do list (like a list of glosses).
Of course, there are verbs and nouns in the sense that pap will most often be used in a verbal way, and functionally in a sentence there are verbs. But you cannot classify even pap as a completely verbal word, because it can just as easily function as a noun (hitter) or an adjective (not sure how to parse that in English though). With no derivational markers. That is the main point; words can be used in different word classes in Proto-Southern, without needing a derivational marker (verbalizer, nominalizer etc.). Thats why I posit that there are no word classes as such in the language. But feel free to disagree with me, please, I would love some discussion on this.

[sirdanilot]

The valency reduction particle is now a clitic =t or a particle ti depending on the context. It now also occupies only the comment slot (on the grounds that the particle originally meant something like 'someone' or 'something', and that this cannot be in the emphasized topic slot). It can also occur only in the unmarked SO word order (so after the subject if it is an object/iobject, or before the object if it is a subject).

As you see even such as 'simple language' can become quite intricated and tricky, and I might have certainly made a mistake here haha.

Code: Select all

Valency reduction. We cannot really posit the existence of a passive form in Proto-Southern, though valency-reduction strategies can be used to present, among others, a passive meaning. This is done through the clitic =t, which occupies the empty slot. Aside from passive meanings, this can also be used to denote missing arguments for ditransitive verbs such as asa ‘to give’; in addition, =t  can be used in the meaning of ‘someone’ or ‘something’.
For ditransitive verbs, at least one of the object and indirect object needs to be marked with a suffix. As=t does not take these affixes, it will be the remainder of the ‘deleted’ arguments (the object when the indirect object is replaced by=t  and vice versa). If both the object and the indirect object are present, the indirect object is marked rather than the direct object. The clitic occurs in the comment slot rather than the topic slot in the sentence. If =t has the role of a subject and the verb occupies the topic slot, the clitic becomes a separate particle ti which occurs before the object in the comment slot; after all, the particle cannot occur in the topic slot and it cannot occur after the object if it functions as a subject. 

(5)	a-tsi	paf=t	/*a-tsi=t	pap
		1s-OBJ	hit=VALR	
		‘I was hit.’
pap	ti		a-tsi=t
hit		VALR	1s-OBJ
‘I was hit.’
a	paf=t
1s	hit=VALR
‘I hit something’ (or: I was in the process of hitting, practising hitting etc.)
asa		a=t		Irinoxo-kran
give	1s=VALR	Irinoxo-IOBJ
‘I gave (it/something) to Irinoxo.’
asa		a	pit-si=t
give	1s	unripe-OBJ=VALR
‘I gave (someone) the unripe one.’
asa		ti		asa		Irinoxo-kran-u
give	VALR	give	Irinoxo-IOBJ-HS
‘The gift was given to Irinoxo (they say).’

[Ketumak]

It's looking good so far. How does Proto-Southern handle questions and negation?

[Halian]

Ceterum censeo Iancinem esse delendam

[sirdanilot]

It's looking good so far. How does Proto-Southern handle questions and negation?

Currently working on exactly those things (mainly questions now) so I will post an update whenever I get to it !

[Ketumak]

OK, I'll look out for them.

[sirdanilot]

I have uploaded questions now (ctrl f for Question Sentences). This is inspired a bit by questions in Tupian languages (mainly the part about interrogative questions).

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/294 ... ction.docx

[Ketumak]

I've seen your approach to polar questions at work in Spanish, so that's fine. I'm intrigued by the approach to wh-questions. I gather from WALS this approach is attested, though I've never seen it in action myself. I suspect "u", interrogative/indefinite, needs an affix. How else could you say "somebody saw me” as distinct from "who saw me?". I don't think its quite the same as the passive.

The passive "I was seen" has me as topic and I am possibly the agent of the next sentence. "Smbdy saw me" probably means they are the next agent.

Another option would be to have "u saw me" plus your question intonation for the question and with statement intonation for the "somebody" statement.

[sirdanilot]

As is in the example sentences: u takes an object suffix -tsi when it has the function of object 'who did you hit?', and it takes no such affix when in the function of subject 'who hit you?'

Code: Select all

(1)	u		pap	ka?
WH	hit	2s
‘Who hit you?’
u-tsi		pap	ka?
WH-OBJ	hit	2s
‘Who did you hit?’
(or: u ka pap / u-tsi ka pap respectively)

The interrogative word u can also function in combination with the valency reduction clitic =t to form passive-like constructions.

(1)	u-tsi	paf=t
WH-OBJ	hit-VALR
‘Who was hit?’

[masako]

You really should learn to use BBCode.

[sirdanilot]

You really should learn to use BBCode.

You know you could also not post in this thread if you are not going to make actual content-comments on this conlang, because you are not contributing. Or you could start to contribute. It's up to you.
What do you think of it? Even negative critique (with some more content than 'its a stupid lang') would be more welcome than no content, and I am glad if people point out mistakes or bring up new points to consider.

Next project will be negation but it might take a while as I am going to move soon and will have less time to think about this until I settle in my new apartment. Also quantifiers, expressions of time, tense-aspect-mood...

[masako]

You really should learn to use BBCode.

You know you could also not post in this thread if you are not going to make actual content-comments on this conlang, because you are not contributing.

I did make a "content-comment" and simultaneously "contributed". I commented on your content not being presented well thereby (hopefully) contributing to your understanding of what some readers of the thread might be noticing (and not caring too much for).

You should know that very much like primary school, we give points for presentation...and right now, you're failing.

[sirdanilot]

You really should learn to use BBCode.

You know you could also not post in this thread if you are not going to make actual content-comments on this conlang, because you are not contributing.

I did make a "content-comment" and simultaneously "contributed". I commented on your content not being presented well thereby (hopefully) contributing to your understanding of what some readers of the thread might be noticing (and not caring too much for).

You should know that very much like primary school, we give points for presentation...and right now, you're failing.

You have very obviously not even clicked on the links to the word documents I posted which contain the exact same information as I put in these posts, with the correct alignment because I used tabs (and I put it there exactly for people who are too lazy to click the links and for ease of reading). If you do not even take the effort to do that, then please don't complain on whether someone is using bbcode or not.

Your comments solely on lay-out aren't helpful and if you continue to clutter the thread I will use the 'report' button. Not that it will have any effect, but for the sake of principle.

[masako]

So, have you had a chance to learn some BBCode yet?

[Halian]

(scrapped)

[sirdanilot]

I used the report button, not that it will have any effect but for the sake of principle.

In any case because I am now settling in my new apartment I haven't had time to work a lot on this yet, but I have some nice ideas for colour terms, negation, evidentiality etc.

[Halian]

(scrapped)

[Salmoneus]

Stop bullying sirdanilot. If you're not interested in his conlang, just ignore his thread.