In search of isolating conlangs

[Basilius]

On the sliding scale between synthetic and isolating, English is closer to isolating than to synthetic, but not too far down the line, whereas Mandarin Chinese is all the way at the isolating end.

At any rate, the grammar of Mandarin Chinese uses more bound morphemes than what was quoted for English above. Plural marker, at least some of the classifiers/counters (including another plural marker, not to multiply categories), several TAM markers, the multifunctional -de, and I should have forgotten something.

(Although one might also count things like 's and 've and 'll in English.)

[----]

I've been learning Vietnamese for a bit and from what I can see it seems pretty much entirely isolating, but I'm relatively new to the language.

[Ollock]

On the sliding scale between synthetic and isolating, English is closer to isolating than to synthetic, but not too far down the line, whereas Mandarin Chinese is all the way at the isolating end.

At any rate, the grammar of Mandarin Chinese uses more bound morphemes than what was quoted for English above. Plural marker, at least some of the classifiers/counters (including another plural marker, not to multiply categories), several TAM markers, the multifunctional -de, and I should have forgotten something.

(Although one might also count things like 's and 've and 'll in English.)

De functions pretty much entirely like 's, following an entire noun phrase rather than acting as a suffix. The plural marker -men is optional and restricted to human nouns and pronouns referring to humans. There aren't too many verb suffixes.

Of course, even though it has few inflection on verbs, English encodes a great deal on verbs. Also, English has suppletion and fusional forms, something Chinese lacks. Dervational morphology works differenty, though -- Chinese is heavy on compounding, and derivational suffixes usually do double-duty as full-blown content words.

In any case, it is a little messy counting these things. A language could easily be polysynthetic in verb morphology and almost isolating in nouns.

[linguofreak]

English isn't that isolating. And considering that most other European languages that any westerner is likely to learn (like French, Spanish, German, etc.) are definitely on the synthetic end, I find it more intriguing to make something completely isolating, like say, Chinese.

It's isolating enough, I think, that that first conlang English speakers make, the one that so often ends up being a native-language-relex n00blang, ends up being isolating, and as a result, we tend to shy away (without realizing it) from isolation because it reminds us of that first conlang.

I know that my primary conlang certainly developed alot of fusional/agglutinating tendencies because I was trying to move it away from English. I wasn't consciously thinking "I want to make this less isolating because isolation is n00blangish", but that was the end result.

[Ulrike Meinhof]

It's isolating enough, I think, that that first conlang English speakers make, the one that so often ends up being a native-language-relex n00blang, ends up being isolating, and as a result, we tend to shy away (without realizing it) from isolation because it reminds us of that first conlang.

I know that my primary conlang certainly developed alot of fusional/agglutinating tendencies because I was trying to move it away from English. I wasn't consciously thinking "I want to make this less isolating because isolation is n00blangish", but that was the end result.

I would think that most beginning conlangers would have experience with at least one other language, which all so often tends to be one of the major European languages, say Spanish or German. And those are grammatically pretty much like a more synthetic English. About as far away from the center on the isolating-synthetic scale as English, but in the other direction.

The reason beginning conlangers tend to make heavily agglutinating conlangs is rather because that's what they have experience with, just to a lesser extent. It's easy to extrapolate and add lots of more affixes, but it's harder to come up out of the blue with a grammar that's more like Chinese than Spanish, when all you know is SAE.

[TaylorS]

English only has 7 regular inflections:

Plural -s
3SG Verb -s
Present Particple/Gerund -ing
Preterite/Past Participle -ed
Auxiliary Negation -n't
Comparative -er
Superlative -est

And a huge lot of derivational morphology.

True, but derivational morphology is lexical, not grammatical.

[linguofreak]

It's isolating enough, I think, that that first conlang English speakers make, the one that so often ends up being a native-language-relex n00blang, ends up being isolating, and as a result, we tend to shy away (without realizing it) from isolation because it reminds us of that first conlang.

I know that my primary conlang certainly developed alot of fusional/agglutinating tendencies because I was trying to move it away from English. I wasn't consciously thinking "I want to make this less isolating because isolation is n00blangish", but that was the end result.

I would think that most beginning conlangers would have experience with at least one other language, which all so often tends to be one of the major European languages, say Spanish or German. And those are grammatically pretty much like a more synthetic English. About as far away from the center on the isolating-synthetic scale as English, but in the other direction.

I started my primary conlang at just about the point I was starting to learn German, and the first version of it was very close to English in terms of isolation/synthesism.

The reason beginning conlangers tend to make heavily agglutinating conlangs is rather because that's what they have experience with, just to a lesser extent. It's easy to extrapolate and add lots of more affixes, but it's harder to come up out of the blue with a grammar that's more like Chinese than Spanish, when all you know is SAE.

I didn't say beginning conlangers tend to make heavily agglutinating conlangs. I said that they tend to start with conlangs close to their native language and then move away. My first conlang started out isolating and then became more agglutinating/fusional as I made it less like English.

[Curlyjimsam]

Viksen is basically isolating, with a small number of derivational affixes and a handful of clitics that can superficially appear to behave like inflectional affixes some of the time (i.e. in the way that English 's can look like an affix in king's though not in King of Spain's). But there is no grammar of it online at the moment, as I don't currently have a website.

In general I tend toward more isolating languages; a lot of the time I find complex morphology tedious (though there are interesting things you can do with it). Most of my languages are probably not much more inflecting than English is. This can be a touch irritating sometimes when other people's grammars seem to loads longer than mine (and therefore likely to be thought of as superior at the most casual glance) but closer inspection reveals that they are three-quarters composed of tables for the various inflectional paradigms ...

[Ulrike Meinhof]

This can be a touch irritating sometimes when other people's grammars seem to loads longer than mine (and therefore likely to be thought of as superior at the most casual glance) but closer inspection reveals that they are three-quarters composed of tables for the various inflectional paradigms ...

If tables of inflectional paradigms signficantly affect the length ratio between your grammar and someone else's, then both are too short.

[Imralu]

I prefer the look and feel of synthetic languages but because I prefer a certain morpheme order (modifiers following their heads) and have a dislike of prefixes, I usually end up with isolating languages. My latest lang, Xuáli, is the only lang I have made recently which has any bound morphemes at all. All it has is a set of suffixes, which I call the oblique suffixes, which are used to indicate possession/transitivity (which are the same thing in Xuáli). These are simple collapsings of other words, which I supposed happened relatively recently in the internal history of Xuáli. For example, "I see it" (with "it" referring to an animal) may formerly have been *Na i cev a sa [1s PRED see(r) OBL animal] but is now either Na i cevas or Na i ceva sa. "I see one/an animal" may have been na i cev a o sa but is now Na i cevos.

[Ollock]

I prefer the look and feel of synthetic languages but because I prefer a certain morpheme order (modifiers following their heads) and have a dislike of prefixes, I usually end up with isolating languages. My latest lang, Xuáli, is the only lang I have made recently which has any bound morphemes at all. All it has is a set of suffixes, which I call the oblique suffixes, which are used to indicate possession/transitivity (which are the same thing in Xuáli). These are simple collapsings of other words, which I supposed happened relatively recently in the internal history of Xuáli. For example, "I see it" (with "it" referring to an animal) may formerly have been *Na i cev a sa [1s PRED see(r) OBL animal] but is now either Na i cevas or Na i ceva sa. "I see one/an animal" may have been na i cev a o sa but is now Na i cevos.

What does word order or morpheme order have to do with synthetic vs isolating?

[TomHChappell]

What does word order or morpheme order have to do with synthetic vs isolating?

If it's isolating, it has word-order instead of morpheme-order.
If it's synthetic, it has morpheme-order. If it's highly polysynthetic, it may have only morpheme-order, with word-order being free.

[Cedh]

I think Imralu means that he generally likes both (a) synthetic languages and (b) head-initial languages. Unfortunately, languages which are both synthetic and head-initial tend to have mostly prefixing morphology, which he doesn't like.

[Arzena]

Aʔetʔukwer is an isolating lang that I've been toying with over the past two years.

Ŋlap ʔo um ʔe wom luk tsriu sro.
light 3sg.ACT stranger in bowel CL fire PST
The stranger lit the fire in the bowel

[Dewrad]

I think Imralu means that he generally likes both (a) synthetic languages and (b) head-initial languages. Unfortunately, languages which are both synthetic and head-initial tend to have mostly prefixing morphology, which he doesn't like.

The solution here is to cheat and posit an earlier head-final stage to the language, whereby one can have suffixing morphemes yet head-initial constituent order.

(Or, if you're going the whole hog and doing really detailed diachronics, you don't have to cheat, just make sure your parent language is head-final.)

[Imralu]

I think Imralu means that he generally likes both (a) synthetic languages and (b) head-initial languages. Unfortunately, languages which are both synthetic and head-initial tend to have mostly prefixing morphology, which he doesn't like.

Cha-ching! That's it exactly.

The solution here is to cheat and posit an earlier head-final stage to the language, whereby one can have suffixing morphemes yet head-initial constituent order.

(Or, if you're going the whole hog and doing really detailed diachronics, you don't have to cheat, just make sure your parent language is head-final.)

Yeah, I've done that before. That's basically like a lot of European languages - generally head initial but with suffixes, for example Spanish. I tend not to like the way that pans out though, because of various other ordering problems. Just the way my aesthetics work creates a lot of conflicts there. I'm very happy to have figured out a way to get a few suffixes in without mixing orders.

[WeepingElf]

I think Imralu means that he generally likes both (a) synthetic languages and (b) head-initial languages. Unfortunately, languages which are both synthetic and head-initial tend to have mostly prefixing morphology, which he doesn't like.

The solution here is to cheat and posit an earlier head-final stage to the language, whereby one can have suffixing morphemes yet head-initial constituent order.

(Or, if you're going the whole hog and doing really detailed diachronics, you don't have to cheat, just make sure your parent language is head-final.)

Which is, BTW, exactly what I am doing in Old Albic! You have certainly noticed that it is head-initial but predominantly suffixing (there are a few prefixes, but most affixes are suffixes). That is because it evolved from head-final and suffixing Proto-Hesperic.

[TomHChappell]

Ŋlap ʔo um ʔe wom luk tsriu sro.
light 3sg.ACT stranger in bowel CL fire PST
The stranger lit the fire in the bowel (emphasis mine -- thc)

Ouch!

[Arzena]

Tro, he, he.

Whoops, lol

[----]

My newest conlang, 'Louces' is fully isolating (I might have mentioned it here before) and I'm basing the orthography off of French, but the orthography is somewhat misleading. I might post a thread on it later when I've got it more figured out but I'm really liking it so far. An example sentence:

Ne ceaux haites lien jatte.
I might go to the store.

[Ollock]

My newest conlang, 'Louces' is fully isolating (I might have mentioned it here before) and I'm basing the orthography off of French, but the orthography is somewhat misleading. I might post a thread on it later when I've got it more figured out but I'm really liking it so far. An example sentence:

Ne ceaux haites lien jatte.
I might go to the store.

My god, why would you ever want to use French orthography?
Also, a transcription could show us right there a little of how it's misleading.

[----]

My newest conlang, 'Louces' is fully isolating (I might have mentioned it here before) and I'm basing the orthography off of French, but the orthography is somewhat misleading. I might post a thread on it later when I've got it more figured out but I'm really liking it so far. An example sentence:

Ne ceaux haites lien jatte.
I might go to the store.

My god, why would you ever want to use French orthography?
Also, a transcription could show us right there a little of how it's misleading.

1. Because it is terrible in the greatest sense of the word possible.
2. Of course: [nɤɰ c͡çoxet˥˩ jɨɲ ɟ͡ʝa̰t] The tone comes from historical stress where syllables have been lost over time. There's also only two phonemic vowels, /a ə/ which can be surrounded by a ton of glides and whatnot to create what appears to be a relatively large vowel system. In addition, there's some initial consonant mutation when compounds are formed; after classifiers, etc. It's still pretty new, so things might change.

[Avaja]

Váh tyn go Kazujisha da anofeive hya isolata-sha, ah pan galu raku hya grammatika da tynatta ni báhte.
well certain that Kazujisha is one REL isolate-language, but PAST PASS write grammar is certain in old
Certainly Kazujisha is an isolating language, but the written grammar is old.


Anna ni hya ja ka, me haguta seale ilmu gei te haguta na konshafei.*
that in REL and also, I some years since not do some ADJ conlanging
And to that, I don't conlang since a few years.


Vá~h, tyn hali te sufei nigo Kazujisha misete, ah.
well, certain want do you.PL to Kazujisha show, but
I would like to show you Kazujisha, but I can't.


* -fei "collection of things", -kalne "type" for making adjectives out of foreign nouns and name suffixes are the only affixes in Kazujisha and there is no other morphology.

[ná'oolkiłí]

1. Because it is terrible in the greatest sense of the word possible.
2. Of course: [nɤɰ c͡çoxet˥˩ jɨɲ ɟ͡ʝa̰t] The tone comes from historical stress where syllables have been lost over time. There's also only two phonemic vowels, /a ə/ which can be surrounded by a ton of glides and whatnot to create what appears to be a relatively large vowel system. In addition, there's some initial consonant mutation when compounds are formed; after classifiers, etc. It's still pretty new, so things might change.

That sounds like a really cool language.

[Ollock]

ná'oolkiłí --- you got the attribution on those quotes backwards.