Now for some word order typology action.
Features 81-84
SOV wins. That takes care of 81-83. It is SV (feature 82). However, OV and VO turn out to be exactly as common. So I guess that means the language—while being predominantly SOV—does allow the oblique to appear after the verb as a stylistic choice. However, it does not allow the S to move because VS order is very uncommon. 84 talks about where obliques/adjuncts appear in relation to the verb and the object. Here, VOX (X = oblique) is given as supremely dominant. However, since we established that the word is SOV, that doesn't quite work. So we look at the second most common feature: More than one order with none dominant. And looking at the frequency of other orders, it seems that XOV would be the most common, followed by OVX.
The language is SOV, with an option of using SVO. In tritransitive sentences, the order is usually SXOV or SOVX. SVXO and SVOX are probably possible too, in the same instances where it is acceptable to use SVO.
Feature 85
This one deals with adpositional phrases. Here we have to tread carefully, because we know that it is more common for modifier-head or head-modifier to dominate what kinds of adpositions there are than for it to be unconnected with main word order. Maybe the statistics will fit with the dominant word-order, maybe not. Let's look…
Will you look at that! Postpositions are more common, which matches the word order. So postpositions it is.
Features 86-90
These have to do with the order within NPs. Again, I'm going to edit as needed so that the modifier-head order that has been established is maintained for the most part but I will not ignore enormous margins of difference. Let's see.
Genetive — noun is more common than the reverse. Matches.
Noun — adjective appears in 768 languages, the more expected reversed order appears in 341 one. This cannot be ignored. Noun — adjective it is.
Demonstrative — noun is more common than the reverse. Matches.
Noun — numeral is more common (515, 51%), but numeral — noun (430, 42%) would be more expected. I think I'm going to have to concede to the majority in this case, or what do you think?
Noun — relative clause is overwhelming. That's it.
So, it seems genetives and demonstratives will appear before, adjectives and relative clauses come after. But what about numerals?
Features 91-94
Degree word and adjective is next on the docket. It seems it appearing before is much more common. Before it is: degree word — adjective.
Next we learn about polar question particles. They don't exist in the majority of languages, and it doesn't in avrelang, either.
More on questions: are interrogative phrases fronted in questions? Nope. Turns out they are not.
So where do adverbial subordinators appear? Well, our general modifier-head order would assume final, but nope, initial wins out 3 to 1. The "Theoretical Issues" section in the article covers this asymmetry in languages.
Features 95-97
To finish off the word order chapters, we will look at greater clause relationships. These features are going to have to go by what we already have. These are elaborations over the past few issues we covered and are entirely dependent on what has been settled on before. According to 95, OV and postpositions is the most common relationship and that is indeed what avrelang has.
96 tells us VO and relative clause–noun is the most common. But here we are not in luck. That doesn't match. Avrelang turns out to be OV and noun–relative clause, which finishes third place. Maybe there is reason to go back and look at this again?
Finally, 97 tells us, VO and noun–adjective is the most common order. Alas, we're not in luck; again. Avrelang is OV and noun–adjective, the runner up. I don't see reason to change this, this seems common enough.
But I'm going to look at those relative clauses again. The most common order for an OV language is RelN. However, the globally most common order is NRel which is what my avrelang has, according to previous data. The former has 111 behind it, the latter 95. The difference seems unremarkable. I'm going to go with NRel. It is the globally most common order (506 against 119), and even though it does not correlate with the OV order, that is highly interesting. The globally most common word order does not correlate with the most common ordering of nouns and relative clauses. Huh. Who knew?
Next up… a little intermission. I'm going to sleep on this and then make a summary in the morning. Maybe start making some words. How to make the most average word? I wonder if Zamenhof knew? The next subject in WALS is simple clauses.
My Avrelang
Word Order
vec
Re: Word Order
fascinating, all throughout.
though I had a thought as I pondered this project you have embarked upon: in creating an Avelang, your results will not be average.
Zamenhof wasn't average. you're in good company.
though I had a thought as I pondered this project you have embarked upon: in creating an Avelang, your results will not be average.
vecfaranti wrote:Now for some word order typology action.
Next up… a little intermission. I'm going to sleep on this and then make a summary in the morning. Maybe start making some words. How to make the most average word? I wonder if Zamenhof knew?
Zamenhof wasn't average. you're in good company.
The next subject in WALS is simple clauses.
MadBrain is a genius.
-
TomHChappell
- Avisaru
- Posts: 807
- Joined: Wed Dec 28, 2005 2:58 pm
Re: My Avrelang
Vecfaranti, did you ever see this?
Since it's likely to disappear soon, I'll try to copy it here, I guess, if you're interested.
Anyway, here's the first post:
This lists, according to WALS.info, the commonest feature-values of several grammatical, morphological, and syntactic features in the natlangs in their database.
For each feature, the feature-values are listed from the commonest to the rarest, until the cumulative percent rises to 67% or more.
The percentage to the left of each feature-value is the percent of WALS.info's languages which have that value for that feature.
I don't intend to do this for the Lexicon or the "Other" groups of features.
I haven't done it for the Phonology group yet and don't know when nor whether I will.
I have done it, here, for:
* Nominal Syntax
* Complex Sentences
* Morphology
* Verbal Categories
* Word Order
* Simple Clauses
* Nominal Categories.
If you pick these values for these features your conlang will be "plain vanilla"; a first conlang probably should be. Maybe, later conlangs should probably have only one or two or three exceptional values to these features, unless you're positing non-human speakers.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nominal Syntax
58: Obligatory Possessive Inflection
82.38% Absent
61: Adjectives without Nouns
58.87% Without marking
14.52% Marked by preceding word
60: Genitives, Adjectives and Relative Clauses
55.80% Highly differentiated
23.91% Adjectives and relative clauses collapsed
64: Nominal and Verbal Conjunction
53.49% Identity
41.53% Differentiation
59: Possessive Classification
51.44% No possessive classification
38.68% Two classes
62: Action Nominal Constructions
25.00% No action nominals
17.26% Possessive-Accusative
14.88% Sentential
14.29% Restricted
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Complex Sentences
128: Utterance Complement Clauses
79.72% Balanced
122: Relativization on Subjects
75.30% Gap
125: Purpose Clauses
60.00% Deranked
22.35% Balanced
127: Reason Clauses
53.25% Balanced
24.85% Deranked
124: 'Want' Complement Subjects
50.88% Subject is left implicit
25.44% Subject is expressed overtly
123: Relativization on Obliques
49.11% Gap
17.86% Pronoun-retention
12.50% Non-reduction
126: 'When' Clauses
48.28% Balanced
29.31% Deranked
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Morphology
20: Fusion of Selected Inflectional Formatives
75.76% Exclusively concatenative
27: Reduplication
75.27% Productive full and partial reduplication
28: Case Syncretism
62.12% No case marking
17.68% No syncretism
25: Locus of Marking: Whole-language Typology
51.27% Inconsistent or other
19.92% Head-marking
21: Exponence of Selected Inflectional Formatives
46.30% No case
43.83% Monoexponential case
26: Prefixing vs. Suffixing in Inflectional Morphology
42.73% Strongly suffixing
14.54% Equal prefixing and suffixing
13.65% Little affixation
24: Locus of Marking in Possessive Noun Phrases
41.53% Dependent marking
33.05% Head marking
29: Syncretism in Verbal Person/Number Marking
40.91% Not syncretic
30.30% Syncretic
22: Inflectional Synthesis of the Verb
35.86% 4-5 categories per word
21.38% 6-7 categories per word
16.55% 2-3 categories per word
23: Locus of Marking in the Clause
30.08% Head marking
26.69% Dependent marking
24.58% Double marking
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Verbal Categories
73: The Optative
84.95% Inflectional optative absent
80: Verbal Number and Suppletion
82.38% None
74: Situational Possibility
67.52% Verbal constructions
79: Suppletion According to Tense and Aspect
63.73% None
18.65% Tense
69: Position of Tense-Aspect Affixes
59.23% Tense-aspect suffixes
14.12% Tense-aspect prefixes
72: Imperative-Hortative Systems
53.60% Neither type of system
35.47% Maximal system
70: The Morphological Imperative
53.38% Second singular and second plural
22.30% No second-person imperatives
68: The Perfect
51.35% No perfect
36.04% Other perfect
76: Overlap between Situational and Epistemic Modal Marking
50.72% No overlap
31.88% Overlap for either possibility or necessity
77: Semantic Distinctions of Evidentiality
43.30% No grammatical evidentials
39.71% Indirect only
78: Coding of Evidentiality
43.30% No grammatical evidentials
31.34% Verbal affix or clitic
66: The Past Tense
42.34% Present, no remoteness distinctions
39.64% No past tense
75: Epistemic Possibility
37.92% Other
35.00% Affixes on verbs
71: The Prohibitive
36.77% Normal imperative + special negative
29.29% Special imperative + special negative
22.83% Normal imperative + normal negative
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Word Order
82: Order of Subject and Verb
78.87% SV
90: Order of Relative Clause and Noun
71.77% Noun-Relative clause
93: Position of Interrogative Phrases in Content Questions
67.50% Not initial interrogative phrase
87: Order of Adjective and Noun
63.31% Noun-Adjective
28.11% Adjective-Noun
94: Order of Adverbial Subordinator and Clause
60.07% Initial subordinator word
14.73% Final subordinator word
86: Order of Genitive and Noun
54.84% Genitive-Noun
37.65% Noun-Genitive
89: Order of Numeral and Noun
51.40% Noun-Numeral
42.91% Numeral-Noun
96: Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Relative Clause and Noun
48.94% VO and NRel
23.15% Other
85: Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase
48.42% Postpositions
43.48% Prepositions
91: Order of Degree Word and Adjective
46.91% Degree word-Adjective
40.50% Adjective-Degree word
83: Order of Object and Verb
46.72% OV
46.72% VO
88: Order of Demonstrative and Noun
45.49% Demonstrative-Noun
44.29% Noun-Demonstrative
84: Order of Object, Oblique, and Verb
42.09% VOX
33.85% No dominant order
95: Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase
41.34% OV and Postpositions
40.37% VO and Prepositions
81: Order of Subject, Object and Verb
40.47% SOV
35.50% SVO
92: Position of Polar Question Particles
39.77% No question particle
35.14% Final
97: Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adjective and Noun
34.53% VO and NAdj
24.53% OV and NAdj
17.18% OV and AdjN
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Simple Clauses
115: Negative Indefinite Pronouns and Predicate Negation
82.52% Predicate negation also present
111: Nonperiphrastic Causative Constructions
81.94% Morphological but no compound
108: Antipassive Constructions
75.26% No antipassive
119: Nominal and Locational Predication
69.69% Different
116: Polar Questions
62.00% Question particle
18.29% Interrogative verb morphology
101: Expression of Pronominal Subjects
60.68% Subject affixes on verb
11.42% Obligatory pronouns in subject position
110: Periphrastic Causative Constructions
57.63% Purposive but no sequential
29.66% Sequential but no purposive
106: Reciprocal Constructions
56.57% Distinct from reflexive
25.14% Identical to reflexive
100: Alignment of Verbal Person Marking
55.79% Accusative
22.11% Neutral
109: Applicative Constructions
54.64% No applicative construction
26.78% Benefactive and other; both bases
98: Alignment of Case Marking of Full Noun Phrases
51.58% Neutral
24.21% Nominative - accusative (standard)
102: Verbal Person Marking
51.06% Both the A and P arguments
21.69% No person marking
105: Ditransitive Constructions: The Verb 'Give'
50.00% Indirect-object construction
22.22% Double-object construction
104: Order of Person Markers on the Verb
49.34% A and P do not or do not both occur on the verb
25.33% A precedes P
103: Third Person Zero of Verbal Person Marking
47.63% No zero realization
25.26% No person marking
112: Negative Morphemes
47.18% Negative particle
33.53% Negative affix
121: Comparative Constructions
46.71% Locational
20.36% Conjoined
99: Alignment of Case Marking of Pronouns
45.93% Neutral
35.47% Nominative - accusative (standard)
113: Symmetric and Asymmetric Standard Negation
43.77% Both
38.38% Symmetric
118: Predicative Adjectives
39.12% Verbal encoding
34.20% Nonverbal encoding
114: Subtypes of Asymmetric Standard Negation
38.38% Non-assignable
27.61% A/Cat
13.47% A/Fin
117: Predicative Possession
26.25% Have-Possessive
24.58% Conjunctional Possessive
20.00% Locational Possessive
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nominal Categories
42: Pronominal and Adnominal Demonstratives
71.14% Same forms
44: Gender Distinctions in Independent Personal Pronouns
67.20% No gender distinctions
52: Comitatives and Instrumentals
66.15% Differentiation
23.60% Identity
45: Politeness Distinctions in Pronouns
65.70% Second person pronouns encode no politeness distinction
23.67% Second person pronouns encode a binary politeness distinction
39: Inclusive/Exclusive Distinction in Independent Pronouns
60.00% No inclusive/exclusive opposition
31.50% Inclusive and exclusive differentiated
46: Indefinite Pronouns
59.51% Interrogative-based indefinites
26.07% Generic-noun-based indefinites
31: Sex-based and Non-sex-based Gender Systems
56.42% No gender system
32.68% Sex-based gender system
32: Systems of Gender Assignment
56.42% No gender system
22.96% Semantic and formal assignment
30: Number of Genders
56.42% None
19.46% Two
48: Person Marking on Adpositions
55.29% Adpositions without person marking
21.96% Person marking for pronouns only
41: Distance Contrasts in Demonstratives
54.27% Two-way contrast
37.61% Three-way contrast
33: Coding of Nominal Plurality
51.36% Plural suffix
15.66% Plural word
51: Position of Case Affixes
46.04% Case suffixes
36.19% Neither case affixes nor adpositional clitics
34: Occurrence of Nominal Plurality
45.70% Plural in all nouns, always obligatory
18.90% Plural in all nouns, always optional
13.75% Plural only in human nouns, obligatory
43: Third Person Pronouns and Demonstratives
44.44% Third person pronouns and demonstratives are unrelated to demonstratives
23.11% Third person pronouns and demonstratives are related to all demonstratives
36: The Associative Plural
44.30% Associative plural marker also used for additive plurals
20.25% Special bound associative plural marker
19.83% Special non-bound associative plural marker
35: Plurality in Independent Personal Pronouns
43.68% Person-number stem
18.01% Person-number stem with a pronominal plural affix
9.58% Person-number affixes
38: Indefinite Articles
39.75% Neither indefinite nor definite
19.24% Indefinite word distinct from numeral for 'one'
19.03% Numeral for 'one' is used as indefinite article
40: Inclusive/Exclusive Distinction in Verbal Inflection
39.50% No inclusive/exclusive opposition
35.00% No person marking at all
49: Number of Cases
38.31% No morphological case-marking
14.18% 6-7 case categories
9.20% 10 or more case categories
9.20% Exclusively borderline morphological case-marking
37: Definite Articles
34.81% Definite word distinct from demonstrative
33.22% Neither definite nor indefinite article
50: Asymmetrical Case-Marking
31.03% No morphological case-marking
30.27% Symmetrical case-marking
20.31% Additive-quantitatively asymmetrical case-marking
_____________________________________________________________________________________
As for phoneme-inventory;
see http://www.conlanger.com/cbb/viewtopic. ... n%2A#47970.
Here are the commonest (that is, occuring in the most UPSID languages) two dozen consonant phones; all the consonant phones that occur in at least 25% of UPSID's languages.
94% [m] voiced bilabial nasal
89% [k] voiceless velar plosive
84% [j] voiced palatal approximant
83% [p] voiceless bilabial plosive
74% [w] voiced labio-velar approximant
64% [ b] voiced bilabial plosive
62% [h] voiceless glottal fricative
56% [g] voiced velar plosive
53% [N] voiced velar nasal
48% [?] voiceless glottal plosive
45% [n] voiced alveolar nasal
43% [s] voiceless alveolar sibilant fricative
42% [tS)] voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant affricate
41% [S] voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant fricative
40% [t] voiceless alveolar plosive
40% [f] voiceless labiodental fricative
39% [l] voiced alveolar lateral approximant
35% [n_d](?) voiced denti-alveolar nasal
34% [t_d](?) voiceless denti-alveolar plosive
31% [J] voiced palatal nasal
30% [l_d](?) voiced denti-alveolar lateral approximant
30% [s_d](?) voiceless denti-alveolar sibilant fricative
27% [d] voiced alveolar plosive
25% [dZ)] voiced palato-alveolar sibilant affricate
(I put (?) beside the ones I'm not sure of the X-SAMPA for.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
_____________________________________________________________________________________
In descending order by frequency of occurrence, the manners of articulation were;
Voiceless Stops
Nasals
Mute Fricatives
Voiced Stops
Voiced Fricatives
Mute Affricates
Laterals
Mute Apirated Plosives
Voiced Rhotics
Semi-vowels
Mute Ejective Stops
Voiced Affricates
In descending order by frequency of occurrence, the places of articulation were;
Labials
Velars
Alveolars
Dentals
Post-Alveolars
Palatals
Labio-Dentals
Palato-Alveolars
Retroflexes
Glottals
In descending order by frequency of occurrence, the consonant segments were;
m, k, p, b, g, N, tS, S, rr, ?, f, j, s, J, n, t, l, dZ, p_h, k_h, r`, w, x, t_d, d, v, n_d, d_d, k_>, c, T, z, h
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Does any of that help?
Since it's likely to disappear soon, I'll try to copy it here, I guess, if you're interested.
Anyway, here's the first post:
This lists, according to WALS.info, the commonest feature-values of several grammatical, morphological, and syntactic features in the natlangs in their database.
For each feature, the feature-values are listed from the commonest to the rarest, until the cumulative percent rises to 67% or more.
The percentage to the left of each feature-value is the percent of WALS.info's languages which have that value for that feature.
I don't intend to do this for the Lexicon or the "Other" groups of features.
I haven't done it for the Phonology group yet and don't know when nor whether I will.
I have done it, here, for:
* Nominal Syntax
* Complex Sentences
* Morphology
* Verbal Categories
* Word Order
* Simple Clauses
* Nominal Categories.
If you pick these values for these features your conlang will be "plain vanilla"; a first conlang probably should be. Maybe, later conlangs should probably have only one or two or three exceptional values to these features, unless you're positing non-human speakers.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nominal Syntax
58: Obligatory Possessive Inflection
82.38% Absent
61: Adjectives without Nouns
58.87% Without marking
14.52% Marked by preceding word
60: Genitives, Adjectives and Relative Clauses
55.80% Highly differentiated
23.91% Adjectives and relative clauses collapsed
64: Nominal and Verbal Conjunction
53.49% Identity
41.53% Differentiation
59: Possessive Classification
51.44% No possessive classification
38.68% Two classes
62: Action Nominal Constructions
25.00% No action nominals
17.26% Possessive-Accusative
14.88% Sentential
14.29% Restricted
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Complex Sentences
128: Utterance Complement Clauses
79.72% Balanced
122: Relativization on Subjects
75.30% Gap
125: Purpose Clauses
60.00% Deranked
22.35% Balanced
127: Reason Clauses
53.25% Balanced
24.85% Deranked
124: 'Want' Complement Subjects
50.88% Subject is left implicit
25.44% Subject is expressed overtly
123: Relativization on Obliques
49.11% Gap
17.86% Pronoun-retention
12.50% Non-reduction
126: 'When' Clauses
48.28% Balanced
29.31% Deranked
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Morphology
20: Fusion of Selected Inflectional Formatives
75.76% Exclusively concatenative
27: Reduplication
75.27% Productive full and partial reduplication
28: Case Syncretism
62.12% No case marking
17.68% No syncretism
25: Locus of Marking: Whole-language Typology
51.27% Inconsistent or other
19.92% Head-marking
21: Exponence of Selected Inflectional Formatives
46.30% No case
43.83% Monoexponential case
26: Prefixing vs. Suffixing in Inflectional Morphology
42.73% Strongly suffixing
14.54% Equal prefixing and suffixing
13.65% Little affixation
24: Locus of Marking in Possessive Noun Phrases
41.53% Dependent marking
33.05% Head marking
29: Syncretism in Verbal Person/Number Marking
40.91% Not syncretic
30.30% Syncretic
22: Inflectional Synthesis of the Verb
35.86% 4-5 categories per word
21.38% 6-7 categories per word
16.55% 2-3 categories per word
23: Locus of Marking in the Clause
30.08% Head marking
26.69% Dependent marking
24.58% Double marking
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Verbal Categories
73: The Optative
84.95% Inflectional optative absent
80: Verbal Number and Suppletion
82.38% None
74: Situational Possibility
67.52% Verbal constructions
79: Suppletion According to Tense and Aspect
63.73% None
18.65% Tense
69: Position of Tense-Aspect Affixes
59.23% Tense-aspect suffixes
14.12% Tense-aspect prefixes
72: Imperative-Hortative Systems
53.60% Neither type of system
35.47% Maximal system
70: The Morphological Imperative
53.38% Second singular and second plural
22.30% No second-person imperatives
68: The Perfect
51.35% No perfect
36.04% Other perfect
76: Overlap between Situational and Epistemic Modal Marking
50.72% No overlap
31.88% Overlap for either possibility or necessity
77: Semantic Distinctions of Evidentiality
43.30% No grammatical evidentials
39.71% Indirect only
78: Coding of Evidentiality
43.30% No grammatical evidentials
31.34% Verbal affix or clitic
66: The Past Tense
42.34% Present, no remoteness distinctions
39.64% No past tense
75: Epistemic Possibility
37.92% Other
35.00% Affixes on verbs
71: The Prohibitive
36.77% Normal imperative + special negative
29.29% Special imperative + special negative
22.83% Normal imperative + normal negative
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Word Order
82: Order of Subject and Verb
78.87% SV
90: Order of Relative Clause and Noun
71.77% Noun-Relative clause
93: Position of Interrogative Phrases in Content Questions
67.50% Not initial interrogative phrase
87: Order of Adjective and Noun
63.31% Noun-Adjective
28.11% Adjective-Noun
94: Order of Adverbial Subordinator and Clause
60.07% Initial subordinator word
14.73% Final subordinator word
86: Order of Genitive and Noun
54.84% Genitive-Noun
37.65% Noun-Genitive
89: Order of Numeral and Noun
51.40% Noun-Numeral
42.91% Numeral-Noun
96: Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Relative Clause and Noun
48.94% VO and NRel
23.15% Other
85: Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase
48.42% Postpositions
43.48% Prepositions
91: Order of Degree Word and Adjective
46.91% Degree word-Adjective
40.50% Adjective-Degree word
83: Order of Object and Verb
46.72% OV
46.72% VO
88: Order of Demonstrative and Noun
45.49% Demonstrative-Noun
44.29% Noun-Demonstrative
84: Order of Object, Oblique, and Verb
42.09% VOX
33.85% No dominant order
95: Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase
41.34% OV and Postpositions
40.37% VO and Prepositions
81: Order of Subject, Object and Verb
40.47% SOV
35.50% SVO
92: Position of Polar Question Particles
39.77% No question particle
35.14% Final
97: Relationship between the Order of Object and Verb and the Order of Adjective and Noun
34.53% VO and NAdj
24.53% OV and NAdj
17.18% OV and AdjN
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Simple Clauses
115: Negative Indefinite Pronouns and Predicate Negation
82.52% Predicate negation also present
111: Nonperiphrastic Causative Constructions
81.94% Morphological but no compound
108: Antipassive Constructions
75.26% No antipassive
119: Nominal and Locational Predication
69.69% Different
116: Polar Questions
62.00% Question particle
18.29% Interrogative verb morphology
101: Expression of Pronominal Subjects
60.68% Subject affixes on verb
11.42% Obligatory pronouns in subject position
110: Periphrastic Causative Constructions
57.63% Purposive but no sequential
29.66% Sequential but no purposive
106: Reciprocal Constructions
56.57% Distinct from reflexive
25.14% Identical to reflexive
100: Alignment of Verbal Person Marking
55.79% Accusative
22.11% Neutral
109: Applicative Constructions
54.64% No applicative construction
26.78% Benefactive and other; both bases
98: Alignment of Case Marking of Full Noun Phrases
51.58% Neutral
24.21% Nominative - accusative (standard)
102: Verbal Person Marking
51.06% Both the A and P arguments
21.69% No person marking
105: Ditransitive Constructions: The Verb 'Give'
50.00% Indirect-object construction
22.22% Double-object construction
104: Order of Person Markers on the Verb
49.34% A and P do not or do not both occur on the verb
25.33% A precedes P
103: Third Person Zero of Verbal Person Marking
47.63% No zero realization
25.26% No person marking
112: Negative Morphemes
47.18% Negative particle
33.53% Negative affix
121: Comparative Constructions
46.71% Locational
20.36% Conjoined
99: Alignment of Case Marking of Pronouns
45.93% Neutral
35.47% Nominative - accusative (standard)
113: Symmetric and Asymmetric Standard Negation
43.77% Both
38.38% Symmetric
118: Predicative Adjectives
39.12% Verbal encoding
34.20% Nonverbal encoding
114: Subtypes of Asymmetric Standard Negation
38.38% Non-assignable
27.61% A/Cat
13.47% A/Fin
117: Predicative Possession
26.25% Have-Possessive
24.58% Conjunctional Possessive
20.00% Locational Possessive
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nominal Categories
42: Pronominal and Adnominal Demonstratives
71.14% Same forms
44: Gender Distinctions in Independent Personal Pronouns
67.20% No gender distinctions
52: Comitatives and Instrumentals
66.15% Differentiation
23.60% Identity
45: Politeness Distinctions in Pronouns
65.70% Second person pronouns encode no politeness distinction
23.67% Second person pronouns encode a binary politeness distinction
39: Inclusive/Exclusive Distinction in Independent Pronouns
60.00% No inclusive/exclusive opposition
31.50% Inclusive and exclusive differentiated
46: Indefinite Pronouns
59.51% Interrogative-based indefinites
26.07% Generic-noun-based indefinites
31: Sex-based and Non-sex-based Gender Systems
56.42% No gender system
32.68% Sex-based gender system
32: Systems of Gender Assignment
56.42% No gender system
22.96% Semantic and formal assignment
30: Number of Genders
56.42% None
19.46% Two
48: Person Marking on Adpositions
55.29% Adpositions without person marking
21.96% Person marking for pronouns only
41: Distance Contrasts in Demonstratives
54.27% Two-way contrast
37.61% Three-way contrast
33: Coding of Nominal Plurality
51.36% Plural suffix
15.66% Plural word
51: Position of Case Affixes
46.04% Case suffixes
36.19% Neither case affixes nor adpositional clitics
34: Occurrence of Nominal Plurality
45.70% Plural in all nouns, always obligatory
18.90% Plural in all nouns, always optional
13.75% Plural only in human nouns, obligatory
43: Third Person Pronouns and Demonstratives
44.44% Third person pronouns and demonstratives are unrelated to demonstratives
23.11% Third person pronouns and demonstratives are related to all demonstratives
36: The Associative Plural
44.30% Associative plural marker also used for additive plurals
20.25% Special bound associative plural marker
19.83% Special non-bound associative plural marker
35: Plurality in Independent Personal Pronouns
43.68% Person-number stem
18.01% Person-number stem with a pronominal plural affix
9.58% Person-number affixes
38: Indefinite Articles
39.75% Neither indefinite nor definite
19.24% Indefinite word distinct from numeral for 'one'
19.03% Numeral for 'one' is used as indefinite article
40: Inclusive/Exclusive Distinction in Verbal Inflection
39.50% No inclusive/exclusive opposition
35.00% No person marking at all
49: Number of Cases
38.31% No morphological case-marking
14.18% 6-7 case categories
9.20% 10 or more case categories
9.20% Exclusively borderline morphological case-marking
37: Definite Articles
34.81% Definite word distinct from demonstrative
33.22% Neither definite nor indefinite article
50: Asymmetrical Case-Marking
31.03% No morphological case-marking
30.27% Symmetrical case-marking
20.31% Additive-quantitatively asymmetrical case-marking
_____________________________________________________________________________________
As for phoneme-inventory;
see http://www.conlanger.com/cbb/viewtopic. ... n%2A#47970.
Here are the commonest (that is, occuring in the most UPSID languages) two dozen consonant phones; all the consonant phones that occur in at least 25% of UPSID's languages.
94% [m] voiced bilabial nasal
89% [k] voiceless velar plosive
84% [j] voiced palatal approximant
83% [p] voiceless bilabial plosive
74% [w] voiced labio-velar approximant
64% [ b] voiced bilabial plosive
62% [h] voiceless glottal fricative
56% [g] voiced velar plosive
53% [N] voiced velar nasal
48% [?] voiceless glottal plosive
45% [n] voiced alveolar nasal
43% [s] voiceless alveolar sibilant fricative
42% [tS)] voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant affricate
41% [S] voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant fricative
40% [t] voiceless alveolar plosive
40% [f] voiceless labiodental fricative
39% [l] voiced alveolar lateral approximant
35% [n_d](?) voiced denti-alveolar nasal
34% [t_d](?) voiceless denti-alveolar plosive
31% [J] voiced palatal nasal
30% [l_d](?) voiced denti-alveolar lateral approximant
30% [s_d](?) voiceless denti-alveolar sibilant fricative
27% [d] voiced alveolar plosive
25% [dZ)] voiced palato-alveolar sibilant affricate
(I put (?) beside the ones I'm not sure of the X-SAMPA for.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
_____________________________________________________________________________________
In descending order by frequency of occurrence, the manners of articulation were;
Voiceless Stops
Nasals
Mute Fricatives
Voiced Stops
Voiced Fricatives
Mute Affricates
Laterals
Mute Apirated Plosives
Voiced Rhotics
Semi-vowels
Mute Ejective Stops
Voiced Affricates
In descending order by frequency of occurrence, the places of articulation were;
Labials
Velars
Alveolars
Dentals
Post-Alveolars
Palatals
Labio-Dentals
Palato-Alveolars
Retroflexes
Glottals
In descending order by frequency of occurrence, the consonant segments were;
m, k, p, b, g, N, tS, S, rr, ?, f, j, s, J, n, t, l, dZ, p_h, k_h, r`, w, x, t_d, d, v, n_d, d_d, k_>, c, T, z, h
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Does any of that help?
Re: Word Order
That is what I'm secretly hoping.Rodlox wrote:in creating an Avelang, your results will not be average
vec
Compilation of the features I have so far
I want to compile what I've got now into a little grammar sketch.
Consonants
/p t tʃ k ʔ/
/b d dʒ g/
/f s ∫ x h/
/m n ŋ/
/l r/
/w j/
I'm going to spell the /t∫/ and /dʒ/ as <ć> and <j>, /∫/ as <ś> and /j/ as <y>, but otherwise things are spelt according to IPA.
Vowels
/a e i o u/
Phonotactics
The syllable structure is "moderately complex": (C)(C)V(C)
The clusters allowed are:
pr, br, pl, bl, py, by
tr, dr, ty, dy, tw, dw
kr, dr, kl, gl, kw, gw
sr, sl, sw
or schematically:
There are 21 consonants, 5 vowels. The C–V ratio is 4.2.
Stress
Stress falls on the pænultimate syllable. Secondary stress falls two syllables later.
Verbs
Now for some news. We established that there is a window of marking between 5–8 features on each verb, but rather closer to the former then the latter. We've established that avrelang marks: tense (past—non-past), subject (person & number), object (person & number), mood (indicative—situational-necessitive—epistemic-necessative—imperative—hortative, at least—perhaps irrealis or something), aspect (not perfective, imperfective nor perfect, but something). It may also mark a passive voice or whatever else once we figure out what the alignment system is. If there's voice, it will be 6 categories which is perfect. No need to add more. All of these categories are marked with suffixes.
Nouns
Nouns do not mark case and they have no genders. But there is a plural and there is possessive marking. These are marked with suffixes. There is a definite article, which is a separate word. We don't know if it follows or precedes. Indefinite words have no article.
Adjectives, adverbs and postpositions
Adjectives do not decline unless they are heads which they can. They follow NP heads. Adverbs and postpositions never decline.
Pronouns
Personal pronouns. Let's look ahead at some WALS features:
Features 136-137
136 talks about m-T pronouns and n-m pronouns. Apparently, a great number of languages in Eurasia and N-Africa have personal pronouns starting with m and a dental obstruent (T). In the Americas, many languages start with n-m. Most languages have neither, so we don't have to be constrained by these. However, I'm going to have m and n in the first person because it seems very "average". But we'll do something different for the second person.
There is no clusivity marking. So I'm going to tell you what the personal pronouns are (at least for now), plural after comma:
1p am, amya (I, we)
2p ya, yawa (you, you guys)
3p da, daga (he/she/it, they)
The 1st person plural is formed by suffixing the 2nd person pronoun. The plurals of the 2nd and 3rd persons are formed with reduplication which is then dissimilated.
The demonstratives have two-way dexis and they are the same whether adnominal or not, just like the adjectives. I'm going to go ahead and put the article here; plural after comma:
art. ki, kiti (the)
prox. ti, tiki (this, these)
dist. ku, kutu (that, those)
The interrogatives and indefinites are related. I'm going to go ahead and make the relatives identical to the interrogatives.
thing/person mi, mini (what, who, which)
possessor ma (whose)
mana has no plural and does not appear adnominally, because there is an interrogative possessive suffix (-ma). mi is prefixed with the numeral one for making the indefinite pronoun.
All adnominal pronouns precede there nouns.
Consonants
/p t tʃ k ʔ/
/b d dʒ g/
/f s ∫ x h/
/m n ŋ/
/l r/
/w j/
I'm going to spell the /t∫/ and /dʒ/ as <ć> and <j>, /∫/ as <ś> and /j/ as <y>, but otherwise things are spelt according to IPA.
Vowels
/a e i o u/
Phonotactics
The syllable structure is "moderately complex": (C)(C)V(C)
The clusters allowed are:
pr, br, pl, bl, py, by
tr, dr, ty, dy, tw, dw
kr, dr, kl, gl, kw, gw
sr, sl, sw
or schematically:
- p + r,l,y
- t + r,y,w
- k + r,l,w
- s + r,l+w
- trer > trel
- blil > blir
There are 21 consonants, 5 vowels. The C–V ratio is 4.2.
Stress
Stress falls on the pænultimate syllable. Secondary stress falls two syllables later.
Verbs
Now for some news. We established that there is a window of marking between 5–8 features on each verb, but rather closer to the former then the latter. We've established that avrelang marks: tense (past—non-past), subject (person & number), object (person & number), mood (indicative—situational-necessitive—epistemic-necessative—imperative—hortative, at least—perhaps irrealis or something), aspect (not perfective, imperfective nor perfect, but something). It may also mark a passive voice or whatever else once we figure out what the alignment system is. If there's voice, it will be 6 categories which is perfect. No need to add more. All of these categories are marked with suffixes.
Nouns
Nouns do not mark case and they have no genders. But there is a plural and there is possessive marking. These are marked with suffixes. There is a definite article, which is a separate word. We don't know if it follows or precedes. Indefinite words have no article.
Adjectives, adverbs and postpositions
Adjectives do not decline unless they are heads which they can. They follow NP heads. Adverbs and postpositions never decline.
Pronouns
Personal pronouns. Let's look ahead at some WALS features:
Features 136-137
136 talks about m-T pronouns and n-m pronouns. Apparently, a great number of languages in Eurasia and N-Africa have personal pronouns starting with m and a dental obstruent (T). In the Americas, many languages start with n-m. Most languages have neither, so we don't have to be constrained by these. However, I'm going to have m and n in the first person because it seems very "average". But we'll do something different for the second person.
There is no clusivity marking. So I'm going to tell you what the personal pronouns are (at least for now), plural after comma:
1p am, amya (I, we)
2p ya, yawa (you, you guys)
3p da, daga (he/she/it, they)
The 1st person plural is formed by suffixing the 2nd person pronoun. The plurals of the 2nd and 3rd persons are formed with reduplication which is then dissimilated.
The demonstratives have two-way dexis and they are the same whether adnominal or not, just like the adjectives. I'm going to go ahead and put the article here; plural after comma:
art. ki, kiti (the)
prox. ti, tiki (this, these)
dist. ku, kutu (that, those)
The interrogatives and indefinites are related. I'm going to go ahead and make the relatives identical to the interrogatives.
thing/person mi, mini (what, who, which)
possessor ma (whose)
mana has no plural and does not appear adnominally, because there is an interrogative possessive suffix (-ma). mi is prefixed with the numeral one for making the indefinite pronoun.
All adnominal pronouns precede there nouns.
vec
Re: My Avrelang
Don't you mean two earlier? I only ask because by definition there isn't a second syllable after the penultimate syllable.Stress falls on the pænultimate syllable. Secondary stress falls two syllables later.
Also you say there is no plural form of mana but I don't see the word elsewhere. Was that possibly an old form of ma?
Re: My Avrelang
Whoopsiedoo. Yes, you're right about the stress and that should say ma. But I went back and forth with that form. Singular or plural? Ma or mana? I went with singular. The other is too random for avrelang. Thanks for that.
vec
Re: My Avrelang
http://wals.info/feature/combined/4/1?t ... =d99f&s=20
I was just looking at your phonology bit, and my problem is that your phonology doesn't look that normal; it does contain contrasts that I don't think are common cross-linguistically. But I combined the two features of size of inventory and fricative voicing contrast using WALS and the combination you've picked is in plurality (just). I just wonder if you can manage having no voicing contrast in the fricatives without introducing an odd contrast. You've had to go for ŋ, x, postalveolar affricates, glottal stops, and ʃ (for which, by the way, you've been using an integral sign – i suggest using a program like Ukelele to make a keyboard layout with IPA on it, so that you don't make errors like this), which in the ideal 'average' phonology, I would leave out.
Having had a cursory glance at some phonologies in that bracket, Basque includes a series of laminal and apical coronals, Norwegian includes a series of retroflexes, Tuvan according to WP does have a voicing contrast in fricatives, Dinka contains a dental/alveolar split, Sinhala contains retroflexes, etc - in short, I think you need to include an unaverage set of consonants, such as two sets of coronals, in order to have an average sized inventory and no voicing contrast in fricatives, and I would recommend either including a voicing contrast in fricatives (this combination on the map I linked contains only slightly fewer languages) or going for a smaller inventory.
Up to you though.
I was just looking at your phonology bit, and my problem is that your phonology doesn't look that normal; it does contain contrasts that I don't think are common cross-linguistically. But I combined the two features of size of inventory and fricative voicing contrast using WALS and the combination you've picked is in plurality (just). I just wonder if you can manage having no voicing contrast in the fricatives without introducing an odd contrast. You've had to go for ŋ, x, postalveolar affricates, glottal stops, and ʃ (for which, by the way, you've been using an integral sign – i suggest using a program like Ukelele to make a keyboard layout with IPA on it, so that you don't make errors like this), which in the ideal 'average' phonology, I would leave out.
Having had a cursory glance at some phonologies in that bracket, Basque includes a series of laminal and apical coronals, Norwegian includes a series of retroflexes, Tuvan according to WP does have a voicing contrast in fricatives, Dinka contains a dental/alveolar split, Sinhala contains retroflexes, etc - in short, I think you need to include an unaverage set of consonants, such as two sets of coronals, in order to have an average sized inventory and no voicing contrast in fricatives, and I would recommend either including a voicing contrast in fricatives (this combination on the map I linked contains only slightly fewer languages) or going for a smaller inventory.
Up to you though.
Re: My Avrelang
I think I see what you mean. The weird thing about this "average" phonology is that it doesn't look normal or real. But to me, that is kind of the fun of it. However, I'm a little confused as to what exactly you are suggesting I change. Right now, the phonology is designed to hit every single average on WALS and it does. That was the original goal. But what you're suggesting wouldn't exactly fulfill it.
The thing is, the size is entirely based around WALS average sizes. Averages ≠ Normalcy which is what this experiment is showing us. However, all the 21 consonants in there are in the top 21 list of consonants worldwide. It seems to me you would want the phonology to be smaller—however, most languages have this size inventory.
Or am I misunderstanding something?
The thing is, the size is entirely based around WALS average sizes. Averages ≠ Normalcy which is what this experiment is showing us. However, all the 21 consonants in there are in the top 21 list of consonants worldwide. It seems to me you would want the phonology to be smaller—however, most languages have this size inventory.
Or am I misunderstanding something?
vec
Re: My Avrelang
As for number of consonants and number of vowels, arithmetic mean isn't necessarily the ideal, but it seems to be working for you. However, you can (and, it seems, do) run into trouble if you want to include only sounds which most langs have; obviously, most langs will have some sounds which most langs don't have.
Fixed stress: If you look at feature 14, it's not actually a majority that have no fixed stress. It's the biggest category, but I think the sensible way to look at it would be in two steps - A, fixed or weight-sensitive stress, and B, on what syllable(s). Fixed stress is more common, and out of those, penultimate is the most common. (Incidentally, of the weight-sensitive ones, the most common category is "ultimate or penultimate".) So you're not cheating, this is the most logical answer.
But secondary stress two syllables after the main? That's kind of hard if the main is the penultimate, isn't it?
Is labiodental fricative more common than bilabial? Don't know many langs that have bilabial, but is just seems logical.
The vowels seem like a pretty obvious set. Maybe add a schwa, but I would say probably not. One question might be how common it is to have reduction to the point where there are fewer unstressed consonants, like English, but my guess would be it's not that common.
I'm a little sceptical of some of the consonants. Affricates, but just in one POA? Postalveolar fric? I've been told that it's rare to have more frics than plosives. Glides? Don't know if that's really that common. And glottal stop, that's a messy one - it seems to turn up as non-phonemic in various situations. I wonder, by the way, how having a glottal stop correlates with having uvulars?
Maybe you need to make some sort of compromise between "most common number of consonants" and "most common consonants". I would suggest slightly fewer consonants than you have.
I think the velar nasal is fine. 234 have it and 235 don't, according to WALS, so it's pretty even. I would say the most average would be to have it but not initially - that combination is less common, but it's in the middle.
Apart from that, my suggestion would be to remove the glides and the postalveolar, and have either no affricates or affricates in all POA.
Syllable structure - I would go with CVC, spontaneously, but I don't know which is the most common.
EDIT: Haven't read all your later posts, it looks like you've already mentioned some of this stuff.
One more thing tho: Note (in feature 81) that VO is more common than OV - basically, head-initial is more common than head-final. Then the position of the subject hops around a little; if I recall correctly, the position of the subject is also the one most likely to vary within a language (like, for example, German and Nordic have VSO in questions).
Fixed stress: If you look at feature 14, it's not actually a majority that have no fixed stress. It's the biggest category, but I think the sensible way to look at it would be in two steps - A, fixed or weight-sensitive stress, and B, on what syllable(s). Fixed stress is more common, and out of those, penultimate is the most common. (Incidentally, of the weight-sensitive ones, the most common category is "ultimate or penultimate".) So you're not cheating, this is the most logical answer.
But secondary stress two syllables after the main? That's kind of hard if the main is the penultimate, isn't it?
Is labiodental fricative more common than bilabial? Don't know many langs that have bilabial, but is just seems logical.
The vowels seem like a pretty obvious set. Maybe add a schwa, but I would say probably not. One question might be how common it is to have reduction to the point where there are fewer unstressed consonants, like English, but my guess would be it's not that common.
I'm a little sceptical of some of the consonants. Affricates, but just in one POA? Postalveolar fric? I've been told that it's rare to have more frics than plosives. Glides? Don't know if that's really that common. And glottal stop, that's a messy one - it seems to turn up as non-phonemic in various situations. I wonder, by the way, how having a glottal stop correlates with having uvulars?
Maybe you need to make some sort of compromise between "most common number of consonants" and "most common consonants". I would suggest slightly fewer consonants than you have.
I think the velar nasal is fine. 234 have it and 235 don't, according to WALS, so it's pretty even. I would say the most average would be to have it but not initially - that combination is less common, but it's in the middle.
Apart from that, my suggestion would be to remove the glides and the postalveolar, and have either no affricates or affricates in all POA.
Syllable structure - I would go with CVC, spontaneously, but I don't know which is the most common.
EDIT: Haven't read all your later posts, it looks like you've already mentioned some of this stuff.
One more thing tho: Note (in feature 81) that VO is more common than OV - basically, head-initial is more common than head-final. Then the position of the subject hops around a little; if I recall correctly, the position of the subject is also the one most likely to vary within a language (like, for example, German and Nordic have VSO in questions).
Re: My Avrelang
I'm kind of interested in this too, so I looked at the UPSID site a little more closely. It seems to me that the biggest problem with the site (or rather, with trying to use it for this kind of purpose) is that it makes fairly fine distinctions (for example, between alveolar, dental, and "dental/alveolar" [whatever exactly that means] POAs) regardless of whether they actually contrast in the language, and it doesn't provide an easy way to merge the non-contrasting ones back together. This distorts some of the figures quite a bit (e.g., clearly a lot more than 40% of languages have a phoneme /t/).
In an attempt to correct for this, I added together all three versions of the common coronal MOAs, and made a little chart of the 30 most common consonants according to both lists (i.e., up to /x/, the least common phoneme in your inventory, in the original UPSID list):
The merged sounds are marked with asterisks.
This probably overcorrects a little, since languages that contrast alveolars and dentals would be counted twice; but I suspect that that's not extremely common worldwide. (UPSID doesn't seem to have a way to even check this though-- except by actually examining the inventory of every language! I really wish it had an interface that allowed you to see how common various contrasts were, rather than merely listing phonemes.)
Anyway, judging by these lists, your inventory looks pretty "average" to me, in terms of being made up of common consonants. (Notice, for example, that /ŋ/ actually appears in slightly more than 50% of the UPSID sample, and /tʃ/ and /ʃ/ are both about as common as /f/.) I think the one change I'd definitely make if I were doing this is to trade /x/ for /ɲ/, which seems to be significantly more common. (I might also consider trading /dʒ/ for /ts/, but the symmetry of /tʃ dʒ/ seems worth keeping.)
In an attempt to correct for this, I added together all three versions of the common coronal MOAs, and made a little chart of the 30 most common consonants according to both lists (i.e., up to /x/, the least common phoneme in your inventory, in the original UPSID list):
Code: Select all
rank counting my way counting UPSID's way
near-duplicates merged near-duplicates listed separately
1 n* 98.7% m 94.25%
2 t* 97.3% k 89.4%
3 m 94.25% j 83.8%
4 k 89.4% p 83.1%
5 j 83.8% w 73.6%
6 p 83.1% b 63.6%
7 s* 82.7% h 61.9%
8 l* 76.3% g 56.1%
9 w 73.6% ŋ 52.5%
10 d* 64.5% ʔ 47.9%
11 b 63.6% n (alveolar) 44.8%
12 h 61.9% s (alveolar) 43.5%
13 g 56.1% tʃ 41.7%
14 ŋ 52.5% ʃ 41.5%
15 ʔ 47.9% t (alveolar) 40.1%
16 tʃ 41.7% f 39.9%
17 ʃ 41.5% l (alveolar) 38.6%
18 f 39.9% n (dental/alveolar) 35.5%
19 r* 34.4% t (dental/alveolar) 33.7%
20 ɲ 31.3% ɲ 31.3%
21 ɾ* 28.0% l (dental/alveolar) 30.2%
22 ts* 27.2% s (dental/alveolar) 29.9%
23 z* 27.0% d (alveolar) 26.6%
24 dʒ 25.1% dʒ 25.1%
25 tʰ* 25.1% t̪ (dental) 23.5%
26 kʰ 22.8% kʰ 22.8%
27 pʰ 22.4% pʰ 22.4%
28 v 21.1% r (alveolar) 21.1%
29 x 20.8% v 21.1%
30 kʼ 14.0% x 20.8%This probably overcorrects a little, since languages that contrast alveolars and dentals would be counted twice; but I suspect that that's not extremely common worldwide. (UPSID doesn't seem to have a way to even check this though-- except by actually examining the inventory of every language! I really wish it had an interface that allowed you to see how common various contrasts were, rather than merely listing phonemes.)
Anyway, judging by these lists, your inventory looks pretty "average" to me, in terms of being made up of common consonants. (Notice, for example, that /ŋ/ actually appears in slightly more than 50% of the UPSID sample, and /tʃ/ and /ʃ/ are both about as common as /f/.) I think the one change I'd definitely make if I were doing this is to trade /x/ for /ɲ/, which seems to be significantly more common. (I might also consider trading /dʒ/ for /ts/, but the symmetry of /tʃ dʒ/ seems worth keeping.)
Hüwryaasûr, priestess of the four hegemons, wrote:Ryunshurshuroshan, the floating lizard
Akana Wiki | Akana Forum
Re: My Avrelang
Maybe I should take out the /ŋ/ and replace it with /ɲ/ so that I get the WALS feature of most not having it, even though it is very common. And maybe I should take out /x/. That would give me 20:5=4 which is OK.
vec
Re: My Avrelang
Even though /ŋ/ is definitely more common than /ɲ/ (roughly 50% vs. 30% of langs)?
But do what you like of course! (I'm slightly tempted to try doing my own avralang now... I don't know if I'd have the patience to get very far with it, but it seems like an interesting exercise.)
But do what you like of course! (I'm slightly tempted to try doing my own avralang now... I don't know if I'd have the patience to get very far with it, but it seems like an interesting exercise.)
Hüwryaasûr, priestess of the four hegemons, wrote:Ryunshurshuroshan, the floating lizard
Akana Wiki | Akana Forum
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TomHChappell
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- Joined: Wed Dec 28, 2005 2:58 pm
Re: My Avrelang
I used the median.Chuma wrote:As for number of consonants and number of vowels, arithmetic mean isn't necessarily the ideal, but it seems to be working for you.
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Have you noticed in the Universals Archives that there are syntactic correlates to a language's preference for Iambic over Trochaic or vice-versa?
Last edited by TomHChappell on Tue Jan 11, 2011 9:36 am, edited 1 time in total.
Re: My Avrelang
The WALS feature actually says that most have it; notice that there is an extra difference between whether it's allowed initially or not, which is what makes the 'not having it' feature come out as the mode/plurality (which I've always thought is the worst kind of average).vecfaranti wrote:Maybe I should take out the /ŋ/ and replace it with /ɲ/ so that I get the WALS feature of most not having it, even though it is very common. And maybe I should take out /x/. That would give me 20:5=4 which is OK.
Excuse me, I was out by one - it's 235 not having it versus 234 having it. 50/50 toss up there, basically (there is absolutely no way that this is statistically significant!); I'd go for the velar nasal over the palatal nasal by far if you feel you have to have one.
Re: My Avrelang
Well, I'm actually very interested in what you were discussing before, but I didn't quite get what you meant, specifically. Could you write up your vision of the phonology? I'm currently going through a back and forth kind of thing and I want to change everything—an awful place to be.
vec
Re: My Avrelang
I'm not sure.... it is a difficult question...
maybe
which is 19 consonants
or else your one but without ʔ and x. Or without ŋ, but then 50% of languages have ŋ near enough, so I would keep it in... of course more than 50 apparently have ʔ so iunno.
the other thing is that as i said earlier not that many languages have the /l r/ contrast outside of Europe IIRC. so here's another possibility with 21 consonants (take out the voiced frics and put back ʔ if you don't want the voiced frics and that leaves 19):
the one thing i will say is that, if you keep yours (and actually there's no real reason why you shouldn't, actually, but you can go down to 19 consonants and stay in all the parameters...), IMO ć and ʔ are bad choices as orthographical letters, especially when you could use c without the accent.
for an orthography with your original inventory i would go with something like:
or
if you don't like the apostrophe.
maybe
Code: Select all
p t k
b d g
f s x
v z ɣ
m n ŋ
l r
w jor else your one but without ʔ and x. Or without ŋ, but then 50% of languages have ŋ near enough, so I would keep it in... of course more than 50 apparently have ʔ so iunno.
the other thing is that as i said earlier not that many languages have the /l r/ contrast outside of Europe IIRC. so here's another possibility with 21 consonants (take out the voiced frics and put back ʔ if you don't want the voiced frics and that leaves 19):
Code: Select all
p t tʃ k
b d dʒ g
f s ʃ h
v z ʒ
m n ŋ
w r jfor an orthography with your original inventory i would go with something like:
Code: Select all
p t q k '
b d j g
f s c x h
m n ŋ
l r y wCode: Select all
p t c k q
b d j g
f z s x h
m n ŋ
l r y w-
TomHChappell
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- Joined: Wed Dec 28, 2005 2:58 pm
Re: My Avrelang
Vecfaranti, I'm afraid this thread has tended lately to go to be way too much about the phonetics and phonology -- actually, just about the phoneme inventory, not about the rest of phonetics and phonology, such as sandhi and allophony and phonotactics and syllable structure -- and too little about the syntax and semantics and morphology and pragmatics and prosody.
I'd like to hear about your choices of the most-common values of each "parameter" or "feature" that don't have to do with your phoneme inventory.
In phonetics and phonology that don't have to do with phoneme-inventory:
Some phonotactics:
Which phoneme-pairs are allowed to begin words and which aren't?
Which phoneme-pairs are allowed to end words and which aren't?
Can you generalize that to phoneme-pairs that can begin or end morphemes and/or syllables and/or onsets and/or rimes and/or nuclei and/or codas? And which can't?
How about which phoneme-pairs can occur word-internally and which can't?
And can you generalize that to phoneme-pairs that can occur and which can't occur internally to morphemes and/or syllables and/or onsets and/or rimes and/or nuclei and/or codas?
I guess the stuff about syllables and rimes and onsets and codas and nuclei above is pretty much settled by your syllable-structure. (You'd need to decide on Feature 12; have you yet?) How about words and morphemes?
Prosody; How does your language distribute primary stress? It's got fixed stress-locations, not being weight-sensitive; and that fixed location is the next-to-last syllable. Does that mean it's the first syllable if the word only has two syllables?
How does it distribute secondary stress (rhythm, feature 17)? You say "the second syllable after the main stress"; but that doesn't make sense if the main stress is on the second-to-last syllable, since in that case there's only one syllable after the main stress. And what if there are two or more syllables before the main stress -- how is secondary stress distributed among them? I would assume you'd start with either the first or the second syllable, and then secondarily-stress alternate syllables until you get to the point where the next syllable is the main stress. Do you start at the beginning of the word and work forward, or do you start at the primarily-stressed syllable and work backward?
Tone: You said your language isn't tonal, though most are, because most in the WALS.info sample-database aren't. In that case, what is "stress" in your language, since most languages' "stress" is mostly pitch-accent?
Morphology:
All concatenating affixing morphology, or are their lots of infixes, circumfixes, suprafixes (such as morphological tone or morphological stress or morphological length ("chronemes")), and "transfixes" (like the templates in 3Cons)?
I expect it to be "all concatenating", that is, all prefixes and suffixes.
Is it totally agglutinating? It looks like it's agglutinating for the most part (features 20-22).
Is there a lot of lexical suppletion?
Head-marking, you say.
More suffixes than prefixes.
No cases; no genders; no syncretism.
Plurals mandatory.
Definite article yes; indefinite article no.
Clusivity, no.
Two-way distance distinction for demonstratives.
Indefinite pronouns and interrogative pronouns related.
Comitative "with" different from instrumental "with", not like English.
Possessive suffixes as well as plural suffixes for nouns.
Adjectives "can act like nouns". Adjectives and genitives and relative clauses are not to be confused with one another.
Conjunctives for verbs and for nouns are the same; comitative "with" and conjunction "and" are different.
Morphological tenses are past vs non-past; "future" and "perfect" will have to be shown non-morphologically.
Verbs agree with both subject and object.
What about features 70-78?
The rest of features 73-80 you say doesn't have morphology.
-------------------------------------------------
Syntax:
Word-order SXOV and SOVX.
Postpositions.
Genitive-noun and demonstrative-noun, but noun-adjective and noun-RC.
You've handled features 91-97.
-------------------------------------------------
Have you already answered all of these questions?
What about the following?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Complex Sentences
128: Utterance Complement Clauses
79.72% Balanced
122: Relativization on Subjects
75.30% Gap
125: Purpose Clauses
60.00% Deranked
127: Reason Clauses
53.25% Balanced
124: 'Want' Complement Subjects
50.88% Subject is left implicit
123: Relativization on Obliques
49.11% Gap
126: 'When' Clauses
48.28% Balanced
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Simple Clauses
115: Negative Indefinite Pronouns and Predicate Negation
82.52% Predicate negation also present
111: Nonperiphrastic Causative Constructions
81.94% Morphological but no compound
108: Antipassive Constructions
75.26% No antipassive
119: Nominal and Locational Predication
69.69% Different
116: Polar Questions
62.00% Question particle
101: Expression of Pronominal Subjects
60.68% Subject affixes on verb
110: Periphrastic Causative Constructions
57.63% Purposive but no sequential
106: Reciprocal Constructions
56.57% Distinct from reflexive
100: Alignment of Verbal Person Marking
55.79% Accusative
109: Applicative Constructions
54.64% No applicative construction
98: Alignment of Case Marking of Full Noun Phrases
51.58% Neutral
102: Verbal Person Marking
51.06% Both the A and P arguments
105: Ditransitive Constructions: The Verb 'Give'
50.00% Indirect-object construction
104: Order of Person Markers on the Verb
49.34% A and P do not or do not both occur on the verb
Is this a problem? How does it cross-correlate with Feature 102?
103: Third Person Zero of Verbal Person Marking
47.63% No zero realization
112: Negative Morphemes
47.18% Negative particle
121: Comparative Constructions
46.71% Locational
99: Alignment of Case Marking of Pronouns
45.93% Neutral
113: Symmetric and Asymmetric Standard Negation
43.77% Both
118: Predicative Adjectives
39.12% Verbal encoding
114: Subtypes of Asymmetric Standard Negation
38.38% Non-assignable
117: Predicative Possession
26.25% Have-Possessive
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Have you already considered all of those features?
I'd like to hear about your choices of the most-common values of each "parameter" or "feature" that don't have to do with your phoneme inventory.
In phonetics and phonology that don't have to do with phoneme-inventory:
Some phonotactics:
Which phoneme-pairs are allowed to begin words and which aren't?
Which phoneme-pairs are allowed to end words and which aren't?
Can you generalize that to phoneme-pairs that can begin or end morphemes and/or syllables and/or onsets and/or rimes and/or nuclei and/or codas? And which can't?
How about which phoneme-pairs can occur word-internally and which can't?
And can you generalize that to phoneme-pairs that can occur and which can't occur internally to morphemes and/or syllables and/or onsets and/or rimes and/or nuclei and/or codas?
I guess the stuff about syllables and rimes and onsets and codas and nuclei above is pretty much settled by your syllable-structure. (You'd need to decide on Feature 12; have you yet?) How about words and morphemes?
Prosody; How does your language distribute primary stress? It's got fixed stress-locations, not being weight-sensitive; and that fixed location is the next-to-last syllable. Does that mean it's the first syllable if the word only has two syllables?
How does it distribute secondary stress (rhythm, feature 17)? You say "the second syllable after the main stress"; but that doesn't make sense if the main stress is on the second-to-last syllable, since in that case there's only one syllable after the main stress. And what if there are two or more syllables before the main stress -- how is secondary stress distributed among them? I would assume you'd start with either the first or the second syllable, and then secondarily-stress alternate syllables until you get to the point where the next syllable is the main stress. Do you start at the beginning of the word and work forward, or do you start at the primarily-stressed syllable and work backward?
Tone: You said your language isn't tonal, though most are, because most in the WALS.info sample-database aren't. In that case, what is "stress" in your language, since most languages' "stress" is mostly pitch-accent?
Morphology:
All concatenating affixing morphology, or are their lots of infixes, circumfixes, suprafixes (such as morphological tone or morphological stress or morphological length ("chronemes")), and "transfixes" (like the templates in 3Cons)?
I expect it to be "all concatenating", that is, all prefixes and suffixes.
Is it totally agglutinating? It looks like it's agglutinating for the most part (features 20-22).
Is there a lot of lexical suppletion?
Head-marking, you say.
More suffixes than prefixes.
No cases; no genders; no syncretism.
Plurals mandatory.
Definite article yes; indefinite article no.
Clusivity, no.
Two-way distance distinction for demonstratives.
Indefinite pronouns and interrogative pronouns related.
Comitative "with" different from instrumental "with", not like English.
Possessive suffixes as well as plural suffixes for nouns.
Adjectives "can act like nouns". Adjectives and genitives and relative clauses are not to be confused with one another.
Conjunctives for verbs and for nouns are the same; comitative "with" and conjunction "and" are different.
Morphological tenses are past vs non-past; "future" and "perfect" will have to be shown non-morphologically.
Verbs agree with both subject and object.
What about features 70-78?
The rest of features 73-80 you say doesn't have morphology.
-------------------------------------------------
Syntax:
Word-order SXOV and SOVX.
Postpositions.
Genitive-noun and demonstrative-noun, but noun-adjective and noun-RC.
You've handled features 91-97.
-------------------------------------------------
Have you already answered all of these questions?
What about the following?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Complex Sentences
128: Utterance Complement Clauses
79.72% Balanced
122: Relativization on Subjects
75.30% Gap
125: Purpose Clauses
60.00% Deranked
127: Reason Clauses
53.25% Balanced
124: 'Want' Complement Subjects
50.88% Subject is left implicit
123: Relativization on Obliques
49.11% Gap
126: 'When' Clauses
48.28% Balanced
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Simple Clauses
115: Negative Indefinite Pronouns and Predicate Negation
82.52% Predicate negation also present
111: Nonperiphrastic Causative Constructions
81.94% Morphological but no compound
108: Antipassive Constructions
75.26% No antipassive
119: Nominal and Locational Predication
69.69% Different
116: Polar Questions
62.00% Question particle
101: Expression of Pronominal Subjects
60.68% Subject affixes on verb
110: Periphrastic Causative Constructions
57.63% Purposive but no sequential
106: Reciprocal Constructions
56.57% Distinct from reflexive
100: Alignment of Verbal Person Marking
55.79% Accusative
109: Applicative Constructions
54.64% No applicative construction
98: Alignment of Case Marking of Full Noun Phrases
51.58% Neutral
102: Verbal Person Marking
51.06% Both the A and P arguments
105: Ditransitive Constructions: The Verb 'Give'
50.00% Indirect-object construction
104: Order of Person Markers on the Verb
49.34% A and P do not or do not both occur on the verb
Is this a problem? How does it cross-correlate with Feature 102?
103: Third Person Zero of Verbal Person Marking
47.63% No zero realization
112: Negative Morphemes
47.18% Negative particle
121: Comparative Constructions
46.71% Locational
99: Alignment of Case Marking of Pronouns
45.93% Neutral
113: Symmetric and Asymmetric Standard Negation
43.77% Both
118: Predicative Adjectives
39.12% Verbal encoding
114: Subtypes of Asymmetric Standard Negation
38.38% Non-assignable
117: Predicative Possession
26.25% Have-Possessive
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Have you already considered all of those features?
Last edited by TomHChappell on Mon Jan 17, 2011 1:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Re: My Avrelang
After thinking very long and hard, I've decided to not make any changes to the phonology as it is written by me further up at this time. Who knows what happens in revisions. Right now, I just want to get down all of the basics and the issue of phonology is derailing the process, I agree with Tom. However, Tom, I don't quite appreciate you doing all the work for me. Going through WALS and making the language was sort of my job. I'm just going to skip over the features you discussed and do it myself. Thank you, though, for your enthusiasm.
So, moving along.
Features 98-100
Alignment of case marking on nouns has basically already been settled. We already knew it would not be overt. So no case suffixes, yet again. Same story for pronouns. However, verbs mark for constituents in an accusative manner.
Features 101-104
So, it is completely clear that the normal expression of a pronominal subject is by affixing the verb and the pronoun is left out. This is the far most common strategy and it outnumbers all others combined. In 102 we find out what we already knew, both A and P are marked on the verb. 103 tells us that the third person never is expressed by a zero-morpheme. We already knew cause Tom the spoil-sport spoiled the fun. 104 gets us in trouble because we will not be able to use the highest value here—it deals with the order of the A and P suffixes on the verb. The options there outnumber those languages that do not mark both, the highest value in this case. Drum roll... A precedes P. This matches perfectly with the basic word order.
Feature 105
So, next we learn about ditransitive constructions with a verb such as give. Turns out, avrelang employs an indirect-object construction, like most other languages. We can assume based on prior knowledge of the language this will be marked with postpositions.
Feature 106
Reciprocal constructions: these are distinct from reflexive. How, we have yet to find out. Gotta leave out some of the fun for the after-party.
Feature 107-111
Passive constructions are absent. Now, what does this mean, according to WALS? Is there no kind of agent demotion? They say not. Of course there is. I propose that since person marking is obligatory on the verb, agent suppression cannot be achieved by simply omitting a subject. And I don't like the idea of some kind of impersonal pronoun in this case. Instead, the 3.pl will be used, such as in Paamese and in American English. The article states that this does not exclude the possibility of other voices than the passive, so stay tuned to find out if there are any!
The next feature is 108, which is about the antipassive. There is none.
Then comes the question of applicative constructions. What is that? one might ask. Well:
So how about causatives? Turns out, avrelang features purposive but not sequential periphrastic causatives. This means:
Well, I honestly can't really make it out. While I consider myself somewhat intelligent, I'm going to need some help again.
111 tells us that the language has nonperiphrastic causatives. Quelle surprise!
This covers the basics of valency-type marking.
Features 112-115
Next, nothing but negativity. Turns out, avrelang uses a negative particle and if you'll remember from feature 71, there may be a different one for the prohibitive mood. Or at least some sort of structure that differs from the imperative. Anyhoo, is standard negation symmetric or asymmetric? Well, turns out it's both. Yet again, I feel like I'm in over my head, but I shall read better about it. *Reads* Well, turns out, this means that in some cases, negation is symmetric (identical across the board, causing no ruckus in syntax besides the addition of the negative particle), sometimes it is asymmetric. In other words, certain morphological categories will be symmetric with regards to negation, but certain ones will have breaks.
Feature 114, which describes patterns found in asymmetry patterns of negation, will not allow us to choose the highest value due to our findings in chapter 113. The runner up is "In other grammatical categories: Subtype A/Cat". What?! you ask. Well, ask the Finn. This turns out to mean that at least one marked category on the verb changes under negation. What this will end up being I will decide later. I will tell you, these past two articles of WALS are the worst ones I've read yet and several things in them are differently presented from other articles. The lack of consistency here bothers me.
Let's see what 115 has in store for us. Negative indefinite pronouns and predicate negation. Personne. Turns out, both, predicate negation is also present [with negative pronouns]. In other terms double negation, so deplored by English grammaticians, ain't no bitch after all.
So to conlude we have a negative particle, that can affect the marking of the verb in certain cases and whenever a negative determiner appears in the sentence, the negative particle must appear with it. We laso know that prohbitives are in some manner different from imperatives.
Feature 116
Polar bears. I mean polar questions! What wonderful creatures—I mean features. To be or not to be? For the polar bear, alas, it seems that it is not to be. The bear asks and nature is speaking as we speak. And also the Icelandic police. Are you full of questions now? What the f is he going on about, you ask yourself. Well, we are all just one spurningarmerki and I question, are you questioning? All of this would be so much less confusing if we were to just stop this nonsense and find out how polar questions are formed in avrelang, wouldn't it? Turns out after all the polar bear killing that an interrogative particle is used.
Features 117-120
Predicative possession. Possessed with excitement? Well, only if you're a predicate. In avrelang, like most languages in WALS, possession is indicated with a 'have'-verb. Nothing fancy.
Feature 118 deals with predicative adjectives: "the adjective is predicative" vs. "the adjective predicatives" vs. either possible. Well, avrelang, being pretty average, goes with "the adjective predicatives". Before, we learnt that adjectives can stand alone as nouns. Turns out they can be verbs too. How fun for them.
Next up is nominal and locational predication. Turns out it is different—not the same as in the minority of languages. This means that there are locational verbs "to be at" different from other copulae "to be". Just like Spanish and Mandarin.
To wrap up predication issues, WALS goes into the subject of zero copula. This is not possible in avrelang. It is in Russian, though. Just in case you didn't know...
Feature 121
The last feature in simple clauses and the last feature I cover in this post is comparatives. Avrelang uses locational comparison. While the other contenders are all close to each other, locational is a clear winner. This means that the NP representing the point of comparison is in a locational case or in this case has a locational postposition.
Next up will be a little bit of tidying up and settling what the verbal system is capable of. Thanks to everyone who is still following.
So, moving along.
Features 98-100
Alignment of case marking on nouns has basically already been settled. We already knew it would not be overt. So no case suffixes, yet again. Same story for pronouns. However, verbs mark for constituents in an accusative manner.
Features 101-104
So, it is completely clear that the normal expression of a pronominal subject is by affixing the verb and the pronoun is left out. This is the far most common strategy and it outnumbers all others combined. In 102 we find out what we already knew, both A and P are marked on the verb. 103 tells us that the third person never is expressed by a zero-morpheme. We already knew cause Tom the spoil-sport spoiled the fun. 104 gets us in trouble because we will not be able to use the highest value here—it deals with the order of the A and P suffixes on the verb. The options there outnumber those languages that do not mark both, the highest value in this case. Drum roll... A precedes P. This matches perfectly with the basic word order.
Feature 105
So, next we learn about ditransitive constructions with a verb such as give. Turns out, avrelang employs an indirect-object construction, like most other languages. We can assume based on prior knowledge of the language this will be marked with postpositions.
Feature 106
Reciprocal constructions: these are distinct from reflexive. How, we have yet to find out. Gotta leave out some of the fun for the after-party.
Feature 107-111
Passive constructions are absent. Now, what does this mean, according to WALS? Is there no kind of agent demotion? They say not. Of course there is. I propose that since person marking is obligatory on the verb, agent suppression cannot be achieved by simply omitting a subject. And I don't like the idea of some kind of impersonal pronoun in this case. Instead, the 3.pl will be used, such as in Paamese and in American English. The article states that this does not exclude the possibility of other voices than the passive, so stay tuned to find out if there are any!
The next feature is 108, which is about the antipassive. There is none.
Then comes the question of applicative constructions. What is that? one might ask. Well:
While an interesting prospect, it is not present in avrelang.In an applicative construction , the number of object arguments selected by the predicate is increased by one with respect to the basic construction.
So how about causatives? Turns out, avrelang features purposive but not sequential periphrastic causatives. This means:
Well, I honestly can't really make it out. While I consider myself somewhat intelligent, I'm going to need some help again.
111 tells us that the language has nonperiphrastic causatives. Quelle surprise!
This covers the basics of valency-type marking.
Features 112-115
Next, nothing but negativity. Turns out, avrelang uses a negative particle and if you'll remember from feature 71, there may be a different one for the prohibitive mood. Or at least some sort of structure that differs from the imperative. Anyhoo, is standard negation symmetric or asymmetric? Well, turns out it's both. Yet again, I feel like I'm in over my head, but I shall read better about it. *Reads* Well, turns out, this means that in some cases, negation is symmetric (identical across the board, causing no ruckus in syntax besides the addition of the negative particle), sometimes it is asymmetric. In other words, certain morphological categories will be symmetric with regards to negation, but certain ones will have breaks.
Feature 114, which describes patterns found in asymmetry patterns of negation, will not allow us to choose the highest value due to our findings in chapter 113. The runner up is "In other grammatical categories: Subtype A/Cat". What?! you ask. Well, ask the Finn. This turns out to mean that at least one marked category on the verb changes under negation. What this will end up being I will decide later. I will tell you, these past two articles of WALS are the worst ones I've read yet and several things in them are differently presented from other articles. The lack of consistency here bothers me.
Let's see what 115 has in store for us. Negative indefinite pronouns and predicate negation. Personne. Turns out, both, predicate negation is also present [with negative pronouns]. In other terms double negation, so deplored by English grammaticians, ain't no bitch after all.
So to conlude we have a negative particle, that can affect the marking of the verb in certain cases and whenever a negative determiner appears in the sentence, the negative particle must appear with it. We laso know that prohbitives are in some manner different from imperatives.
Feature 116
Polar bears. I mean polar questions! What wonderful creatures—I mean features. To be or not to be? For the polar bear, alas, it seems that it is not to be. The bear asks and nature is speaking as we speak. And also the Icelandic police. Are you full of questions now? What the f is he going on about, you ask yourself. Well, we are all just one spurningarmerki and I question, are you questioning? All of this would be so much less confusing if we were to just stop this nonsense and find out how polar questions are formed in avrelang, wouldn't it? Turns out after all the polar bear killing that an interrogative particle is used.
Features 117-120
Predicative possession. Possessed with excitement? Well, only if you're a predicate. In avrelang, like most languages in WALS, possession is indicated with a 'have'-verb. Nothing fancy.
Feature 118 deals with predicative adjectives: "the adjective is predicative" vs. "the adjective predicatives" vs. either possible. Well, avrelang, being pretty average, goes with "the adjective predicatives". Before, we learnt that adjectives can stand alone as nouns. Turns out they can be verbs too. How fun for them.
Next up is nominal and locational predication. Turns out it is different—not the same as in the minority of languages. This means that there are locational verbs "to be at" different from other copulae "to be". Just like Spanish and Mandarin.
To wrap up predication issues, WALS goes into the subject of zero copula. This is not possible in avrelang. It is in Russian, though. Just in case you didn't know...
Feature 121
The last feature in simple clauses and the last feature I cover in this post is comparatives. Avrelang uses locational comparison. While the other contenders are all close to each other, locational is a clear winner. This means that the NP representing the point of comparison is in a locational case or in this case has a locational postposition.
Next up will be a little bit of tidying up and settling what the verbal system is capable of. Thanks to everyone who is still following.
vec
Re: My Avrelang
Figured you would have said, "This not possible in avrelang."vecfaranti wrote: To wrap up predication issues, WALS goes into the subject of zero copula. This is not possible in avrelang. It is in Russian, though. Just in case you didn't know...
Also, in Soviet Russia, copula zeros you.
-
TomHChappell
- Avisaru
- Posts: 807
- Joined: Wed Dec 28, 2005 2:58 pm
Re: My Avrelang
Sorry!vecfaranti wrote:However, Tom, I don't quite appreciate you doing all the work for me. Going through WALS and making the language was sort of my job. I'm just going to skip over the features you discussed and do it myself.
I only intended to show that I'd done something sort of like that some time ago on a different forum. (But only for some of the features.)
I'll edit that post to make it a "spoiler".
And, because I greyed and sized it out;
How will you reconcile the choice for feature 102 with that for feature 104?
Re: My Avrelang
Well, too many features already said that both are marked on the verb in most languages to ignore, so 104 has to take a back seat and I'm going for the runner up in that case.
vec