zompist bboard

Tentatively named Qan Hlais ("this speak").

Well, I am going to need more than a few naming languages for a roleplaying setting I've adopted as a forever-work-in-progress, and I'd like some names to have a sort of SE Asian feel to them. Naturally, I'm now battling verbs in a language explicitly created for producing proper nouns. Oh well.The grammar is shaky at this point and I'm not sure where to go with it. I want SOV order and Chinese-style relative clauses, but it seems difficult to make this unambiguous.

What I have so far is as follows.

Phonology

I do love my lateral fricatives. I fear the alveolar PoA is too "heavy," but I actually like the sound of one of my languages for once.
/q/ is realized as a glottal stop syllable-finally.




Vowels: /a i u/ <a i u>

All diphthongs are valid, but /wu/ and /ji/ don't occur.
I'm a cowardly Westerner, so it's non-tonal.
Length is non-phonemic, though I'd consider changing this if macrons were easier to type.

Syllables are (C)CV(C), if one considers diphthongs as single vowels. I'm making this up as I go along, of course, but the only onset blend so far is /sr/.

Declarative statements

For equivalences, use a zero copula.

pa sran
2s ox
"You are an/the ox."

pa sran hli
2s ox NEG
"You are not an/the ox."

Adjectives are verbs:

sran wang
ox large
"The ox is large"

For objects, use a particle to precede the phrase.

hai fi sran thas
1s OBJ ox think
"I think about the ox."

fi sran hair
OBJ ox kill
"The ox was killed"

For past tense, use a particle immediately before the verb.

hai fi pa lu hlais
1s OBJ 2s PST speak
"I spoke to you."

There's a set of six determiners, specifying the head as proximal, distal, or indefinite ("some"), and animate or inanimate. Animacy is not intrinsic to the noun, and can be used to make useful distinctions.

hai fi qan sran hlir
1s OBJ PRX:A ox discuss
"I'm talking about this (living) ox."

hai fi xan sran hlir
1s OBJ PRX:I ox discuss
"I'm talking about this ox (carcass)."

Some verbs can be serialized.

hai fi sran lu hair hlais
1s OBJ ox PST kill speak
"It's said I killed the ox."

qun sran wang thas
DIST:A ox large think
"I think that ox (over there) is large."

Now, verby adjectives beg adjective-y relative clauses. Particles like the object can indicate the beginning of a relative clause, which ends with the REL particle. I don't know where else this would happen, but I think it could be done more elegantly.

pa fi wang thas jaq sran lu hair
1s OBJ large think REL ox PST kill
"You killed the ox that I thought to be large."

hai fi xu sran wang jaq lu hlais
1s OBJ PRX:I ox large REL PST speak
"I said that this is a large carcass."

hai fi pa fi sran lu hair jaq hlais
1s OBJ 2s OBJ ox PST kill REL speak
"I'm saying that you killed the ox."

Here's some ambiguity, however:

hai fi pa lu hair jaq sran hlir
1s OBJ 2s PST kill REL ox discuss
"I'm talking about the ox you killed." or "The (I killed you) ox is discussing."

The second interpretation is of course nonsense and ungrammatical because of the verb valence and the ox's lack of participation in its own relative clause. I think there shouldn't be any real ambiguity if the verbs are strict about what complements they can take.

We'll throw in some dative particles and adverbs, which precede the verb. Dative particles initiate relative clauses.

hai fi pa mai lu hlais
1s OBJ 2s yesterday PST speak
"I spoke with you yesterday."

hai fi pa thu fi sran lu hair jaq mai lu hlais
1s OBJ 2s ABL OBJ ox PST kill REL yesterday PST speak
"I spoke to you yesterday about how the ox was killed."

pa fi xan sran fan hai lu laux hli
2s OBJ DIST:I ox ILL 1s PST give NEG
"You didn't give that ox carcass to me."

Interrogatives

The question particle can precede an entire clause to question if it is true.

xa pa fi sran lu hair?
Q 2s OBJ ox PST kill
"Did you kill the ox?"

The negative particle can be added to invert the question.

hli xa pa fi sran lu hair?
NEG Q 2s OBJ ox PST kill
"Didn't you kill the ox?"

The question particle can replace a noun in a clause to ask for one to take its place.

pa fi hai thu fi xa lu hair jaq mai lu hlais
2s OBJ 1s ABL OBJ Q PST kill REL yesterday PST speak
"You spoke to me yesterday about how what was killed?" but also "What was killed, the murder of which you spoke to me about yesterday?"

That's all for now. As you can see, the lexicon is limited right now. If there are any obvious ways this could break, or if it plain doesn't make sense, please alert me to them now. Any other feedback also appreciated.

Hello TheCommissar and welcome to the board.

I'm a fan of isolating languages, too, so I thought I'd check your thread out. I like the phonology and the name you've chosen. Your first example sentence could well be ambiguous though. "You are an ox" needs to be considered along with other kinds of nominal predicates, so they work together as a system. This is partly because the English verb "to be" has several distinct jobs to do.

A lot of isolating languages have no copula for predicate adjectives, so "Ox strong" is fine, but they often have one for predicate nouns (see Wikipedia article on "Copula (linguistics)" ). You need to distinguish the following noun-noun relations:

Proper inclusion: Individual X is a member of class Y - You are an ox
Equivalence: Individual X = Individual Y - I am his father
Possession: Individual X own a/the Y - I have an ox
Locative: X is in/on/at the Y - The ox is in the field
Existential (1): There is an ox in the field
Existential (2): There are oxen (i.e. There are such things as oxen (in the world) )

Any thoughts on those?

Hurrah, attention. Sure, I'll elaborate on the copula.

I'll have a verb "to exist" which can address the two existential cases.

sran ki
ox exist
"Oxen exist."

qun sran ki hli
DIST:A ox exist NEG
"That ox (that you're thinking of) doesn't exist."

For the locative cases, I'll use a locative particle to denote an indirect object. The following two cases are distinguished

sran las hlia ki
ox LOC field exist
"In the field is an ox." (Emphasizing the ox as a characteristic of the field)

sran las hlia piun
ox LOC field stand
"The ox is (standing) in the field." (Emphasizing the field as a characteristic of the ox)

As far as the ambiguity of being a member of the set of oxen versus being the same entity as a specific ox, I realize I can take the predicate nouns a step further and treat each noun N as a verb meaning "to be an N." To establish the identicality of two specific entities, where it must be unambiguous, I'll use an essive particle:

qan sran phai qun sran ki hli
PRX:A ox ESS DIST:A ox exist NEG
"This ox is not the same as that ox."

hai sran hli
1s ox NEG
"I'm not an ox."

But, because there's only one second person:

hai pa hli
1s 2s NEG
"I'm not you"

Another case that comes to mind is relative clauses.

qan sran phai pa fi phai maq lu ki jaq fan hai lu hlais jaq ki hli
PRX:A ox ESS 2s OBJ ESS 3s PST exist REL ILL 1s PST speak REL exist NEG
"This ox isn't what you said it was."
Literally, "this ox doesn't exist as that which you said to me that it existed as."

If you think macrons are hard to type, I'd suggest switching to the keyboard layout.

_________________
Knowledge is power, and power corrupts. So study hard and be evil!

Looks fine. Your alveolar POA is not too heavy; many languages have that many alveolars. And if macrons are hard to type, why don't you use acutes or circumflexes?

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ESTAR-3SG:P human-OBJ only human-OBJ true-OBJ REL-LOC play-3SG:A