An overview of Acranasian

[Risla]

I've just put out a(n extremely disorganized) post on Acranasian on my blog. I'd really appreciate any questions or feedback people have, or suggestions on how to organize the grammatical information more effectively than "and also, this reminds me of this other thing!".

[dhok]

Looks like Nahuatl meets Athabaskan. I like it!

[Sevly]

Isolating languages are my personal favorite. A couple of comments and questions:

• I like your morphonology and allophony. You have some simple touches that fit together nicely.
• I also like how you have the case markers being derived from demonstratives. From that, I can't help but wonder whether the coordinating conjunction ma is diachronically related to the absolutive prefix ma-.
• Is qúlāk’i "angry" just a verb that means "to be angry (with)", or are adjectives in general more like verbs, as in Japanese?

I'm looking forward to seeing more on the honorifics and the postpositions. I'm also curious about the morphosyntactic changes between Acranasian and Eresian, which you alluded to throughout this post and suggested as a future post. Well, I for one would love to read about it.

[Whimemsz]

Boozhoo miinawaa! Niminwendaan dash geyaabi ginanda-gikendaan iw ojibwemowin! Bayetooj dash niin gaawiin ingii-nanda-gikendaasiin iw ojibwemowin in basically two years (and I can't figure out how to translate "for the last two years" or the like...dammit!). Wayiiba biskaabiikan miinawaa imaa #isharia-ing.

Comments on Acranasian:

* Are vowel-vowel clusters other than a+i and a+u (which are apparently treated as diphthongs -- though they aren't listed in the phoneme inventory) permitted?

* Is the use of circumflexes (as in ał-sułłâłu) a variant of macrons, or do circumflexes serve a different purpose? I don't think they're mentioned anywhere.

* I like the existence of two separate fortition processes

* "By the Classical period, the former was very much the preferred reading (due to analogy with other conjunctions)". Do you mean "the latter" here? If not, I don't understand.

* I like the specifics on the semantics/use of a’ā


I gotta go, I'll finish up with comments either later tonight or else tomorrow.

[Risla]

Thanks to all of you for the input!

Looks like Nahuatl meets Athabaskan. I like it!

Thanks! It wasn't particularly inspired by either of those--more of the phonological influence is from Salishan languages, were languages to have a strict (C)V(N/L) syllable structure, and grammatically it's inspired by Japanese and Aymara.

• I like your morphonology and allophony. You have some simple touches that fit together nicely.

Thanks! Morphophonology is really my specialty, as it were, in linguistics--I'm hoping to have a career in linguistics in which I help to describe the (currently woefully underdescribed) ridiculous morphophonology of Aymara. So far, I've been pretty restrained in Acranasian morphophonology-wise, but you can probably expect it to gradually get weirder.

• I also like how you have the case markers being derived from demonstratives. From that, I can't help but wonder whether the coordinating conjunction ma diachronically related to the absolutive prefix ma-.

I've been waffling back and forth on whether or not to have them be diachronically related, and I'm leaning towards not right now. By South Eresian, though, they've certainly merged into the same morpheme.

• Is qúlāk’i "angry" just a verb that means "to be angry (with)", or are adjectives in general more like verbs, as in Japanese?

It's not that adjectives are more like verbs in Acranasian--adjectives are grammatically indistinguishable from verbs in every way, as is the case in Ojibwe, at least, and I'm pretty sure that's the case with a lot of other languages.

I'm looking forward to seeing more on the honorifics and the postpositions. I'm also curious about the morphosyntactic changes between Acranasian and Eresian, which you alluded to throughout this post and suggested as a future post. Well, I for one would love to read about it.

Awesome! I've got a good grasp now, I think, of what's changed between the two languages; it's taken a lot of fiddling to go from a head-final-to-mixed isolating language to a very head-initial (aside from relative clause placement) VSO language with polypersonal agreement. I should hopefully have the changes compiled and coherent-ish on my blog in not too much time.

Boozhoo miinawaa! Niminwendaan dash geyaabi ginanda-gikendaan iw ojibwemowin! Bayetooj dash niin gaawiin ingii-nanda-gikendaasiin iw ojibwemowin in basically two years (and I can't figure out how to translate "for the last two years" or the like...dammit!). Wayiiba biskaabiikan miinawaa imaa #isharia-ing.

Aaniin ingwana giin! Aw Awanigaabaw (Brendan Fairbanks) noongom ingikinoo'amaag ji-nitaa-ojibwemoyaan, mii-sh wewiib nanda-gikendamaan. Aawiin nigikendanziin ji-giiweyaan imaa #isharia; IRC client ingii-kida'an, onzaam ginwenzh ingii-apiitaabajitoon. I'm pretty sure Brendan taught us how to say things like "for the last two years," so I've probably got it buried in a notebook somewhere. I'll get back to you on that. (by the way, I've got some comments now on the Ojibwe Genesis thing you did a while back; I suppose I can PM them to you or something, if you'd like)

* Are vowel-vowel clusters other than a+i and a+u (which are apparently treated as diphthongs -- though they aren't listed in the phoneme inventory) permitted?

Whoops, those're supposed to be listed in the phonemes. Thanks for catching that, I'll fix that now. Yes, vowel-vowel clusters are permitted; you can see one in the negative particle siā. I treat /ai/ and /au/ as diphthongs for prosodic purposes, which I didn't really discuss in the post (because I keep changing things).

* Is the use of circumflexes (as in ał-sułłâłu) a variant of macrons, or do circumflexes serve a different purpose? I don't think they're mentioned anywhere.

That's supposed to be ał-sułłā́łu; I copied and pasted it from a file where I'd been too lazy to put in the effort to type macronned characters and then put the acutes on them. Thanks again, I'll fix that too.

* "By the Classical period, the former was very much the preferred reading (due to analogy with other conjunctions)". Do you mean "the latter" here? If not, I don't understand.

Nope, the former. Reading back over it, I realize I was pretty obtuse there, so I'm not surprised confusion arose. What I meant was that the preferred reading became Amakiā́lqwa axxula c’a nī́ [łłā qúlāk’i nī́] "I left Amachálco [because I was angry]," rather than [Amakiā́lqwa axxula c’a nī́ łłā] qúlāk’i nī́ "[Because I left Amachálco], I was angry," by analogy with, eg, ma, such as in xxū łłáhhi a’ā [ma siā ƛáp’a āp’usa c’a ‘u hi’ī] (ma's clause-initialness becomes apparent in some other situations).

* I like the specifics on the semantics/use of a’ā

Thanks! That particle gets pretty strongly grammaticalized in South Eresian (it becomes a voice), and becomes lexicalized on a number of weather verbs (eg tláxaha [ˈtɬʰɑːʃaʔɑ], from łłáhhi a’ā, which is now the nominal form of "rain").

[Whimemsz]

Boozhoo miinawaa! Niminwendaan dash geyaabi ginanda-gikendaan iw ojibwemowin! Bayetooj dash niin gaawiin ingii-nanda-gikendaasiin iw ojibwemowin in basically two years (and I can't figure out how to translate "for the last two years" or the like...dammit!). Wayiiba biskaabiikan miinawaa imaa #isharia-ing.

Aaniin ingwana giin! Aw Awanigaabaw (Brendan Fairbanks) noongom ingikinoo'amaag ji-nitaa-ojibwemoyaan, mii-sh wewiib nanda-gikendamaan. Aawiin nigikendanziin ji-giiweyaan imaa #isharia; IRC client ingii-kida'an, onzaam ginwenzh ingii-apiitaabajitoon.

irc.sorcery.net. Better get on that >:|

(also, I don't know gida'am, what does it mean?)

(by the way, I've got some comments now on the Ojibwe Genesis thing you did a while back; I suppose I can PM them to you or something, if you'd like)

Sure, feel free.

* "By the Classical period, the former was very much the preferred reading (due to analogy with other conjunctions)". Do you mean "the latter" here? If not, I don't understand.

Nope, the former. Reading back over it, I realize I was pretty obtuse there, so I'm not surprised confusion arose. What I meant was that the preferred reading became Amakiā́lqwa axxula c’a nī́ [łłā qúlāk’i nī́] "I left Amachálco [because I was angry]," rather than [Amakiā́lqwa axxula c’a nī́ łłā] qúlāk’i nī́ "[Because I left Amachálco], I was angry," by analogy with, eg, ma, such as in xxū łłáhhi a’ā [ma siā ƛáp’a āp’usa c’a ‘u hi’ī] (ma's clause-initialness becomes apparent in some other situations).

Ah, okay, that makes sense.

Last few comments

* Why is there no second person pronoun in the sentence "Why are you angry at me?" ?

* In Siā ai na-kwī n-ai qúlāk’i ī́ na-ŋínū ‘umā́kw’a, the order of the elements doesn't seem to match the gloss (the gloss implies the order should be Siā ai na-kwī qúlāk’i ī́ n-ai na-ŋínū ‘umā́kw’a -- I don't know which is correct, but the following discussion suggests the it's the gloss that's wrong).

[Risla]

Boozhoo miinawaa! Niminwendaan dash geyaabi ginanda-gikendaan iw ojibwemowin! Bayetooj dash niin gaawiin ingii-nanda-gikendaasiin iw ojibwemowin in basically two years (and I can't figure out how to translate "for the last two years" or the like...dammit!). Wayiiba biskaabiikan miinawaa imaa #isharia-ing.

Aaniin ingwana giin! Aw Awanigaabaw (Brendan Fairbanks) noongom ingikinoo'amaag ji-nitaa-ojibwemoyaan, mii-sh wewiib nanda-gikendamaan. Aawiin nigikendanziin ji-giiweyaan imaa #isharia; IRC client ingii-kida'an, onzaam ginwenzh ingii-apiitaabajitoon.

irc.sorcery.net. Better get on that >:|

(also, I don't know gida'am, what does it mean?)

Gida'an; Listed on the online dictionary as "remove it (using something)," and I used it there for "delete it" because I couldn't figure out any better words.

* Why is there no second person pronoun in the sentence "Why are you angry at me?" ?

The language is relatively pro-drop, especially wrt subject pronouns.

* In Siā ai na-kwī n-ai qúlāk’i ī́ na-ŋínū ‘umā́kw’a, the order of the elements doesn't seem to match the gloss (the gloss implies the order should be Siā ai na-kwī qúlāk’i ī́ n-ai na-ŋínū ‘umā́kw’a -- I don't know which is correct, but the following discussion suggests the it's the gloss that's wrong).

Annnnd whoops again, you've caught another mistake. The gloss is indeed wrong there. I've fixed it now, thanks!

[Whimemsz]

Gida'an; Listed on the online dictionary as "remove it (using something)," and I used it there for "delete it" because I couldn't figure out any better words.

Oh, whoops, in my notes I write am-theme VTIs with final -am for convenience... I forgot that's not the convention!

[Risla]

I am going to bump this up for now while I repeatedly rewrite some new posts. I probably should have put this in C&C proper.

[Whimemsz]

Is anything new happening with this?

[Risla]

Hopefully. At some point. I keep redoing the syntactic changes because I actually have very little knowledge about how syntactic change actually works in language aside from "it is a thing that happens," so I'm afraid they'll seem noobish.

[Sevly]

so I'm afraid they'll seem noobish

Surely not. How many of us write about syntactic change at all? Looking forward to it.

[Risla]

so I'm afraid they'll seem noobish

Surely not. How many of us write about syntactic change at all? Looking forward to it.

...Good point. Thanks.

[Risla]

annnd I'm going to bump this up again. Sorry for the lack of updates (still!), I've been busyish.

[Salmoneus]

So, any updates?