The Arrakum language (aspects of aspect)

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Risla
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Re: The Arrakum language (pretty scripty?)

Post by Risla »

Thanks!

No Siddham influence here; I actually first really looked at Siddham about a day before I posted this, by which point it was already very much in its current state. The aesthetic similarities were certainly not lost on me, though.

CURRENT STUPID IDEAS:
  • I'm thinking I might nix the language being properly ergative; instead, I'm thinking of a split system, probably based on aspect. I definitely like the idea of inchoative (as well as cessative) being marked ergatively, but what else gets to be ergative is still something being decided.
  • I'm actually going to include noun cases, which I've avoided for years because I haven't trusted my conlanging skill enough to not just copy an IE language. I'm a bit more secure in my abilities and less likely to tear down everything I do, so I think it's time to try those again.
  • Strongly considering fucking around with negation---maybe there will be no way to just say "I don't do X," without either saying "Nobody does X" and "Other people (but not me) do X."
  • I've also had a stupid idea for a while of person deixis being based not on addressee status but on proximity or perceived attention to the conversation---so, eg, a third person listening to a conversation who is not being addressed uses the same person marking as the second person, or a letter written to someone far away is treated the same as a far-away third person. I like the idea of the person distinction being 1) first person, 2) person close enough to be paying attention to the conversation, 3) person within sight but not within easy conversational range, and 4) person out of sight. An analogous system would probably apply to, eg, demonstratives as well. I was considering implementing this in Sqtséemsekáskwto, but that's not really a major project, and also that's already got an absolute mountain of deictic fuckery that I'm not sure I want to add to.
  • Noun classes! I'm thinking four or five noun classes, which are arbitrary not really based on any semantic stuff (or only weakly). Aside from my adoration of animacy, this is also something I haven't done much with.
  • Also, I've never really played with switch reference, and I am very tempted to do that.

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kanejam
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Re: The Arrakum language (pretty scripty?)

Post by kanejam »

This is awesome and the script is awesome and so gorgeous and I am eagerly awaiting more!
If you cannot change your mind, are you sure you have one?

Here's a thread on Oscan.

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Re: The Arrakum language (pretty scripty?)

Post by Nortaneous »

this thread is the second google result i get for jaqaru morphophonology, lol

(i'm adding the mora-fuckery to amqoli, but there are no long vowels so it is even more complicated)
Siöö jandeng raiglin zåbei tandiüłåd;
nää džunnfin kukuch vklaivei sivei tåd.
Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei.

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Melteor
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Re: The Arrakum language (pretty scripty?)

Post by Melteor »

This is one language I would really like to see more of. The script's cool and the morphology is almost totally new to me, and it just looks totally alien. It'd be great to build upon it.

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Re: The Arrakum language (pretty scripty?)

Post by Imralu »

I love it but it terrifies me. I would never learn this language.
Risla wrote:[*]Strongly considering fucking around with negation---maybe there will be no way to just say "I don't do X," without either saying "Nobody does X" and "Other people (but not me) do X."
Do it! This is great!
Risla wrote:[*]I've also had a stupid idea for a while of person deixis being based not on addressee status but on proximity or perceived attention to the conversation---so, eg, a third person listening to a conversation who is not being addressed uses the same person marking as the second person, or a letter written to someone far away is treated the same as a far-away third person. I like the idea of the person distinction being 1) first person, 2) person close enough to be paying attention to the conversation, 3) person within sight but not within easy conversational range, and 4) person out of sight. An analogous system would probably apply to, eg, demonstratives as well. I was considering implementing this in Sqtséemsekáskwto, but that's not really a major project, and also that's already got an absolute mountain of deictic fuckery that I'm not sure I want to add to.
I really like this. I really wanted an out-of-sight "4th person" in Ngolu but I was tired of my tables of nominals, decided it was complex enough and writing it all into my dictionary was a pain as it was.
Glossing Abbreviations: COMP = comparative, C = complementiser, ACS / ICS = accessible / inaccessible, GDV = gerundive, SPEC / NSPC = specific / non-specific
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Risla
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Re: The Arrakum language (pretty scripty?)

Post by Risla »

Oh hey, people are posting in my thread!

Nort, if you'd like, I have a copy of Jaqaru: Outline of Phonological and Morphological Structure, and I'd be happy to scan parts—or all—of it in for you. I delight in the apparent fact that my affinity for mora fuckery is spreading.

Otherwise, apologies to everyone who's interested—I'm a really slow conlanger! I have been starting to get hit by inspiration again, so there's a good chance I'll post more here soon.

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Re: The Arrakum language (pretty scripty?)

Post by Risla »

On second thought, fuckit, here's the morphophonemics chapter from the book in question (BEEP BEEP PDF ALERT). I'll probably scan other parts later.

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Re: The Arrakum language (no new conlanging, but Jaqaru info

Post by Nortaneous »

kvlt
Siöö jandeng raiglin zåbei tandiüłåd;
nää džunnfin kukuch vklaivei sivei tåd.
Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei.

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din
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Re: The Arrakum language (no new conlanging, but Jaqaru info

Post by din »

Awesome, thanks :)!
— o noth sidiritt Tormiott

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Melteor
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Re: The Arrakum language (no new conlanging, but Jaqaru info

Post by Melteor »

Neat-o

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Re: The Arrakum language (no new conlanging, but Jaqaru info

Post by clawgrip »

Have you ever considered making a font of your script?

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Re: The Arrakum language (no new conlanging, but Jaqaru info

Post by Risla »

That would be really cool, but given how the syllable blocks are put together, I'm not sure how a font would actually work. :?

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Re: The Arrakum language (aspects of aspect)

Post by Risla »

So after about three years or so, Arrakum has been reborn. I've been hammering out grammar in a notebook. There's still a LOT of work to do, including deciding on the actual forms for...more or less all morphology (posts will be gloss-only for the time being), but I thought I should write some of it down here so I can consider it finalized and be less compelled to fiddle with it forever. I've spent all day scribbling madly about TAM, and I think I've got the beginnings of a functional system. I'll just completely leave out undecided morphology here, like deixis, until further notice. If you find yourself wondering "where's that morphology?" that's where it is (in limbo).

ASPECT

There are three grammatical aspects in Arrakum. I will refer to these as perfective (PF), precompletive (PC), and imperfective (IPFV). This is very roughly similar to how Wikipedia describes the aspectual system in Torau (with precompletive corresponding roughly to the Torau "active imperfective" and imperfective corresponding to "stative imperfective", but I haven't looked into it. These are best demonstrated on verbs, which I will refer to as resultative verbs, which have an internal aspectual structure of being a process followed by an event followed by an activity or changed state. Some examples of such verbs are sleep, fall, and sit.

goat sleep-PFV
"The goat fell asleep"

goat sleep-IPFV
"The goat was sleeping"

goat sleep-PC
"The goat was falling asleep"

In more classic achievement verbs, such as build a house or eat (something)the imperfective aspect is ungrammatical:

man house build-PFV
"The man built the house"

man house build-PC
"The man was building the house"

*man house build-IPFV

In activity verbs, the precompletive aspect is ungrammatical:

man walk-PFV
"The man walked"

*man walk-PC

man walk-IPFV
"The man was walking"

Finally, in achievement verbs, both imperfective and precompletive aspects are ungrammatical:

man arrive-PFV
"The man arrived"

*man arrive-PC

*man arrive-IPFV

Semelfactive verbs are not distinguished from achievements, and can take iterative derivational morphology to become activity verbs. Stative verbs are adjectives, which is an area I haven't explored at all yet. Another related thing, though: I'd like imperfectives to be very easy to create adjective constructions from and likely require no additional morphology, with precompletives requiring some additional morphology, and perfectives being non-adjectivalizable and requiring relative clause constructions to modify nouns. Stay tuned, I guess...

Aspectual morphology is going to be relatively fusional with person/distance deixis. I have only barely begun to work that out, so that is very much TBD.

TENSE

Tense and finiteness are inseparable in Arrakum. There is a three-way distinction here between past (PST), non-past (NPST), and non-finite (NF). As you've already probably predicted, tense marking only appears on matrix clauses, with all subordinate clauses taking non-finite marking. I am pondering breaking down non-finite marking further, but currently I think I'm probably going to keep that as is. Tense is the rightmost morphology that appears on a verb.

man goat see-PFV-PST
"The man saw the goat"

Additionally, here we see some overlap with aspect:

woman sleep-PFV-NPST
"The woman will fall asleep" (or just "The woman will sleep")

woman sleep-PC-NPST
"The woman is falling asleep"

woman sleep-IPFV-NPST
"The woman is sleeping"

TENSE & ASPECT IN COMPLEX SENTENCES:

Sequences of events can be expressed using non-finite perfective subordinate clauses (I feel like I should note that this was directly inspired by how Ojibwe handles "after" constructions):

monster goat see-PFV-NF kill-PFV-NF now eat-PC-PST
"The monster saw, killed, and is eating the goat."

Similarly, simultaneous events can be expressed with imperfective or precompletive non-finite subordinate clauses:

Aravennu sing-IPFV-NF walk-PFV-PST
"Aravennu sang as she walked"

Lastly, subordinate non-finite precompletive verbs can in some cases be used to express concepts of incompleteness, such as when expressing that something almost happened, or that someone tried to do something. This can occur even in cases where the precompletive morphology would be ungrammatical in a matrix clause. I really need to figure out negation more before I can really get into this, since I want negation to play a role here:

Errendu monster kill-PC-NF die-PFV-PST
"Errendu tried to kill the monster and died."

MOOD?

Modal auxverbs will abound. I haven't worked this out yet because I haven't been in the mood (hurr hurr).

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Re: The Arrakum language (aspects of aspect)

Post by yangfiretiger121 »

Your code needs work because you're mixing places of articulation (labial) with qualities of articulation (glottal). Please pick a single articulation identifies from the full chart.

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Re: The Arrakum language (aspects of aspect)

Post by Risla »

yangfiretiger121 wrote:Your code needs work because you're mixing places of articulation (labial) with qualities of articulation (glottal). Please pick a single articulation identifies from the full chart.
wat

glottal is a place of articulation.

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Re: The Arrakum language (aspects of aspect)

Post by yangfiretiger121 »

Basically, I was trying to say that you should have either four (labial, etc.) or up to twelve (bilabial, etc.) locations across the top of your code. While the latter's true, you mix a major class of articulation (labial) with more specific places (glottal), which confuses people.

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Re: The Arrakum language (aspects of aspect)

Post by KathTheDragon »

That is pointlessly nit-picky, and provides zero benefit. It's common practice to not give the exact columns for whatever phonemes you have, but rather to collapse some of them down if they pattern together.

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Re: The Arrakum language (aspects of aspect)

Post by Ser »

yangfiretiger121 wrote:Basically, I was trying to say that you should have either four (labial, etc.) or up to twelve (bilabial, etc.) locations across the top of your code. While the latter's true, you mix a major class of articulation (labial) with more specific places (glottal), which confuses people.
Oh c'mon, not even actual linguists bother with such conventions, as common as they might be.

See, for example, the following consonant inventory, taken from Comrie's The World's Major Languages.

Image

It puts the bilabials with the labiodentals together while having such a thing as "laryngeal", doesn't bother to clearly distinguish the modes of articulation, puts /f/ and /fʲ/ in the same cell (and only this pair!), and even describes /ts/ as a glottalized version of /s/ (and /z/).

And yet it was published and is readable.

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