zompist bboard

Intro & Aims

My purpose with Moq isn't to make a naturalistic "it could pass for a natlang" language; but more "could a language like this function?" so there are features that don't seem realistic, contravene universals, and probably won't be attested in any natlang. I imagine it spoken by non-humans or a divergent population of humans (e.g. one which has had extensive linguistic contact with non-human languages), although I haven't really thought about a background culture for it.
EDIT: reading that back it sounds a bit like "ohmygodz i am so cool my lang has crazy features" - but that wasn't what I meant; rather I just meant that "no natlang does that" is not necessarily a problem, so long as it actually functions without being too ambiguous or too taxing on the mental processes/working memory of the speakers.

Not every single detail of phonology and grammar have been worked out, so this is just a sketch of the major features. Comments and feedback are welcome!

1 - Phonological sketch

Consonants
Stops /p b pʶ bʶ t d tʶ dʶ k g q ʔ/ <p b p‘ b‘ t d t‘ d‘ k g q x>
Affricates /tɬ tʃ dʒ/ <tl c j>
Fricatives /f fʶ θ ð θʶ ðʶ ɬ s z sʶ zʶ ʃ ʒ χ ʁ ʢ ʜ h/ <f f‘ th dh th‘ dh‘ lh s z s‘ z‘ sh zh kh gh qh xh h>
Approximants /w wʶ l lʶ j/ <w w‘ l l‘ y>
Trill /r rʶ/ <r r‘>
Nasal /m n ŋ/ <m n ng>
Vowels
Monophthongs /a i u a: i: u:/ <a i u â î û>
Diphthongs /aj aw a:j a:w/ <e o ai au>

1.1 - Syllable structure

C(:)(w)V(:)(w,y)(C)(C)
Syllables must have an onset, which can be geminate. Any consonant can be in onset position, although ng is rare, with the restriction that y w w‘ can neither appear in word initial onset position, nor be geminated.
If the onset is a voiceless non-labial stop t t‘ k q x it can be followed by a glide w.
Glides y w w‘ can never precede the high vowels i u u respectively.
The nucleus can be a long or short vowel, optionally followed by a glide.
All consonants can appear in coda position, although n is rare. Coda clusters are relatively unrestricted - almost any combination, regardless of relative sonority, is possible. The restrictions that do exist are:
both members of a cluster must agree on uvularization
the first member cannot be an affricate
the two consonants cannot differ in voicing only
lh th dh do not appear together in a cluster

Prosodic word structure
Prosodic words, content words and unbound morphemes must be formed entirely from a sequence of trochaic feet - either a single heavy syllable H (closed syllable or open with a long vowel) or two light syllables LL. Sub-minimal morphemes must be augmented phonetically to meet this minimum requirement if spoken independently, and affixes and reduplicative elements often have different forms to satisfy the requirement that the word can be exhaustively parsed into feet.

1.2 - Allophony

Vowels
Vowel and glide sequences /aj aw a:j a:w/ are realised as [ɛ ɔ ai au] in closed syllables, and [e: o: ai au] in open syllables. They are romanised as <e o ai au> for convenience, despite <e o> not strictly being phonemic.
/a i u/ are [ɑ ə o] adjacent to uvular and uvularised consonants, and are romanised as <a e o> in this environment.
Consonants
Uvularisation spreads rightwards from a uvularised consonant unless blocked by a high front vowel or a non-uvularisable consonant.
Laterals: /ɬ/ can be realised as [l̥] and /l/ can be realised pre stopped as [dl] - these are in free variation and depend mostly on speakers.
In word final position, a sequence of voiceless stop and glottal stop is realised as an unreleased stop, e.g. /pʔ/ = [p̚] (this contrasts with a released stop /p/ and a geminate stop /pp/).
In intervocalic position, sequences of voiceless stop and glottal stops are often realised as ejectives.

Suprasegmental features
Stress falls regularly on the rightmost non-final heavy syllable of a word, or if there are no heavy syllables, on the initial light syllable.
Prosodic words generally have a rising intonation, with a slight downstep before the beginning of the next word, giving a generally rising sawtooth pattern to the pitch of the sentence. New sentences generally have a larger downstep, resetting to the same pitch as the previous sentence.

1.3 - Morphophonological processes

Consonantal suffixation
Many suffixes are prosodically sub-minimal (recall that all surface words must be exhaustively parsable into trochaic feet H or LL; no stray unfooted syllables are permissible) - a common type consist simply of one consonantal segment. Various augmentation strategies then occur to satisfy the footing requirements.
e.g. CVCV+C CVCVCVC : leqa + k = leqakak - the suffix is augmented to a full foot by reduplicating it and inserting copy of the previous vowel. LL -> LLH
CVCV+C CVC:VC : leqa + k = leqqak - the medial consonant is geminated and the consonant suffixed. LL HH
CVC+C CVCC : leq + t = leqt - the consonant is simply affixed if it forms a legal coda cluster. H H
CVC+C CVC:VC : leq + k = leqqek - the medial consonant is geminated, the vowel reduplicated and the consonant suffixed if it does not form a legal cluster. H HH
CVCC+C CVCCVC : leqt + k = leqtek - the vowel is reduplicated and the consonant suffixed. H HH

Reduplification
The general rule is "suffix a copy of as much of the word's first CVC sequence as is necessary to produce a fully footed word," although there are cases of different amounts of reduplicant being added
e.g. leq leql - suffixation of only the first consonant to form a legal coda cluster. H H
kala kallak - suffixation of only the first consonant with gemination of the medial consonant. LL HH
xaq xaqxaq - suffixation of whole heavy syllable. H HH

Bonus: note about the native writing system
Moq is written with a "mixed abugida" - consonant glyphs have an inherent vowel /a/, and diacritics are used to indicate if the vowel is different. Coda consonants are written with the same glyphs, but "stacked" in a block with the onset consonant glyph; this stacking indicates that the inherent vowel is cancelled, and so the script has no virama-like "vowel killer" diacritic.

That's all for today. Any questions, comments, posting out of things that seem implausible (although bear in mind what I said about how realistic I'm aiming for), things I've missed, and typos, would be gratefully received.

Next: 2 - Grammatical Relations
How arguments are marked in verbal clauses
EDIT: I decided to do basic noun phrases so the structure of what was getting marked as an argument would be more clear.

2 - Basic Noun Phrases

In the next post, I'm going to talk about how arguments are marked in a verbal clause, which means basic info about noun phrase structure is necessary first.


2.1 - Basic noun phrases

All noun phrases require an article in order to be referential - the article does not mark definiteness; it encodes categories of number, shape and presence. These categories are marked only on the article; the noun itself is unmarked. The forms are: (widen your browser window if this does not display as a nice 7 column table; I used the BBCode "columns" function - if your window is too narrow it will wrap around)

Presence:
Shape:
Collective
Singulative (-t)
Plurative (-RED)
Present
1D
kala
kallat
kallak
Present
2D
tlom
tlomt
tlomtl
Present
3D
xaq
xaqt
xaqxaq
Absent
-
buw‘a
bût‘at
buw‘abû
Past
-
dh‘elh
dh‘elht
dh‘eldh

Morphophonological processes, some mentioned in the previous post and some not, are visible here:
Suffixation
- gemination of the medial consonant of the 1D present singulative when suffixed with -t: kala kallat
- augmentation of the suffix -t to -tVt in the absent singulative (with final vowel deletion of the stem): buw‘a bût‘at
- direct suffixation to produce a coda cluster in the other three cases
Reduplication
- full reduplication of the first CVC sequence in 3D present plurative: xaq xaqxaq
- partial reduplication, of only CV from the first CVC sequence, in the absent plurative (with lengthening): buw‘a buw‘abû
- partial reduplication, of only the C from the first CVC sequence, in the other three cases, with
-- gemination of the medial consonant in the 1D present singulative: kala kallak
-- fortition of the final consonant to avoid an illegal cluster in the past plurative: dh‘elh dh‘eldh
-- direct suffixation to produce a coda cluster in the 2D present plurative

The categories encoded are
Present: the referent is present, accessible, influenceable by the speaker at the time of speaking. The precise definition depends on the nature of the referent: for people, "present" generally refers to within calling distance; for tools, it generally refers to objects within reach.
Absent: the referent exists but is not present, accessible, influenceable (due to remoteness), or does not yet exist (eg going to be created things), or whose existence is not yet ascertained (eg things that are looked for)
Past: the referent no longer exists or has never existed; it is not accessible or influenceable due to pastness or other limits of causality (by the time influence arrives it would be too late; the point of no return has been passed)

For present referents, shape is also distinguished:
1D: things whose characteristic shape is "long" or "tall" - rivers, (uncoiled) string, snakes, trees, people, tall buildings; and abstractly: lengths of time, spoken discourses, sequences of events.
2D: things characterised by being "flat" - surfaces, sheets of paper or fabric, the sea, floors, pages of writing, spilled liquid (on floor or table), coils of string.
3D: the default; things characterised by being amorphously bulky rather than noticeably long or flat - eggs, balls, boxes, tables, cakes, fruit, balls of string; things with no constant particular shape - clouds, most liquids; abstract ideas - languages, thoughts, beauty, health; the residue - anything not obviously 1D or 2D - including points (a special case of all 3 dimensions being similar). Occasionally used in speaking for objects which should be 1D or 2D when the speaker is either careless or not conceptualising them very distinctly from other objects mentioned - for example when listing disparate objects.

The number categories are as follows:
Collective: the default; unspecified for number. It is used for general reference, or when number is unimportant, unknown. The collective is also used with enumerating phrases - such as numerals, "many," "some" etc
Singulative: a marked form, referring to a single individual. This form is used to emphasise that there is only one referent; not just used for number agreement as the singular in English is. It is thus used with words that emphasise uniqueness, unity - for example in phrases such as "there is only one X." The singulative is often used with inherently unique referents - King, sun, earth, husband/wife.
Plurative: a marked form, referring specifically to a non-enumerated multiplicity of individuals; it is not used for number agreement with numerals or other quantifiers. The plurative is used to emphasise or remind the listener of the multiplicity of referents, thus it is more likely to be used (instead of the plain collective form) for very large numbers. It is usually used when a group is construed as a single entity - such as "a flock of birds" (using the plurative for 'bird') - or when the group is well-defined - such as a team or the senate.

Mass/uncountable nouns can take both the collective and the plurative number. The default is, of course, the collective. The plurative is used when the referent is seen as manipulable or usable; the collective when the referent is non-manipulable or non-physical. for example with lakf "water:"

xaq

3D.coll.art

lakf

water

"water (in a lake)"

xaqxaq

3D.plur.art

lakf

water

"water (in a jug/bowl)"

Different nouns can take different articles depending on context and construal. As an example, take moq "language."
- xaq moq, with the default 3D collective article, refers to language as a concept - "language is the key thing that separates humans from animals."
- kala moq, with the 1D article, referes to a discourse, utterance(s) or a stream of language
- tlom moq, with the 2D article, refers to a piece of written language
The language name, capitalised as Moq in the romanisation, is just this common word for language (in a similar way to how "tea" can refer to tea bush leaf infusions or infusions generally). Natively it would appear usually as xaq moq, or in the singulative xaqt moq for emphasis that it is the language rather than any other. (Other terms are used to disambiguate - see later for details, in the discussion of full noun phrase structure.)

2.2 - Demonstratives

Demonstratives are formed from the articles above by prefixing the proximate and distal demonstrative morphemes n and d - again, various strategies are required to form a prosodically well-formed surface word. The proximate and distal demonstratives only contrast in the present forms; nouns encoded as absent and past can only receive the distal demonstrative prefix d-. (9 columns; widen your screen if it wraps.)

Presence:
Shape:
Collective
Singulative (-t)
Plurative (-RED)
Present
1D proximal n-
nakkal
naklet
naklak
Present
1D distal d-
dakkat
daklat
daklak
Present
2D proximal n-
xantlom
xantlomt
xantlomtl
Present
2D distal d-
dôtlom
dôtlomt
dôtlomtl
Present
3D proximal n-
naq
naqt
naqxaq
Present
3D distal d-
daq
daqt
daqxaq
Absent
distal d-
duw‘a
dût‘at
duw‘abû
Past
distal d-
dâdh‘elh
dâdh‘elht
dâdh‘eldh

Demonstratives are used when the speaker is using location/absence to inform the listener of which entity is being referred to; articles are used when those features are used to pick the referent out of the topical discourse context. Demonstratives can be used as anaphora - "this one" "those" - articles cannot.

Next: 3 - Grammatical Relations
In which we learn how these nouns are marked when they appear as arguments in a verbal clause

3 - Basic Verbal Clauses

In a change from our scheduled programming, this post is going to be about the basic structure of a verbal clause; and the specifics of argument marking will be in the next post (otherwise this post is going to be absolutely massive).

A basic verb clause in Moq requires a sentence initial particle, verb, and auxiliary, in that order. No arguments are obligatory.

3.1 - Initial Particles

These particles mark the clause as one of 4 types of speech act: statement, query, command, and hope/wish:

- Indicative particle: ∅ The indicative is unmarked. It is used for all clauses which do not fit into one of the other three categories.

∅

IND

D‘âth

eat

hâ-∅

REAL.AUX-PFV

"There has been/is eating" "(Someone) eats (something)"

- Interrogative particle: qhâ The interrogative particle marks that the clause is a query or request for information, to which the listener should respond.

Qhâ

INT

d‘âth

eat

hâ-∅

REAL.AUX-PFV

"Is someone eating?"

- Imperative particle: lau The imperative particle indicates that the speaker is instructing the addressee to carry out the contents of the clause. In itself, it is neither polite nor impolite; politeness or (dis)respect for the addressee is indicated by other means within the sentence. All sentences with imperative meaning must use this particle; there is no equivalent to English's polite non-imperative circumlocutions ("Could you pass the salt?") or French's use of the infinitive as a polite imperative.

Lau

IMP

d‘âth

eat

hâ-∅

REAL.AUX-PFV

"Eat!"

- Optative particle: bî The optative particle is used to indicate that the state of affairs described by the clause is desired, wished, hoped, or longed for by the speaker, but that he/she cannot, must not, or otherwise does not intend to attempt to bring it about. It translates notions such as "I wish it would stop raining," "live long and prosper," "I hope he passes his exam," "have a safe trip," and "if only I could stick to my diet." It can perhaps be described as expressing positive affect toward the state without a commitment to action. This lack of commitment to a course of action aimed at bringing about the desired state contrasts optative sentences with indicative sentences of desire ('want'): an indicative "I want a piece of chocolate" generally implies (depending on context, of course) that the speaker intends to eat a piece of chocolate; the corresponding optative sentence "I wish I had a piece of chocolate" is a more wistful statement of desire, akin to "I'd like a piece of chocolate but there isn't any here/I have no money to buy one/I'm trying to lose weight so I can't/won"t have one."

Bî

OPT

d‘âth

eat

sî-∅

IRR.AUX-PFV

"I wish I could eat"

3.2 - Verbs

The verb is uninflected and can be either simple, or derived from another part of speech, including other verbs (occasionally other parts of speech can be used verbally without any derivation, but in general there are verbalising affixes). The verb is unmarked for any properties of its arguments, TAM, or any other grammatical categories. Any affixes* are derivational or lexical, changing the meaning of the verb, rather than grammatical. Transitivity and case frames are part of the lexical entry of the verb and not marked morphologically (apart from when such changes are necessitated due to lexical derivation).

3.4 - Auxiliary

There is a second position clitic auxiliary which marks mood (realis, irrealis, conjunctive), aspect. Intonationally, the initial particles form a prosodic word with the first word of the clause, so the clitic always follows the first post-particle word of the clause.

- Irrealis mood sî is used when the state of affairs described in the clause is not actually asserted to be real - such as possible, conditional, hypothetical, and counterfactual states.
- Realis mood hâ is used when the state of affairs is asserted as being true. The realis mood is used for statements of future events and states, even though they are not real at the time of speaking. Realis and irrealis can be considered as marking whether the speaker judges the events to be situated in the actual timeline that obtains in the real world, or in a hypothetical suppositional timeline which exists only in the speaker's mind.
- Conjunctive mood dâ lacks all other mood and aspect information, and is used in clause chains to indicate that a later clause in the chain (the main clause) will contain marking for mood and aspect categories that also applies to the conjunctive-marked clause.

In addition to a basic morpheme for one of these moods, the auxiliary also marks one of the following four aspects:

- Perfective: -lj The perfective conceptualises the event or action as a whole, ignoring any internal structure, (in the same way that "The movie is good" treats the movie as a single thing rather than a 2 hour sequence of images or complex interweaving of stories, performances and scenes). It is the default aspect (i.e. not requiring any explicit marking; in fact, use of a perfective auxiliary would be ungrammatical) for non-stative verbs (verbs which express some kind of change of state, activity, or process); stative verbs (which describe unchanging states) can be marked for it when the entire state is conceptualised as a single mental object. Perfective verbs cannot be marked for duration. Perfective verbs can be either past or future.
- Progressive: -th The progressive aspect indicates that the action, process, state or activity has begun and not yet ended. It is the default and thus unmarked aspect for stative verbs, which cannot be used with a progressive auxiliary. In addition, "punctual" verbs (such as explode, cough, shatter, find, die), which do not have a duration, cannot be used with progressive aspect.
- Prospective: -la The prospective indicates that the action, process, state or activity has not yet started but is going to; it implies a commitment to the future occurrence of the activity or state. It is used for the speaker's intentionally planned actions ("I'm about to make a cup of tea"), for events anticipated from observation ("that rock is going to fall any moment now"), and for events that run to a timetable ("the train leaves in 5 minutes"). It is not used for events which the speaker has no reason to suspect might happen soon (and where the "not yet" element of the aspect is irrelevant), such as "the sun has not yet become a red giant" (billions of years away in the future), or "I have not yet woken up and found myself transformed into a frog" (technically true but only because it is probably not possible).
- Completive: -pu the completive aspect denotes that the action has been successfully completed. It can only be used with telic verbs (those that have an inherent goal or result), such as understand, walk home, draw a picture, write a letter, make a meal, die, cure an illness, (as opposed to atelic verbs such as yawn, walk, swim, write, breathe). It is not used when an action has simply ceased (stopped walking and sat down, stopped reading a book to do something else, woken up); here, a construction with the perfective aspect would be used instead. Completive aspect can thus be used to imply the telicity of the verb; similar to "up" in English "beat him" vs "beat him up."

The full (non-conjunctive) forms of the auxiliary are thus

Aspect:
Mood
Realis
Irrealis
Perfective
-∅/-lj
hâ/halj
sî/silj
Progressive
-∅/-th
hâ/hath
sî/sith
Prospective:
-la
hala
sila
Completive
-pu
hapu
sipu

Note: when suffixed with an aspect morpheme, the long vowel of the realist/irrealis morphemes shortens.

3.5 - Meaning

A clause with this basic structure (Particle Verb Auxiliary) has one of two basic meanings.

- It can be a statement of existence or occurrence of an action:

Kham

die

hâ+∅

REAL.AUX-PFV

"There has been a death;" "Someone has died."

- The verb has omitted arguments, which are obvious from context

Kham

die

hâ+∅

realis.perf.aux

"(The cat that we have been watching from our window for the past 5 minutes since it was hit by a car) has died."

3.6 - Preview - Clauses with arguments

There are no obligatory arguments in Moq clauses. Arguments can be noun phrases (recall that all noun phrases must begin with an article), demonstratives used as anaphora ("this is good," "I want that one"), or one of the following personal pronouns: Note that there are only pronouns for the speech act participants (SAPs) themselves. Non-SAPs such as third persons are referred to with demonstratives as anaphora, or just omitted if obvious. The collective pronouns tharu and lhak are unmarked for number and are the defaults used in speaking. If it is necessary, or the speaker desires, to disambiguate between himself/himself and others or the addressee/addressee and others, the singulative and plurative forms are used. Note that while the singulative is formed by the same suffix -t as we saw with the articles, the plurative is formed by suppletion rather than the reduplication employed by the articles. This is because the plurative personal pronouns are associative pluratives ("me and others in my group" rather than true pluratives ("me and several other instances of me").


*I'll confess to not yet having really thought about this part too much.

Next: 4 - Grammatical Relations (this time I swear)
In which we learn how nouns are marked when they appear as arguments in a verbal clause

4 - Grammatical Relations

As I said in the first post, when designing Moq my aim was to be a bit imaginative and find a system that while unusual and perhaps unattested, is workable. Argument marking and morphosyntactic alignment is where I really tried to create a different system as an exercise to see if it works: it might not. I haven't worked out in thorough detail yet how all the different kinds of clauses and meanings would be expressed in the system I'm about to outline, so it's entirely possible that somewhere down the line there is an insurmountable problem. If you see one, please point it out. (Please point out and excuse any typos; the bolding and gloss tags in BBCode result in some pretty eye-bending plaintext strings and I'm certain I've missed things.) Please also excuse the odd example sentences about cats.

Argument marking

The default position for arguments is after the verb and auxiliary, and all arguments (noun phrase, pronoun, or demonstrative) must be labelled with one of 5 prepositions: nga, p‘at, jux, xha, shi, glossed as "beginning," "ending," "changed," "unchanged," and "time," respectively. The uses of these prepositions do not map well onto the meanings of English prepositions or the definitions of common cases (nominative, dative etc), and are explained below. Perhaps the most significant to note is the lack of salience of the category "agent;" there is no one consistent way to mark agents, and often the marking of other roles takes precedence over the agentivity of the argument.

1: the "Beginning" preposition, nga

Glossed as:

nga

begin.PREP

This preposition labels nouns which can be seen as starting or causing the action. This definition covers origins of movement ('move from'); but also agents - as the action is conceptualised as originating from them. When there is conflict between these two roles, the more prototypical locative is encoded as "beginning," and the moving agent is encoded as patient, since it undergoes the change of location. Specific examples follow.

- agent: intentional instigator and performer of an action

kham

die

hâ-∅

REAL.AUX-PFV

nga

begin.PREP

tharu

1.COLL

jux

patient.PREP

dh‘elh

PAST.ART

cupu

cat

"I killed the cat"

- origin of movement in motion/transference of possession verbs (walk, fly, move, give, take, bring, sell)

xwaxwe

walk

hâ-∅

REAL.AUX-IPFV

jux

patient.PREP

tharu

1.COLL

nga

begin.PREP

xaq

3D.COLL.ART

lakf

water

"I'm walking from the water"

- force: mindless doer of an action, e.g. tool, force of nature (hammer, rock, avalanche, rain, river)

qhâ

INT

kkwadhu

destroy

hâ-∅

REAL.AUX-PFV

nga

begin.PREP

xaq

3D.COLL.ART

lakf

water

jux

patient.PREP

dh‘elh

PAST.COLL.ART

qoma?

house

"Did water destroy the house?

- stimulus of experiencer verbs

dh‘ôsh

see

hâ-∅

REAL.AUX-IPFV

nga

begin.PREP

lhak

2.COLL

p‘at

end.PREP

tharu

1.COLL

"I see you"

- cause

kham

die

hâ-∅

REAL.AUX-PFV

nga

begin.PREP

kallak

1D.PRS.PLU.ART

qwob‘i

wound

jux

patient.PREP

dh‘elh

PAST.COLL.ART

cupu

cat

"The cat died because of it's wounds;" "The cat died of it's wounds"


2: the "Ending" preposition, p‘at

Glossed as:

p‘at

end.PREP

This is used with nouns which can be viewed as the endpoint, termination, or ultimate aim of an action or process.

- destination of motion and transference verbs

xwaxwe

walk

hâ-∅

REAL.AUX-IPFV

jux

patient.PREP

tharu

1.COLL

nga

begin.PREP

xaq

3D.COLL.ART

lakf

water

p‘at

end.PREP

xaq

3D.PRS.ART

qoma

house

"I'm walking from the water to the house"

- recipient in transference of possession verbs

t‘ukwo

give

ha-pu

REAL.AUX-COMPL

nga

begin.PREP

tharu

1.COLL

xha

unchanged.PREP

xaqxaq

3D.PLU.ART

lakf

water

p‘at

end.PREP

duw‘a

ABS.DEM

"I have given water to him"

- beneficiary

qhâ

INT

kham

die

hâ-∅

REAL.AUX-PFV

nga

begin.PREP

lhak

2.COLL

jux

patient.PREP

dh‘elh

PAST.ART

cupu

cat

p‘at

end.PREP

tharu?

1.COLL

"Did you kill the cat for me?"

- purpose

xwaxwe

walk

hâ-∅

REAL.AUX-IPFV

p‘at

end.PREP

xaq

3D.PRS.ART

qoma

house

jux

patient.PREP

tharu

1.COLL

p‘at

end.PREP

xaqxaq

3D.PLU.ART

lakf

water

"I walked to the house for water"

- experiencer

dh‘ôsh

see

hâ-∅

REAL.AUX-IPFV

nga

begin.PREP

tharu

1.COLL

p‘at

end.PREP

dh‘elh

PAST.ART

cupu

cat

"The cat saw me"

- translations (result of change/become)

Lau

IMP

t‘âsc

become

hâ-∅

REAL.AUX-PFV

p‘at

end.PREP

buw‘a

ABS.COLL.ART

shekwa!

teacher

"Become a teacher!

- finishing points

xwaxwe

walk

ha-lj

REAL.AUX-PFV

jux

patient.PREP

tharu

1.COLL

p‘at

end.PREP

xaq

3D.COLL.ART

rithq

night

"I walked until night"


3: the "Patient" preposition, jux

Glossed as:

jux

patient.PREP

This preposition fits pretty well with the traditional role of patient, marking nouns which undergo the action of the verb and change their state because of it:

kham

die

ha-la

REAL.AUX-PROS

jux

patient.PREP

tharu

1.COLL

"I'm about to die"

- it also marks the animate agentive mover in motion verbs; objects moved by another agent are marked with the 'unchanged' preposition xha (see below). The motivation for this difference would seem to be that a moved inanimate object does not itself really change; its external conditions change only. Whereas an animate being who moves from place to place actually experiences the movement and so undergoes an internal change of state.

xwaxwe

walk

hâ-∅

REAL.AUX-IPFV

jux

patient.PREP

tharu

1.COLL

p‘at

end.PREP

xaq

3D.COLL.ART

qoma

house

"I'm walking to the house"


4: the "Unchanged" preposition, xha

Glossed as:

xha

unchanged.PREP

This preposition marks nouns which undergo the action without themselves being changed

- theme of transference verbs

t‘ukwo

give

ha-pu

REAL.AUX-COMPL

nga

begin.PREP

tharu

1.COLL

xha

unchanged.PREP

daq

3D.DIST.COLL.DEM

cupu

cat

p‘at

end.PREP

duw‘a

ABS.DEM

"I have given that cat to him"

- instruments

qhâ

INT

kham

die

hâ-∅

REAL.AUX-PFV

nga

begin.PREP

tharu

1.COLL

jux

patient.PREP

duw‘a

ABS.DEM

xha

unchanged.PREP

xaq

3D.COLL.ART

cupu?

cat

"Did you kill him with a cat?"

- locations

qhâ

INT

kham

die

hâ-∅

REAL.AUX-PFV

nga

begin.PREP

tharu

1.COLL

jux

patient.PREP

duw‘a

ABS.DEM

xha

unchanged.PREP

xaq

3D.COLL.ART

qoma?

house

"Did you kill him in the house?"

- accompaniments

xwaxwe

walk

ha-lj

REAL.AUX-PFV

jux

patient.PREP

tharu

1.COLL

xha

unchanged.PREP

duw‘a

ABS.DEM

p‘at

end.PREP

xaq

3D.COLL.ART

rithq

night

"I walked with him until night"


5: the "Time" preposition, shi

Glossed as:

shi

time.PREP

This, fairly straightforwardly, is used with words which specify when the action of the verb occurred or when the state obtained.

xwaxwe

walk

ha-∅

REAL.AUX-IPFV

jux

patient.PREP

tharu

1.COLL

shi

time.PREP

xaq

3D.COLL.ART

rithq

night

"I walked at night"


Questions
- Can you see any reasons why this system might be unworkable?
- Are there any possible roles nouns might have that wouldn't be covered by one of these prepositions?
- Would it lead to unworkably ambiguous sentences? I know a lot of these prepositions mark several different roles, but in actual discourse it is not that common to have several different arguments all strung together to make a very long sentence à la "Mrs Peacock killed Professor Plum in the library with a lead pipe on Tuesday after lunch because of her dementia." Having said that, are there any common practical sentences that this system would cause to be unacceptably ambiguous?
- Any other comments?

Thanks!

Next: 5 - Clause Chaining: arranging sentences into discourse (possibly )

Hi! I really like your work so far. This system of prepositions is very interesting as well as the noun class! I do think that the system of prepositions could work but do you envision any other particles or preposition like markers? Or phrasal prepositions?
What natlangs have influenced you?

Looking forward to your next post

Reedman wrote:Hi! I really like your work so far. This system of prepositions is very interesting as well as the noun class!

I'll second this. The language seems natural to me so far, and has a unique feel that doesn't scream "hey, look at how weird I am!".

Reedman wrote:I do think that the system of prepositions could work but do you envision any other particles or preposition like markers? Or phrasal prepositions?

That was my question as well, and I think "phrasal prepositions" would be the way to go, similar to Tibetan.

Mâq Lar wrote:- Can you see any reasons why this system might be unworkable?
- Are there any possible roles nouns might have that wouldn't be covered by one of these prepositions?

I think it's workable. You just maybe need to think about more examples & just figure out how you would convey those ideas given what structures you have in place so far.

Following my above comment, how do locative predications work, such as "I am at the park" or "I am inside the house"? I assume they would also use the "unchanged" preposition "xha", correct? Also, how do you form genitive phrases? Tibetan, AIUI, uses quite a few phrasal prepositions, so you would have something like:

at.PREP interior.NOM of.PREP house.NOM
at interior of house
"inside the house"

Given that sort of example, I don't see any unsolvable problems with what you have.

Reedman wrote:Hi! I really like your work so far. This system of prepositions is very interesting as well as the noun class!

Thanks! By noun class do you mean the 1D/2D/3D marked in the demonstratives? It's not really a noun class, just extra details added to this/that. The same noun can take different demonstratives depending on its current shape - coiled rope or snake would be 3D, uncoiled would be 2D, for example.

I do think that the system of prepositions could work but do you envision any other particles or preposition like markers? Or phrasal prepositions?

For locatives certainly - I'll need a way to express on/in/over/behind etc. Possibly via a preposition plus a noun phrase, eg "the top of the table," or maybe "the table's top." I haven't decided so far.

What natlangs have influenced you?

For the phonology, Arabic coda consonant clusters inspired things like "lakf" and "rithq."
The preposition system was inspired by reading lots of grammars of languages that have very few prepositions (eg only one locative, or just an oblique for everything) and thinking as a speaker of preposition-rich English "how could that work?", and so wanting to try it out.

Looking forward to your next post

I have a half written one that I need to finish

Vardelm wrote:

Reedman wrote:Hi! I really like your work so far. This system of prepositions is very interesting as well as the noun class!

I'll second this. The language seems natural to me so far, and has a unique feel that doesn't scream "hey, look at how weird I am!".

<relieved face> I have a lot of half-langs buried in my computer because I failed at making them not seem like a weird feature was just tacked on for no reason (eg several different attempts at a realistic "no phonemic vowels" language )

Mâq Lar wrote:- Can you see any reasons why this system might be unworkable?
- Are there any possible roles nouns might have that wouldn't be covered by one of these prepositions?

I think it's workable. You just maybe need to think about more examples & just figure out how you would convey those ideas given what structures you have in place so far.

That's my plan of attack - think of a basic principle/structure (the 5 prepositions) and then think about what extensions or workarounds it necessitates. I've got a list of prototypical verbs with different role frames that I'm going to go through and translate to see if my system can cope with everything, and I already have a half-written post about disambiguation when more than one argument uses the same preposition. Watch this space

Reedman wrote:I do think that the system of prepositions could work but do you envision any other particles or preposition like markers? Or phrasal prepositions?

That was my question as well, and I think "phrasal prepositions" would be the way to go, similar to Tibetan.
...
Following my above comment, how do locative predications work, such as "I am at the park" or "I am inside the house"? I assume they would also use the "unchanged" preposition "xha", correct? Also, how do you form genitive phrases? Tibetan, AIUI, uses quite a few phrasal prepositions, so you would have something like:

at.PREP interior.NOM of.PREP house.NOM
at interior of house
"inside the house"

Given that sort of example, I don't see any unsolvable problems with what you have.

Yup, locatives use the "unchanged" preposition "xha" (as a side note, I probably should think of more formal sounding names than "unchanged").
I was thinking of a similar system, yes. There are two genitive prepositions, dh῾u and zha, depending on whether they mark the possessor/whole or possessed/part:
ie "top dh῾u house" = "the top of the house"
but "house zha top" = "the house with that top"
- the difference is not in the relationship between the two nouns, but which of the two is the head of the phrase. So there could be phrases like
"xha interior/top/bottom/side dh῾u house" since they are all parts of the house, but
"xha outside zha house" since the house is a part of the space surrounding it
Locative predications might use different verbs - "be located in" "be located on" etc. I haven't decided if this fits or not with everything else yet. I haven't given enough thought to verbs like "have" "be" which don't express actions.


Thanks to you both for the feedback!

This looks really interesting, and way better than anything I have ever come up with. Looking forward to the next post.

A quick question: how would you indicate movement through something?

Something I think is interesting is the morphosyntactic alignment you end up with:
The 3-way P-R-T distinction is unattested in natlangs as far as I know.