Primordial Scratchpad (NP: Dwarvish vowel question)

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Vardelm
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Re: Primordial Scratchpad (NP: Jin updates)

Post by Vardelm »

Jin: Voice pt 1

I realized after I posted about using Persian ezafe style suffixes that I wanted Jin to not be head-marked, and to not have person-marking on the verbs. That's just because my eventual "elvish" conlang needs to be head-marking and have person/number/gender marking, and I'm making these as opposites. That is, there are certain features of each language that are core, and so the "opposite" language will not have those. Elvish will have person agreement; Jin won't. Jin will have morphological tense & aspect; Elvish won't. Elvish will be suffixing, while Jin is primarily prefixing. So, goodbye ezafe suffixes!

In its place, I wanted suffixes that would control what argument were required by the verb, and so Jin's voice system came out of that.


Voice
Voice controls the transitivity, valency, and diathesis of verbs. This plays a major role in the structure of sentences.

The voices in Jin are:
  • intransitive
  • transitive
  • passive
  • antipassive
  • reflexive
  • reciprocal
  • impersonal
All of the above have both active & stative versions.


Verbs all have a default voice.
  • A verb’s default voice is one of the voices listed above.
  • Most (all?) default voices are intransitive or transitive.
  • No voice suffix is added for a verb in default voice.
Verbs can add a voice suffix to create “derived” or “inflected” voices.
  • This converts the verb from it’s default voice to the voice marked by the suffix.
  • A voice suffix can often add an dynamic, volitional, causative, etc. dimension.
  • The voice suffix that is the same voice as the verb’s default voice can be added specifically to change to a dynamic, volitional, causative, etc. meaning, while keeping the same transitivity & valency.
  • The dynamic, volitional, causative, etc. meanings added by the voice suffixes are not consistent for each suffix. It all depends on the verb.
  • Not all voice suffixes are used with every verb.

Summary of the Voices

Active Intransitive
  • The active intransitive voice requires 1 active argument.
  • Active intransitive verbs are (usually?) unergative.
  • They are often verbs of motion or other activity that are not directed towards an object.
  • Active intransitive verbs do not mention if there is a stative patient, and do not imply such.
  • They can be seen as an “anti-middle” voice, where an agent is performing an action on an object, but the object is not specified or even implied.
Stative Intransitive
  • The stative intransitive voice requires 1 stative argument.
  • Active intransitive verbs are (usually?) unaccusative.
  • Nouns, adjectives, and adverbs of other languages are often stative intransitive verbs in Jin.
  • These verbs do not mention or consider if there is an active agent, and do not imply it.
  • Depending on the root verb, stative intransitive verbs can used as a middle voice or a resulative.
Active Transitive
  • Require 2 arguments: 1 active and 1 stative
  • The active transitive has word order Verb - Active - Stative.
  • The active transitive describes what the active argument is doing to the stative argument.
  • Active transitives are proto-typical transitive verbs.
Stative Transitive
  • Require 2 arguments: 1 active and 1 stative
  • The stative transitive has word order Verb - Stative - Active.
  • Stative transitive verbs define some relationship between the arguments.
  • They are often emotions, perceptions, or locatives.
Active Passive
  • The active passive requires 1 stative argument.
  • This voice indicates there is an active constituent (agent) involved, although it’s left unstated.
Stative Passive
  • The stative passive requires 1 stative argument.
  • This voice indicates there is an active constituent (stimulus, location, etc.) involved, although it’s left unstated.
  • This voice can seem odd since it’s arguments are often treated as subjects by other languages.
Active Antipassive
  • The active antipassive requires 1 active argument.
  • it indicates there is a stative constituent (patient) involved, although it’s left unstated.
Stative Antipassive
  • The stative antipassive requires 1 active argument.
  • This voice indicates there is a stative constituent (experiencer, theme, etc.) involved, although it’s left unstated.
  • Like the stative passive, this voice can behave in unexpected manners for non-native speakers who are used to different notions of “subject”.
Reflexive and Reciprocal
  • The active version of these voices requires 1 active argument.
  • The stative version of these voices requires 1 stative argument.
  • Both voices are essentially transitive.
  • The reflexive indicates the active and stative arguments of the underlying transitive verb are the same.
  • The reciprocal indicates there are 2 or more constituents involved, each of which are active (carrying out the action on the others) and stative (undergoing the actions performed by the other constituents).
  • Jin does not have reflexive or reciprocal pronouns; these voices are used in lieu of those.
Impersonal
  • The impersonal requires 0 arguments. It stands on its own.
  • It states that an action is happening or that something exists, without comment on who or what is in the state or performing the action.
Tibetan Dwarvish - My own ergative "dwarf-lang"

Quasi-Khuzdul - An expansion of J.R.R. Tolkien's Dwarvish language from The Lord of the Rings

Vardelm
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Posts: 329
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Re: Primordial Scratchpad (NP: Jin updates)

Post by Vardelm »

Jin: Voice pt 2

Voice Suffixes:

Code: Select all

Voice        |     Active         |     Stative
-------------+-------------------+---------------------
Intransitive |  V+ja     C+aj     |  V+ya    C+iya
Transitive   |  V+nza    C+anza   |  V+wi    C+awi
Passive      |  V+sh     C+ish    |  V+m     C+im
Antipassive  |  V+qi     C+iq     |  V+ta    C+at
Reflexive    |  V+jun    C+ajun   |  V+bu    C+abu
Reciprocal   |  V+nzim   C+unzim  |  V+bim   C+ubim 
Impersonal   |  V+mas    C+umas   |  V+lah   C+alah

At some point in the near future, I plan to edit this post w/ a bunch of example sentences that illustrate all of the voices. My idea is to show how the work through the following sections:
  • Verbs in their default voice (no voice suffix)
  • Verbs in their default voice vs. a derived voice (adding a voice suffix) that uses the suffix of the verb's default voice
  • Verbs in their default voice vs. using derived voices other than the verb's default voice
  • Verbs as the main verb of a sentence vs. a relative clause


EDIT:
I haven't had time to work on examples the way I'd like, and won't for the next couple weeks, so here's just a quick sketch of some uses of voice.
  • mimut (jida) mizhuliq
    mimut
    dead
    jida
    3PS
    mizhuliq
    stole-thieved

    The thief is dead.
Mimut is, by default, stative intransitive, so the sole argument is considered stative, and requires a stative pronoun (which can be dropped).
  • mimutiya mizhuliq
    mimut-iya
    dead-VIS
    mizhuliq
    stole-thieved

    The thief dies / is dying.
VIS is voice-intransitive-stative, which is the default voice of the verb mimut. Explicitly adding the -iya suffix doesn't change the voice, but does add a dynamic meaning.

  • mimutanza mizhuliq
    mimut-anza
    dead-VTA
    mit'alindi
    guard
    mizhuliq
    stole-thieved

    The guard killed the thief.
VTA is voice-transitive-active, which changes the verb valency to require 2 arguments: 1 active and 1 stative. It also changes diathesis, adds causativity, and makes the verb function like a prototypical accusative verb, where the agent (active argument) is performing an action on the patient (stative argument).
Tibetan Dwarvish - My own ergative "dwarf-lang"

Quasi-Khuzdul - An expansion of J.R.R. Tolkien's Dwarvish language from The Lord of the Rings

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