Glossing challenge for Wena, an isolating language

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Imralu
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Glossing challenge for Wena, an isolating language

Post by Imralu »

So, here's a bunch of fairly pointless sentences to show some syntax of a new isolating lang I'm working on. Your challenge is to work out what all of the words are. You could either gloss every sentence (pffft!) or just write a word list with a gloss for each word. Please use spoiler tags in case others want to do this after you. Also, don't get too hung up on the "ins" and "ats" ... they're basically just meant to be locatives but it's awkward in English. Just meant to be a bit of silly fun but I'm also curious to see if you can do it and how some things are glossed.

Na i mba.
= I am a house.

Na i de mba.
= I am the house.

Lyu nga i mba.
= I am in a house.

Lyu nga i de mba.
= I am in the house.

Lyu ya mba i na.
= A house is at me.

Lyu zyi mba i na.
= The house is at me.

Na i mo ya mba.
= I eat a house.

Na i mo zyi mba.
= I eat the house.

Mba i mo nga.
= A house eats me.

De mba i mo nga.

= The house eats me.

Mo nga i mba.
= What eats me is a house.

Mo nga i de mba.
= What eats me is the house.

Lyu ya mo nga i de mba.
= What eats me is in the house.

Lyu zyi mba i de mo nga.
= The house is in what eats me.

Edit: Swapping lu and lyu.
Last edited by Imralu on Thu Aug 18, 2016 9:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
Glossing Abbreviations: COMP = comparative, C = complementiser, ACS / ICS = accessible / inaccessible, GDV = gerundive, SPEC / NSPC = specific / non-specific
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Re: Glossing challenge for Wena, an isolating language

Post by Benturi »

I like this kind of challenges, I'd like to see more conlangs presented this way.
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i is the copula or a particle that precedes the predicate
ya = of
na = I (1SG.NOM)
nga = of me (1SG.GEN)
de = the (definite article)
zyi = of the
mba = house
lu = place
mo = eater

Lu nga i de mba.
place of.me COP the house

Na i mo ya mba.
I COP eater of house = I eat a house.

Na i mo zyi mba.
I COP eater of.the house = I eat the house.

Mba i mo nga.
house COP eater of.me = A house eats me.

De mba i mo nga.
the house COP eater of.me = The house eats me.

Mo nga i mba.
eater of.me COP house = What eats me is a house.

Mo nga i de mba.
eater of.me COP the house = What eats me is the house.

Lu ya mo nga i de mba.
place of eater of.me COP the house = What eats me is in the house.

Lu zyi mba i de mo nga.
place of.the house COP eater of.me = The house is in what eats me.

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Re: Glossing challenge for Wena, an isolating language

Post by Imralu »

Benturi wrote:I like this kind of challenges, I'd like to see more conlangs presented this way.
Yeah, me too. This should be a thing. I might add more sentences soon,
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i is the copula or a particle that precedes the predicate
Yep. Since it's non-inflecting, though, I'm happy to call it a particle, but yeah, it fills the role of a copula. I've been glossing it "PRED" ...
ya = of
na = I (1SG.NOM)
nga = of me (1SG.GEN)
de = the (definite article)
zyi = of the
mba = house
lu = place
mo = eater
Yep. I would call lu "location" rather than just "place" though but ... minor difference. And I save a bit of space by glossing mo as just "eat" ... and it also means I don't have to make up agent nouns for things where it gets more awkward. (Like, is one who shows a shower?) I'd also probably gloss all your "of"s as "GEN" but "of" is nice and simple for non-linguists to understand and actually doesn't really cause any problems .... and is also shorter, so I might just go with "of", since "of" is basically just a genitive preposition. Thanks!
Anyway, well done! Two tried it over on the CBB and seemed a bit more confused by it, although they didn't do too badly either.
Glossing Abbreviations: COMP = comparative, C = complementiser, ACS / ICS = accessible / inaccessible, GDV = gerundive, SPEC / NSPC = specific / non-specific
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Re: Glossing challenge for Wena, an isolating language

Post by Benturi »

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Imralu wrote:Anyway, well done! Two tried it over on the CBB and seemed a bit more confused by it, although they didn't do too badly either.
:-D
Two things helped: First, based on what I know of your other conlangs, I was expecting some kind of experiment with word classes. :)
Also, while my "main" conlangs are more typical in that they have verbs and nouns as open classes, a lot of my side projects are languages with a closed class of "true" verbs and an open class of nouns that includes nominals referring to actions and events (rarely to agents, but there are means to turn action nouns into agent nouns), so I guess I'm accustomed to seeing (direct) objects expressed as genitives.
There's also the coincidence that in the most recent of those projects, which I was sketching last week, I was using i as topic marker, generally followed by the predicate, and the copula can be omitted so, for example, "I am a house" would be dɤː i taj (1SG TOP house) (with copula: dɤː i taj ɹa).

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Re: Glossing challenge for Wena, an isolating language

Post by Imralu »

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Benturi wrote:Two things helped: First, based on what I know of your other conlangs, I was expecting some kind of experiment with word classes. :)
Ah, cool that you remembered me and something about my conlangs. Yeah. I find it really hard to force myself to have more word classes so I doubt I will ever make a conlang again that has a more normal spread of them. Maybe if I ever make a con sign language ... for some reason, they seem to lend themselves to zero derivation a lot but I haven't got any truly no-noun-verb-distinction-y ideas for SLs to feel quite right to me.

Just curious though - what was your reason for crossing out "particle introducing the predicate" and replace it with "copula"? I would consider it both ... it's a particle because it's a little grammatical word that doesn't inflect, and it's a copula because ... well, it basically means "is/am/are" and it could be thought of as the language's only verb. Are the criteria for counting something as one or the other that go deeper than my knowledge?
Also, while my "main" conlangs are more typical in that they have verbs and nouns as open classes, a lot of my side projects are languages with a closed class of "true" verbs and an open class of nouns that includes nominals referring to actions and events (rarely to agents, but there are means to turn action nouns into agent nouns), so I guess I'm accustomed to seeing (direct) objects expressed as genitives.
Ah, so, kind of like Kēlen?
Benturi wrote:There's also the coincidence that in the most recent of those projects, which I was sketching last week, I was using i as topic marker, generally followed by the predicate, and the copula can be omitted so, for example, "I am a house" would be dɤː i taj (1SG TOP house) (with copula: dɤː i taj ɹa).
Ah, cool. Yeah, i just feels right to me. Because it's going to pop up in basically every clause, it should be short, and if it's an i it lends itself to diphthonging onto things very easily, making it not even effect the syllable count. Also, the Melanesian English-based creoles (Tok Pisin, Bislama ...) use i for this (but only in third person). If you had done a thread like this with your lang, I would have assumed your i is also a copula.
Glossing Abbreviations: COMP = comparative, C = complementiser, ACS / ICS = accessible / inaccessible, GDV = gerundive, SPEC / NSPC = specific / non-specific
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Re: Glossing challenge for Wena, an isolating language

Post by Benturi »

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Imralu wrote:Just curious though - what was your reason for crossing out "particle introducing the predicate" and replace it with "copula"? I would consider it both ... it's a particle because it's a little grammatical word that doesn't inflect, and it's a copula because ... well, it basically means "is/am/are" and it could be thought of as the language's only verb. Are the criteria for counting something as one or the other that go deeper than my knowledge?
Actually I'm not very good with linguistic terminology and "predicate" is kind of an ambiguous term, so I wasn't sure if I was using it right. I left it because it was my first guess. I wrote the glosses in a hurry as usual and just thought if I called it "particle introducing the predicate" it would imply that whatever followed it included a verb, but from your sentences it seemed that i could be analysed as the copular verb, followed by a nominal (as in "NounPhraseA is NounPhraseB").
Imralu wrote:Ah, so, kind of like Kēlen?
Yeah, although my initial sources of inspiration were Basque and a friend's conlang; I discovered Kēlen much later.
Imralu wrote:Because it's going to pop up in basically every clause, it should be short, and if it's an i it lends itself to diphthonging onto things very easily, making it not even effect the syllable count.
:) I'm familiar with this kind of considerations...

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Re: Glossing challenge for Wena, an isolating language

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Benturi wrote:Actually I'm not very good with linguistic terminology and "predicate" is kind of an ambiguous term, so I wasn't sure if I was using it right.
Yeah, sometimes it's used just to mean the verb phrase (without objects etc) and sometimes it's used to mean everything other than the subject (incl. objects).
I left it because it was my first guess. I wrote the glosses in a hurry as usual and just thought if I called it "particle introducing the predicate" it would imply that whatever followed it included a verb, but from your sentences it seemed that i could be analysed as the copular verb, followed by a nominal (as in "NounPhraseA is NounPhraseB").
Well, yeah, but when you say NounPhraseA is NounPhraseB, I would regard "is NounPhraseB" as the predicate. Anyway, this is all just the semantics. I was basically just curious to see if I could learn something from your distinction between them as I think it's useful to bring my use of these kind of words in line with everybody else's.
Yeah, although my initial sources of inspiration were Basque and a friend's conlang; I discovered Kēlen much later.
Yeah, I didn't mean to imply anything about causality. I forgot Basque does something like this, doesn't it?
Imralu wrote:Because it's going to pop up in basically every clause, it should be short, and if it's an i it lends itself to diphthonging onto things very easily, making it not even effect the syllable count.
:) I'm familiar with this kind of considerations...
There's a language around here, I can't remember by who, where the word for "I", from memory, is dikaesha. I just can't. I mean, I guess I run the risk of not having enough redundancy in my langs because I tend to try to make them as short as as overloaded with information in as few syllables as possible, and I also try to do this with a relatively simple phonology and syllable structure. As someone who often (and increasingly) struggles to understand people on the phone or in noisy environments, I could probably do with a bit more redundancy, but I'm also incredibly impatient and I tend to speak much faster than my mouth will really allow because thoughts are so much faster and more compact than language, so when languages end up too long and wordy, it frustrates me a bit. I also really like agglutinative languages but end up making quite isolating languages and I'm slowly learning to appreciate that. There's always a balance of opposing forces.
Glossing Abbreviations: COMP = comparative, C = complementiser, ACS / ICS = accessible / inaccessible, GDV = gerundive, SPEC / NSPC = specific / non-specific
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Re: Glossing challenge for Wena, an isolating language

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Imralu wrote:Well, yeah, but when you say NounPhraseA is NounPhraseB, I would regard "is NounPhraseB" as the predicate. Anyway, this is all just the semantics. I was basically just curious to see if I could learn something from your distinction between them as I think it's useful to bring my use of these kind of words in line with everybody else's.
My thought was basically that "introducing the predicate" could imply "not being part of the predicate"... and in my interpretation i was not only included in it but the verb itself so... Anyway, I'm obviously not the right person to learn the most appropriate or widely accepted liguistic terminology from...
Yeah, I didn't mean to imply anything about causality. I forgot Basque does something like this, doesn't it?
Well, I freely admit I borrowed the "verbs-as-a-small-closed-class" idea from a friend's conlang. And yes, Basque has a small number of verbs that can be fully conjugated, the other verbs have only non-finite forms and must be used together with auxiliaries (each verb has a set of non-finite forms that convey some tense-aspect information, so not all grammatical information is expressed in the auxiliary). It also has some interesting constructions where a lexical element (usually a noun or an adjective) is used together with a light verb like 'be', 'have' or 'do', so "do word" = "speak", "have dear" = "love" (cf. German "lieb haben"), etc. - I also took inspiration from this.
I mean, I guess I run the risk of not having enough redundancy in my langs because I tend to try to make them as short as as overloaded with information in as few syllables as possible, and I also try to do this with a relatively simple phonology and syllable structure.
Trying to keep a low syllable count has been a constant in my conlangs too, even though I don't dislike natlangs or conlangs with long morphemes at all. When I started learning about other people's conlangs (I mean, besides famous ones like Esperanto or Tolkien's), I always wondered why they created such long words. But I tend (now less than before, but still) to use complex phonologies and syllable structures. My conlang Yir, for example, has 36 ~ 37 consonants and 9 or 18 vowels (depending on whether one analyses long vowels or sequences of V+schwa), allows few consonants as coda but complex onsets, most roots are monosyllabic and some common grammatical suffixes are single consonants (-t, -s, -k, -x), and has very little redundancy (Yir is agglutinative, so it could be described as having short morphemes and long words). But Yir is one of my oldest langs, and the more recent ones have more redundancy and longer morphemes.
Btw I assumed that native English speakers are not interested in "keeping the syllable count low" in their conlangs since that's what their own native language does.

EDIT:
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Even in that recent conlang I mentioned in my second post I couldn't resist and made it so that:
a) The copulas (there is an essential copula ɹa and an existential copula ʔe) can be dropped.
b) The locative suffix is -kə, which can be reduced to -k in final position, and that's generally when the copula is dropped, so dɤː i taj-kə ʔedɤː i tajk "I am in the house".
c) Most verbs are actually action nouns like xin "(the act of) walking"; they can be used together with an auxiliary like the verb si "do", which is inherently perfective: dɤː i xin si (1SG TOP walk do.PFV), and -you've guessed it- final si can be reduced to s so: dɤː i xins "I walked"
d) To express an ongoing action, one uses the locative+copula: dɤː i xin-kə ʔe (1SG TOP walk-LOC be:EX) and, of course, this can be reduced to dɤː i xink "I am walking".

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Re: Glossing challenge for Wena, an isolating language

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Benturi wrote:My thought was basically that "introducing the predicate" could imply "not being part of the predicate"... and in my interpretation i was not only included in it but the verb itself so...
Yeah, again, I think this is more or less just semantics. Does the conjunction "because" introduce a clause indicating a cause or reason or is it part of this clause? It's not really mutually exclusive and it really depends on what you define as being part of the clause ... and clause is just a word.
dɤː i xins "I walked"
dɤː i xink "I am walking".
Cool!
Btw I assumed that native English speakers are not interested in "keeping the syllable count low" in their conlangs since that's what their own native language does.
That's a weird generalisation. It's my favourite thing about English. It's generally pretty nice and compact. What's your native language, by the way?
Glossing Abbreviations: COMP = comparative, C = complementiser, ACS / ICS = accessible / inaccessible, GDV = gerundive, SPEC / NSPC = specific / non-specific
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Re: Glossing challenge for Wena, an isolating language

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Imralu wrote:
Benturi wrote:My thought was basically that "introducing the predicate" could imply "not being part of the predicate"... and in my interpretation i was not only included in it but the verb itself so...
Yeah, again, I think this is more or less just semantics. Does the conjunction "because" introduce a clause indicating a cause or reason or is it part of this clause? It's not really mutually exclusive and it really depends on what you define as being part of the clause ... and clause is just a word.
OK, I understand.
dɤː i xins "I walked"
dɤː i xink "I am walking".
Cool!
Thanks! It looks like "normal" verb + tense-aspect marking, doesn't it? But the language has a handful of "true" verbs that do not require an auxiliary and, if transitive, take an unmarked object, so that:
1SG TOP fish-GEN catch do "I caught the fish." (A literal translation would be "I did the catching of the fish.")
1SG TOP fish-GEN cook do "I cooked the fish." (Same as above. I used to gloss my verbal nouns as "catching", etc. to make clear that they're actually, well, nouns.)
but:
1SG TOP fish eat "I ate the fish."
Btw I assumed that native English speakers are not interested in "keeping the syllable count low" in their conlangs since that's what their own native language does.
That's a weird generalisation.
OK, it was just an impression, you know, that many conlangers try to make their (first) langs as different as possible from their own native language...
What's your native language, by the way?
It's Spanish.

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Re: Glossing challenge for Wena, an isolating language

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I thought most conlangers make their first languages very similar to their own as they usually do not understand linguistics that well.
ìtsanso, God In The Mountain, may our names inspire the deepest feelings of fear in urkos and all his ilk, for we have saved another man from his lies! I welcome back to the feast hall kal, who will never gamble again! May the eleven gods bless him!
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Re: Glossing challenge for Wena, an isolating language

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Benturi wrote:Thanks! It looks like "normal" verb + tense-aspect marking, doesn't it? But the language has a handful of "true" verbs that do not require an auxiliary and, if transitive, take an unmarked object, so that:
1SG TOP fish-GEN catch do "I caught the fish." (A literal translation would be "I did the catching of the fish.")
1SG TOP fish-GEN cook do "I cooked the fish." (Same as above. I used to gloss my verbal nouns as "catching", etc. to make clear that they're actually, well, nouns.)
but:
1SG TOP fish eat "I ate the fish."
Yay for little kinks. Makes it seem much more naturalistic. Also, I guess the -k and -s forms can also be expanded out to their full forms for emphasis, no? Keeps things a little more complex.
mèþru wrote:I thought most conlangers make their first languages very similar to their own as they usually do not understand linguistics that well.
Right! But he did say try.

In any case, my conlanging goal tends to be towards something I like, and this trumps naturalism for me. There are features of English that I like and features that I don't like. Conciseness (concision?) is something that I like.
Glossing Abbreviations: COMP = comparative, C = complementiser, ACS / ICS = accessible / inaccessible, GDV = gerundive, SPEC / NSPC = specific / non-specific
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Re: Glossing challenge for Wena, an isolating language

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Imralu wrote:Also, I guess the -k and -s forms can also be expanded out to their full forms for emphasis, no?
Yes. Now I'm probably going to use a contraction of kə ʔe → ke instead of (or besides) just -k, it would make the difference more audible. But I think I've talked too much about my own lang already. Anyway, I have enjoyed this glossing challenge and like what I've seen so far of Wena. I'm also a big fan of Ngolu!

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Re: Glossing challenge for Wena, an isolating language

Post by Imralu »

MOAR!

OK, here's some more. It's not terribly systematic and to work out what everything is, I'll probably have to provide more sentences so feel free to ask "how would you say ..." or "would XYZ mean ..." kind of questions.

Hi e mba.
[ˈhi emˈba]
= This/that is a house.

Hina i gwa.
[ˈhinaj ˈgwa]
= This (here by me) is a fish.

Na i ze mu.
[ˈnaj ze ˈmu]
= I don't know.

Na i ze mu zyu ha na i mu.
[ˈnaj ze ˈmu ʒu ha ˌnaj ˈmu]
= I don't know if I know.

Na i ze mu zyu na i mu mya.
[ˈnaj ze ˈmu ʒu ˌnaj ˈmu mja]
= I don't know what/who I know.

Na i bo mu zyu wa i ma.
[ˈnaj bo ˈmu ʒu ˌwaj ˈma]
= I want to know who/what you are.

He ze ngu nga.
[he ze ˈŋu ŋa]
= Don't kill me!

Ze ngu i zyenda.
[ze ˈŋuj ˈʒenda]
= What doesn't kill (you) makes (you) stronger.

De i ngu zyi u lyu i mba nga u dya i nggo.
[ˌdej ŋu ʒiw ˌʎujmˈba ŋaw ˌdʒajŋˈgo]
= He killed/kills/will kill it in my house with a stick.

De i dwi ngu zyi u dya i mizyo zyi.
[ˌdej dwi ŋu ʒiw ˌdʒaj ˈmiʒo ʒi]
= She killed/kills/will kill it using her mind.

Lyu wo i ma?
ʎu woj ˈma]
= Where are you?

Wa i zi mo zyi u lyu i ma?
[ˈwaj zi ˈmo ʒiw ˌʎuj ˈma]
= Where did you eat it?

Ma i lyu zyu wa i zi mo zyi?
[ˌmaj ˈʎu ʒu ˈwaj zi ˈmo ʒi]
= Where did you eat it? (alternative)

De i zi ngu zyi gwi u (de i) mo (zyi).
[ˈdej zi ˈŋu ʒi ˈgwiw (ˌdej) ˈmo (ʒi)]
= He killed the fish by eating (it). (The "de i" and the "zyi" in brackets are independently optional and don't have to occur together.)

Edit: Changed gwenda to zyenda, part of an arbitrary reform just because I like [ʒ] so much.
Edit: Swapping lu and lyu.
Last edited by Imralu on Thu Aug 18, 2016 9:43 am, edited 3 times in total.
Glossing Abbreviations: COMP = comparative, C = complementiser, ACS / ICS = accessible / inaccessible, GDV = gerundive, SPEC / NSPC = specific / non-specific
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Re: Glossing challenge for Wena, an isolating language

Post by Benturi »

More sentences, good! I'll have a closer look at them this evening, for now this is what I can identify:
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hi "this/that", distance-neutral demonstrative pronoun
hina "this", proximal demonstrative pronoun, apparently hi + na (1SG)
gwa "fish"
e seems to be a form of the particle i after /i/
mu "know" (I'll follow your suggestion and gloss this kind of words that I analyse as agent nouns as verbs)
ze "not"
The interrogative pronoun is ma (nominative) / mya (genitive).

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Re: Glossing challenge for Wena, an isolating language

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Benturi wrote:More sentences, good! I'll have ]hi "this/that", distance-neutral demonstrative pronoun
hina "this", proximal demonstrative pronoun, apparently hi + na (1SG)
gwa "fish"
e seems to be a form of the particle i after /i/
mu "know" (I'll follow your suggestion and gloss this kind of words that I analyse as agent nouns as verbs)
ze "not"
The interrogative pronoun is ma (nominative) / mya (genitive).
Yep. All correct. Well done!

And I'm now glossing with .AG on English verbs to show that it's an agent noun, with .E on adjectives and miscellaneous to show that it's an entity and occasionally .N on ambiguous English nouns like "light". For example "know.AG", "large.E" etc. I just find it's a bit more unambiguous.
Glossing Abbreviations: COMP = comparative, C = complementiser, ACS / ICS = accessible / inaccessible, GDV = gerundive, SPEC / NSPC = specific / non-specific
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Re: Glossing challenge for Wena, an isolating language

Post by Benturi »

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The second-person pronoun (singular, I assume) is wa (NOM) / wo (GEN).
The third-person pronoun (singular, right?) is de (NOM) / zyi (GEN). It also functions as the definite article.
ngu kill.AG
bo want.AG
nggo stick (n)
mizyo mind (n)
dya instrument
zi is some past tense and/or perfective aspect marker, placed after i.
I don't know exactly what zyu and ha are or how to gloss them:
zyu seems to introduce a subordinate clause (it looks like the genitive of something)
the combination zyu ha corresponds to "if" before an indirect question, so maybe ha marks polar questions (non polar questions in your examples simply have an in situ interrogative pronoun).
It seems that he is the imperative of i (He ze ngu nga. lit.: "Don't be killer of me!" = "Don't kill me!").
u seems to turn a clause into an adjunct (I like this!).
gwenda = make.stronger.AG, but whether it is further analysable, I can't tell.

Questions:
Could at least one of the following sentences be an answer to "Where did you eat it?":
a) Lu i mba nga (location PRED house 1SG.GEN)
b) De lu i mba nga (3 location PRED house 1SG.GEN)
c) Lu zyi i mba nga (location 3.GEN PRED house 1SG.GEN)

De i gwenda = "It makes stronger." (right?), but how do you say:
"I am strong."
"I am stronger."
"It makes strong."

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Re: Glossing challenge for Wena, an isolating language

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You're doing really well!
The third-person pronoun (singular, right?) is de (NOM) / zyi (GEN). It also functions as the definite article.
It's not necessarily singular.

There's only one thing you're not quite right on and I'll try to work it into the following examples to nudge you in the right direction.

As far as I see it, there's no appreciable difference between "it makes stronger" and "it makes strong". If you make something strong, presumably that means you're making it stronger than it was, no? I only translated it that way because of the English idiom "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." Of course, there is a difference between making someone stronger than they once were (the sense that gwenda zyenda and the English word "strengthen" have) and making someone stronger than someone else and I'll see if that gets into the new examples. Thanks for this ... I've just figured out how to do comparatives. :-)
Could at least one of the following sentences be an answer to "Where did you eat it?":
a) Lu i mba nga (location PRED house 1SG.GEN)
b) De lu i mba nga (3 location PRED house 1SG.GEN)
c) Lu zyi i mba nga (location 3.GEN PRED house 1SG.GEN)
Yes! (I don't know how in depth you want me to get with this answer. You just asked me a yes-no question, so I answered it. Yes! I will, however, tell you, that I think the most idiomatic answer would probably just be mba nga but longer variants are of course possible, including at least one of your suggestions. ;-))

Actually, I will also tell you that "zyi i" doesn't work because you already discovered that rule. It would have to be "zyi e".
Ne mu i yu na i nda
= It is know that I am strong.

Na i zyu na i gi zyonda u ba i wa.
= I don't think I'm as smart as you. / I think I'm less smart than you.

Mye na i mu zyu na i zinye (ba) nda u gi e wa.
= But I know I'm still stronger than you.

The ba can be dropped in this sentence ....

Na i zyu wa i (ba) nda u gi e na u (wa i) hu.
= I think you'll be stronger than me when you're a man.

(The wa i in brackets can be dropped. The sentence would then technically be syntactically ambiguous but people can cope.)

Lo mo i zye zyu wa i (ba) nda u gi e na.
= Eating will make you stronger than me.

Ha wa i bo (ba) nda u gi e na?
= Do you want to be stronger than me?

Ha wa i bo nda do wa i he mo ya bandya gwi.
= If you want to be strong, you should eat lots of fish.

U hu ye nda do wa i mwe ngge ya eda u me na.
= When you are a strong man, you can hunt cassowaries with me.

(The final phrase could be u me na, u me nga or maybe even u me i na or u na i me but the final two would have a slightly different sense, as if I were tagging along with you rather than you with me. U me na would probably be more common than u me nga but both are grammatically correct.)

Wana i mwe mo ya eda ye ne ngge wona.
= We can eat the cassowaries that we hunt.

The ya could also be dropped from the last two sentences. From a lot of sentences, actually, but maybe that's something a bit more advanced.

I homo! Yu wa i hu i he byu.
= Yum! I'm looking forward to you being a man.

I swear "homo" was entirely unintentional. It actually made me laugh out loud.

EDIT: With the silliness around "homo" I forgot to mention that the last phrase is probably hard because of the funny way they say "look forward to".

EDIT: Changed gwe to zye as part of a language reform just because I like post-alveolar voiced fricatives.
Last edited by Imralu on Sat Jul 23, 2016 11:32 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Glossing Abbreviations: COMP = comparative, C = complementiser, ACS / ICS = accessible / inaccessible, GDV = gerundive, SPEC / NSPC = specific / non-specific
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Re: Glossing challenge for Wena, an isolating language

Post by mèþru »

"homo" is going in the quote thread.
ìtsanso, God In The Mountain, may our names inspire the deepest feelings of fear in urkos and all his ilk, for we have saved another man from his lies! I welcome back to the feast hall kal, who will never gamble again! May the eleven gods bless him!
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Re: Glossing challenge for Wena, an isolating language

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Damn! You beat me to it. (On the other hand, once you post that, oh, I have so much more to post already...).

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Re: Glossing challenge for Wena, an isolating language

Post by Imralu »

Dammit, you guys! That whole sentence looks terrifying without the context. "Can't wait till you're legal! *lick's lips" OMFG!
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Re: Glossing challenge for Wena, an isolating language

Post by mèþru »

I interpreted it as a sex transformation. I need to dig up my pessimistic side from whatever cave it is hiding in and force it to exercise more.
ìtsanso, God In The Mountain, may our names inspire the deepest feelings of fear in urkos and all his ilk, for we have saved another man from his lies! I welcome back to the feast hall kal, who will never gamble again! May the eleven gods bless him!
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Re: Glossing challenge for Wena, an isolating language

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I think I interpreted it as something like planning to meet up with someone you've only ever known as an online user or something, and then getting excited about hooking up with them in person. :D

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Re: Glossing challenge for Wena, an isolating language

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Someone you only know online becomes a man when you meet them?
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Re: Glossing challenge for Wena, an isolating language

Post by Vijay »

Well, becomes an actual man in the flesh before your eyes, as opposed to some screenname on a computer, if that makes any sense.

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