Presentation in Uni about Dravean

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FloWi
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Presentation in Uni about Dravean

Post by FloWi »

Hey Guys :)
Glad I found your forum! My name is Florine and I'm hearing a lecture at uni about conlangs.
Next week I'll have to present the language Dravean :)
And I still need a bit more information about Dravean because I can't really find that much online.
It'd be greatly appreciated if someone helped me out with your collective knowledge ;)
So here are my questions:

1. How artificial or natural is the language?
2. What are typological characteristics and how do they relate to natural languages?
3. What are the goals and were they met?
4. What culture is expressed by the language and how much? Is the language part of its identity?
5. Does it sound pretty or look pretty when written?
6. Can you talk about ANYTHING in Dravean? Is it possible to translate every text to Dravean?
7 How difficult is it to learn this language?
8. If one has learned all there is to know, will this language be usable?
9. Documentation: How much description is publicly accessable?
10. Stability: Is the language done to the point that it isn’t changing anymore, at least not due to active designing?
11. Grammatical complexity: possible and obligatory variation
- Allophony und -morphy and the complexity of the triggering context
- Words and constructions with limited use; und Konstruktionen mit beschränkter Verwendung; suppletion
12. Corpus: What has been written in this language?

Thank you so much for your help in advance :)

Best, Florine

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Re: Presentation in Uni about Dravean

Post by Salmoneus »

Wouldn't it be politer to begin by asking for permission to present somebody else's work?

In any case, the user you want to communicate with is Dewrad, who created it.
FWIW though, there's a 200 page grammar on the internet (I don't know if it's up-to-date; it's not fully complete), and a dictionary of what looks like a couple of thousand words. So you might be able to answer some of your questions yourself...
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Re: Presentation in Uni about Dravean

Post by FloWi »

I didn't intend to be impolite in any way and if it seemed like it I apologize.
I thought the developer of Dravean would appreciate it if his work gets presented somewhere else where people don't know Dravean yet.
Thanks for sending his username.
Best,
Florine

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Re: Presentation in Uni about Dravean

Post by Dewrad »

Tan saloit, Florine! O jèu san el Dewrad, crajadro dela lènga draveana. I'm happy to answer your questions about Dravian: I've sent you a PM with my personal email address if you want any further information (like who I am, my linguistic and professional background etc).

1. How artificial or natural is the language?
Dravian was designed with the explicit intention of creating a language as naturalistic as possible. My aim was to create a language which would plausibly stand up as an authentic member of the Romance family. It was most emphatically not designed as any kind of "auxiliary language".

2. What are typological characteristics and how do they relate to natural languages?
Given the design goal of naturalism, Dravian is consciously designed with reference to the typological characteristics of what Haspelmath terms Standard Average European. Of the first twelve characteristics mentioned on that page, Dravian lacks only number 11, as pro-drop is permissible (although not typical). Of the remaining features mentioned on that page, colloquial Dravian lacks suppletion of comitative and instrumental: cu amaicei mai vs d'o coltèl.

However, this should not be misconstrued as stating that the grammatical typology is solely Standard Average European. The language has its own quirks which don't obtain in (most) other European languages. For example, there are two passive auxiliaries- a stative and a dynamic- and there are a number of word order constraints and peculiarities which have knock-on effects with the distribution of tonic and atonic personal pronouns.

3. What are the goals and were they met?
As stated above: to create a language which would plausibly stand up as an authentic member of the Romance family. I would normally be far too modest to say whether I've been successful, but honestly I believe so.

4. What culture is expressed by the language and how much? Is the language part of its identity?
I'm not sure precisely what you mean by this question. Are you asking if there's an associated fictional culture, or whether the values of the language's speakers are reflected by the lexicon and grammar of the language? Or both?

5. Does it sound pretty or look pretty when written?
Of course it does, but I am biased. There's a sound sample here, which is a reading of the text presented here. Would you like a personalised greeting to you class that you can play during your presentation?

6. Can you talk about ANYTHING in Dravean? Is it possible to translate every text to Dravean?
Hypothetically yes. The only limitation would be the vocabulary. While I don't currently have the words to discuss particle physics in Dravian, I have at my disposal the tools with which to coin them (in the same way that any minority European language would: calquing, borrowing or adapting "international" vocabulary).

7 How difficult is it to learn this language?
No more so than say, Italian or French.

8. If one has learned all there is to know, will this language be usable?
It already is usable. The documentation may be incomplete, but what there is should enable most people with a reasonable familiarity with a modern Romance language to write intelligible (perhaps not entirely grammatically correct) texts.

9. Documentation: How much description is publicly accessable?
There is a work-in-progress grammar description of the language, which currently stands at 32,724 words, and an online lexicon which contains around 2500 headwords. The lexical database on my computer stands at around 3200 words at the moment. I anticipate having the fifth draft of the grammar out in late July or early August.

Links to both can be found in my sig at the bottom of this post.

10. Stability: Is the language done to the point that it isn’t changing anymore, at least not due to active designing?
Yes. What remains to be described in the grammar has already been decided upon, and these sections are mainly elaboration rather than presenting entirely new aspects of the language.

11. Grammatical complexity: possible and obligatory variation
- Allophony und -morphy and the complexity of the triggering context
- Words and constructions with limited use; und Konstruktionen mit beschränkter Verwendung; suppletion

I'm assuming that Konstruktionen mit beschränkter Verwendung are "constructions with limited use"?

Allophony can be found on pages 2 and 4 of the grammar. Allomorphy is pervasive in the language: most significantly rhizotonic apophony in verbal inflection- see page 134 onwards.

There are a number of words with limited use, either due to being archaic or occuring only in set phrases or collocations. For example ramanç is the reflex of Latin rōmānīcē "in a Roman fashion", which is found only in the expression favlar ramanç, which is equivalent to "straight talking" in English.

A fair few grammatical constructions are of limited distribution, and are often limited to dialectal or archaic use. For example, the agreement of past participles of transitive verbs with their objects is restricted to clauses with third person subjects, and is recessive in the standard dialect.

Suppletion is common in verbs, particularly the verbs jèstro "to be" and zèr "to go"- in both cases this suppletion is inherited from Latin. Similarly, suppletion is not unknown in nouns, particularly in gendered pairs referring to animates (oam 'man' vs. fèmna 'woman')

12. Corpus: What has been written in this language?
To date, excluding any contributions I've made to conversations on this board and the examples in the grammar, I have written:

- two folk tales in the language
- an incomplete translation of the Gospel of Mark
- a translation of the introduction to the Communist Manifesto
- a translation of Le Petit Prince
- several "news" articles from the fictional country in which Dravian is spoken
- an extract from a novel

The corpus probably totals something along the lines of 20,000 words, maybe?

Thank you so much for your help in advance :)
Nun, tan mazlèsc! Since I've answered your questions, would you be so kind as to answer one of my own? Why Dravian? Did you choose it or was it assigned? (If so, who on earth knew enough about Dravian to assign it?)
Some useful Dravian links: Grammar - Lexicon - Ask a Dravian
Salmoneus wrote:(NB Dewrad is behaving like an adult - a petty, sarcastic and uncharitable adult, admittedly, but none the less note the infinitely higher quality of flame)

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Re: Presentation in Uni about Dravean

Post by Dewrad »

You're welcome, by the way :|
Some useful Dravian links: Grammar - Lexicon - Ask a Dravian
Salmoneus wrote:(NB Dewrad is behaving like an adult - a petty, sarcastic and uncharitable adult, admittedly, but none the less note the infinitely higher quality of flame)

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Re: Presentation in Uni about Dravean

Post by elemtilas »

Dewrad wrote:To date, excluding any contributions I've made to conversations on this board and the examples in the grammar, I have written:

- two folk tales in the language
tqaye! (hey!)

Had a quick shufty at the grammar -- very nicely done! Both the presentation and the language. At once familiar, yet also obviously not anything else Romance!

I should like to see those folk tales. Do you have a link to those by any chance?
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Re: Presentation in Uni about Dravean

Post by WeepingElf »

Welcome to the ZBB, elemtilas!
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Re: Presentation in Uni about Dravean

Post by elemtilas »

WeepingElf wrote:Welcome to the ZBB, elemtilas!
Danke schön!
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Re: Presentation in Uni about Dravean

Post by mèþru »

Pickles and tea for everyone!
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Re: Presentation in Uni about Dravean

Post by Frislander »

elemtilas wrote:
WeepingElf wrote:Welcome to the ZBB, elemtilas!
Danke schön!
It's good to see you.
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Re: Presentation in Uni about Dravean

Post by elemtilas »

mèþru wrote:Pickles and tea for everyone!
ayya! le-yama eiq erduvanyô eic cleryinvostê!

(Yay! to us and tea and sourbrining-things!)
Frislander wrote:It's good to see you.
Likewise!
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Re: Presentation in Uni about Dravean

Post by FloWi »

Tan saloit, Dewrad :)
thank you so so much for your super informative and helpful answers to all of my questions.
I've had such a busy time in uni recently that's why I didn't have time to reply earlier, I'm sorry about that.
We just held our presentation and it went really well and was very interesting for everyone.
To your question:
Our lecturer picked 16 artifical languages and each group could chose its preference - and we chose Dravian :)
I thought a Romanic language would be cool because I learnt Latin in school for several years.
But how our lectuere found out about Dravian .. I have no idea!
Next week we get our last final task in Dravian - to translate a few sentences from German to Dravian.
Let's see how this goes :D
Thank you again and have a good time,
Florine

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Re: Presentation in Uni about Dravean

Post by Cedh »

FloWi wrote:
Dewrad wrote:Why Dravian? Did you choose it or was it assigned? (If so, who on earth knew enough about Dravian to assign it?)
Our lecturer picked 16 artifical languages and each group could chose its preference - and we chose Dravian :)
I thought a Romanic language would be cool because I learnt Latin in school for several years.
But how our lectuere found out about Dravian .. I have no idea!
It's quite simple: While he was planning the course, he asked me (I work at the same university) to recommend a few conlangs which are both linguistically interesting and reasonably well-documented, and would therefore be suitable for being presented by the students. Among my suggestions were Ayeri, Kahtsaai, High Eolic, Okuna, Novegradian, Alashian, and Dravian. (Of these, Novegradian and Okuna were not included in the course because their descriptions are actually too long.) In addition to suggesting a few languages, I also participated in two sessions myself, presenting some details about how I (and others) approach actual conlanging work.

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