Altrunian Conlang Scratchpad: Additives

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yangfiretiger121
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Altrunian Conlang Scratchpad: Additives

Post by yangfiretiger121 »

The current forms of Basic and Baikal use a system that involves changing the meaning of a word by adding various things to the word. I'll use the Romanized example from the Romanization Challenge thread.

Taras /'tɑ.rɑs/: Goddess of nature and the hunt
Tarushka /'tɑ.ruʃ.kɑ/ (diminutive thereof): to hunt (-ushk- is borrowed from Russian but shows how they form diminutives currently)
Tarushkain /'tɑ.ruʃ.kɑin/(above + yn nounal affix): hunter
Outdated by recent inventory overhaul (linked topic)
Edit three: Tarasapf /tɑ.ʁ̞ɑ'sɑp̪͡f/: Daughter of Taras
Edit four: Taras-tut-ankh /tɑ.ʁ̞ɑ'si 'ɑnx/: Living image of Taras (Technically, "ankh" is borrowed from Ancient Egyptian. However, Intergalactic Standard descends from the Sphinx language, which used the word.)
Edit six: Ru'a /'ʀu.ʔɑ/: Water
Ru'akhi /'ʀu.ʔɑ.xi/ (above + khi suffix): Aquatic

Superlatives form by inserting extra letters in the middle of a word, like diminutives. The major issue here are phrases like "tall hunter" because the superlative would, technically, negate the existing negative and "short hunter" because of a double negative. How to your conlangs deal with superlatives and diminutives?

Known additives
-(a)pf [(ɑ)p̪͡f]: Daughter of; attached to a deity's name by the Empress
-tut ankh [tut anx]: Living image of; attached to a deity's name by the Empress
-in [in]: Similar to English's -er
-ia(r)- [jɑ(ɹ)]: Changes certain Deity's names into their nounal and/or verbal forms
Outdated by recent inventory overhaul (linked topic)
Edit six: -khi [xi]: similar to some uses of "-ar" and "-tic" in English

Altrunian Conlang Scratchpad: a Companion Index
Inventory questions

Edit one: Added index linking to associated topics.
Edit two: Added a list of known additives.
Edit three: Added an additive
Edit four: Added an additive
Edit five: Spelling updates
Edit six: Spelling reversions and new additive
Last edited by yangfiretiger121 on Fri Apr 06, 2018 9:07 am, edited 9 times in total.

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Re: Altrunian Conlang Scratchpad: Additives

Post by smii »

I think your confusing two types of morphology, derivational and inflectional. Derivational morphology takes one base word, like 'build' or 'child', and turns it into another word, like 'builder' or 'childhood'. But these are still lemmas (i.e. they have a dictionary entry). Inflectional morphology doesn't create new lemmas, but inflects an existing one, eg 'builds' or 'children'. Different languages treat different markings as either derivational or inflectional, like the Slavic perfectives. And so generally, you can stack derivational morphemes on top of each other (like 'builderhood' could be a word - I can't think of any real words, except the compounds in Germanic languages), but often not inflectional morphemes: agglutinating languages like Turkish let you stack them, fusional languages like Latin don't.
As for superlatives and diminutives, they generally come in different categories, although not always. Diminutives tend to be derivational (cf 'kitty', 'statuette', sparkle', although the status of '-ish- could be argued), whereas superlatives are inflectional ('tallest', 'biggest', 'most important' are separate dictionary entries). If, however, by superlative you mean augmentative ('rival' vs 'archrival', 'market' vs 'supermarket') then you just stack the affixes on top of each other, so nothing should 'cancel out' anything else.

An example because I don't think I explained it very well (all words that I have used, even if they aren't standard):

market - supermarket - supermarketer - supermarketerish; spark - sparkle - sparkler - sparklery are derivational, but not sparklierest
market, marketting, markets, marketers ect are inflections of the noun and verb 'market'
Last edited by smii on Sat Dec 30, 2017 2:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Altrunian Conlang Scratchpad: Additives

Post by yangfiretiger121 »

Thanks. I may end up going with an augmentative structure.

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Re: Altrunian Conlang Scratchpad: Additives

Post by smii »

The names aren't for the structure: there isn't an 'augmentative structure' that's language independent. Superlatives and augmentatives are different things. Superlatives are a degree of comparison - they give the best or strongest example of something. But they can be marked in different ways, even in English, where we have 'most' (a separate word) and '-est' (an affix). They can also be applied to other parts of speech, cf Bulgarian ' "по̀ човек (po chovek), най човек (nay chovek), по-малко човек (po malko chovek)" (literally more person, most person, less person but normally better kind of a person, best kind of person, not that good kind of a person) and "по̀ обичам (po obicham), най-малко обичам (nay malko obicham)" (I like more, I like the least) ' (lifted straight from Wikipedia).

An augmentative gives a greater version of something - 'rival' and 'archrival' are different things, whereas 'cold' and 'coldest' aren't. Augmentatives tend to be derivational, but they don't have to be - Swedish 'snabb' (fast) can be augmented to 'jättesnabb' (very fast), even though 'jätte-' would almost count more as inflectional than derivational (which is why the distinction doesn't really work except language specifically).
Last edited by smii on Sat Jan 13, 2018 11:48 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Altrunian Conlang Scratchpad: Additives

Post by yangfiretiger121 »

At present, Altrunians make a deity's name into a verb by adding -ia(r)- [jɑ(ɹ)] to it. For example, Taras ['tɑ.ɹɑs] becomes taiaras ['tɑ.jɑ.rɑs], meaning hunt as either a noun or a verb. The affix -in further augments that, making the word taiarasin [tɑ'jɑ.rɑ.sin], meaning "hunter." Pol is one of the few deities whose name adds both formatives as suffixes, yielding ['pol]-->['pol.jɑ]-->['pol.jɑ.rin]. Is this augmentative or derivative?

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Re: Altrunian Conlang Scratchpad: Additives

Post by smii »

yangfiretiger121 wrote:At present, Altrunians make a deity's name into a verb by adding -ia(r)- [jɑ(ɹ)] to it. For example, Taras ['tɑ.ɹɑs] becomes taiaras ['tɑ.jɑ.rɑs], meaning hunt as either a noun or a verb.
Hang on, if -ia(r)- makes a verb, how is taiaras either a noun or a verb? But I like the idea of a special suffix for activities relating to deities.
The affix -in further augments that, making the word taiarasin [tɑ'jɑ.rɑ.sin], meaning "hunter."

So does -in make a noun or an augmented form? If the former, taiaras should only mean 'to hunt' as a verb. If the latter, taiarasin should probably mean something like 'to hunt and kill' or, if taiaras is a noun, 'murderer' or 'expert hunter' or something like that.

And for the actual question:
Pol is one of the few deities whose name adds both formatives as suffixes, yielding ['pol]-->['pol.jɑ]-->['pol.jɑ.rin]. Is this augmentative or derivative?
Probably both. Remember: it's derivative vs inflectional (how the morpheme is used), and augmentative vs diminutive vs neither (what the morpheme means). You've said that -in is an augmentative, so poliarin is an augmented form. From the examples you've given, it definitely seems more appropriate to label both -ia(r)- and -in as derivative than inflectional, as they form new words, not just inflect old words.
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Re: Altrunian Conlang Scratchpad: Additives

Post by yangfiretiger121 »

I forgot to reword the post after looking up "hunt" in Merriam-Webster's online dictionary and finding out that it was once much more common to use "hunt" as a noun. Thus, the -ia(r)- inclusion imparts some deity's names with all of their meanings in regular speech. Therefore, the -in suffix is only meant to be used like English's -er to augment the nounal meaning.

As an aside, stress is now on either the antepenult or the first syllable beginning with a fricative, an affricate, or a trill, which means the stress should be on the [rɑs] syllable in taiaras and taiarasin. Lastly, the stress doesn't change in poliarin because that <r> should have been [ɹ].

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Re: Altrunian Conlang Scratchpad: Additives

Post by smii »

English -er isn't augmentative - I really think you're misunderstanding what it means.
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Re: Altrunian Conlang Scratchpad: Additives

Post by Dē Graut Bʉr »

Explaining it again, because I agree with smii that you don't seem to have understood it at all.

As smii already said, an augmentative indicates a greater version of something. To oversimplify, augmentatives are more or less equivalent to the word "big". So in a language with augmentatives, the augmentative of "house" would mean "big house", the augmentative of "bottle" would mean "big bottle", etc.

Just like the word "big" in English, augmentatives in languages that have them can refer to other things than physical size. For example, the augmentative of "brother" might refer to an elder brother instead of a taller one, and, to use smii's example, the augmentative of "rival" might mean "archrival".

This can all be extended to non-nouns as well. The augmentative of an adjective would then correspond to the English word "very", so, for example, the augmentative of "fast" would mean "very fast". And with verbs, you might get something which means "do X a lot", e.g. the augmentative of "drink" might mean "drink a lot".

Hope this helps.

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Re: Altrunian Conlang Scratchpad: Additives

Post by Soap »

There's some attestation for use of augmentatives to signify agent nouns in Spanish. e.g. llorón = "crybaby", not *"big crying". That said, those are nouns, not verbs, and Altrunian looks very unlike Spanish or any other IE language. I also agree that you seem confused ... the term "augment" can refer to multiple unrelated things, e.g. the Greek augment e- has nothing to do with the aforementioned augmentative derivations of Spanish and the other Romance languages.
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Re: Altrunian Conlang Scratchpad: Additives

Post by yangfiretiger121 »

I am slightly confused. I preferred maths and foreign language (Spanish/German) to English in school, probably, because I'm a native English-speaker.

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Re: Altrunian Conlang Scratchpad: Additives

Post by yangfiretiger121 »

The Skaran Empire is an elected monarchy, whose Empress is chosen from the oldest woman in each of its existing royal lines after the death of the previous Empress. Thus, all such women take a deity's name, adding the suffix -(a)bv ("daughter of") of the suffix -(h)e ankh (Living image of") to it. These and the examples below have been added to the first post.

Tarasabv /tɑ'ʁɑ.sɑp̪͡f/: Daughter of Taras
Taras-tut-ankh /tɑ'ʁɑs tut 'ɑnx/: Living image of Taras
Last edited by yangfiretiger121 on Fri Apr 06, 2018 9:12 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Altrunian Conlang Scratchpad: Additives

Post by yangfiretiger121 »

I just added the -khi (/xi/) suffix, which creates adjectives similar to some uses of "-ar" and "-tic" in English, to the first post.

Examples:
Sha'i (/'ʃɑ.ʔi/): ice→Sha'ikhi (/'ʃɑ.ʔi.xi/): Arctic
Ru'a (/'ʀu.ʔɑ/): water→Ru'akhi (/'ʀu.ʔɑ.xi/): Aquatic
Chi'u (/'çi.ʔu/): Pole→Chi'ukhi (/'çi.ʔu.xi/): Polar

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