Help your conlang fluency (2)

[KathTheDragon]

ïyüu:wieyï u'eëyœ:'öwë. iyu:o ï'owähœ ü'ë ëeöü ao.
I have revised my language. It's better now.

[Matrix]

ïyüu:wieyï u'eëyœ:'öwë. iyu:o ï'owähœ ü'ë ëeöü ao.
I have revised my language. It's better now.

Víþ ônal pex jaga hapk harlniv šo?
[βiθ ˈo.nal ˈpɛks d͡ʒaˈga hapk ˈharl.nɪβ ˈʃo]
able PRES-be do buy hard sound INT
Can I buy a consonant?

[GrinningManiac]

Ág eç rád fwoda af açha na 'ç! çcu çwagd hinwga!
ɑ: eʃ ɾɑð vʷɔ.ðɛ ɪf ɛ.t͡ʃə nə ʃ: ʃkʊ ʃʷɛð hɪnwʲə
_{with god rain horseshoe.INDEF also axe.INDEF 3PS s'truth! true PST.see.1PS lightning.INDEF}
I swear to god it's raining cats and dogs out there! I definitely saw lightning!

[KathTheDragon]

ïyüu:wieyï u'eëyœ:'öwë. iyu:o ï'owähœ ü'ë ëeöü ao.
I have revised my language. It's better now.

Víþ ônal pex jaga hapk harlniv šo?
[βiθ ˈo.nal ˈpɛks d͡ʒaˈga hapk ˈharl.nɪβ ˈʃo]
able PRES-be do buy hard sound INT
Can I buy a consonant?

Ïyü:wo'œ'ö uüwö:'uïë eyü.
I don't have many.
The consonants in this language are really only needed to disambiguate vowel sequences such as oa and owa, which have very different meanings.

[Thry]

Κουλ! Αισσί ήω ιωκαί ωλλα ιδεία λ'υνα λήγγα ων ως βωκάλης αβάν.
Cool! I've toyed with the idea of only-vowel phonologies before too.

[KathTheDragon]

I've also managed to make morphemes be largely nonexistent in the language. It took a while to get right. Here's a sample conjugation of the verb 'to make something new', with 1st person ergative and 3rd person absolutive agreement and indicative mood:
uüwö:'œha - I am making it new (imperfect)
u'eëyœ:'öwë - I have made it new (perfect)
u'öowu:'eyo - I am beginning to make it new (commencive)
u'ëeyi:'owe - I make it new (habitual)
As you can see, nothing appears to constitute the root itself. Even the initial 'u' which marks the indicative is not the entire marker of the mood. Good luck working out how I did it. (No central vowels, umlaut marks either rounded front vowels or unrounded back vowels, œ is rounded æ).

[Jipí]

I've also managed to make morphemes be largely nonexistent in the language.

LIES

[KathTheDragon]

On the whole, no part of a word consistently marks anything. The only thing that does is the initial vowel. As far as I am concerned, there are very few actual morphemes in the language. While there is an equivalent, it is obscured to anyone who does not know it's there. Just look at those examples I gave!

[Jipí]

As far as I am concerned, there are very few actual morphemes in the language.

Please tell us your definition of a morpheme then.

[KathTheDragon]

Well, seeing as I asked that question a while ago, and the answer I got was among the lines of demonstrating it, the -s that marks plurality in nouns is a morpheme, as is -ing and -er/-or, and if I am remembering properly, roots can be morphemes as well. That said, I still don't explicitly know how to drive one, but I'm pretty sure there are no morphemes in the vowel alone. That's definitely not to say that they're not there at all. You have to dig to find them.

[Jipí]

Morphemes do not have to surface as seperable units. Compare German, e.g.:

Mutter (sg.) – Mütter (pl.)
Vater (sg.) – Väter (pl.)

In these cases, the plural morpheme does not consist of a single seperable suffix, but just of an umlaut of the vowel in the stressed syllable. Another example of this phenomenon are strong verbs in Germanic languages (the likes of drive – drove – driven), where the different forms are generated by systematically altering the vowel in the stem syllable (this developed from PIE ablaut).

Besides umlaut plurals, German also has words that do not have any overt plural marking:

Wagen (sg.) – Wagen (pl.)
Kragen (sg.) – Kragen (pl.)

Yet, from context (agreement and such), it's clear when the noun is used as a plural even though that function does not have a phonemic surface realization.

tl;dr – morphemes don't have to consist of affixes; a morpheme may be realized as just a systematical change in the phonemic structure of a lexeme (e.g. umlaut, ablaut, reduplication); lexemes are morphemes as well (i.e. free morphemes).

[KathTheDragon]

Thanks for that little insight. I still challenge you to find the morphemes for aspects (beside imperfect, which is unmarked) in the verbs I gave.

[Ser]

Thanks for that little insight. I still challenge you to find the morphemes for aspects [...] in the verbs I gave

Here's two answers showing morphemes exist, from your own posts:

Even the initial 'u' which marks the indicative is not the entire marker of the mood.

(beside imperfect, which is unmarked)

Anyway, it's silly to try to find them since we don't have enough data, and you don't want to give a description in your own terms. The roots might as well be analyzed as suppletive.

Even then, there's no need to do that. I don't think it's possible to have a language without derivational morphology at all, so you can assume there's that (unless the conlang is simply very much underdeveloped).

[KathTheDragon]

Actually, I said that there were very few morphemes, not none at all. And it probably is way too much of a challenge, so I'll probably just start a thread for it.

[Ever Lurker]

Laimnil. Abilābula inalamgarolam.
Hello. I'm practicing with my new language.

[Zwap]

Kwodh fedhe rarr a-gwamtsjegh pos a-bhrraghdhke glwanj kwiskedh sjtej kwodh askarrbha.
[kʷɔd fɛðə ɾar agʷamt͡ʃeg pɔsaβraðkə glʷanʲ kʷɪskɛd ʃtɛj kʷɔðaskarβa]
I was bored so I created this silly language which uses a lot of digraphs.

[Sevly]

Digraph nie vedet ue deue sie nie?
/ˈdəɪgraβɪ njɪ ˈβɛdɛts wə zɛʊ z njɪ/
What's wrong with digraphs?

[Zwap]

A-ogjorr varre, agbhe bhrraghdhtsjkwodh a-gwamtsjegh fedh varre sjtjanj.
Nothing, it's just that my languages usually don't have this many.

[Ars Lande]

We mwerke au leis eglish desendent, dis etsænzenæs swétle mue Germaneh.
/'we 'mwɛɾke aw lejs 'eɣlɪʃ də'sɛndənt dɪs ə't͡sænzənæs 'swetl mwe ɣəɾ'manɛh/
I 1s-work-PRES at one new English descendant / this.one 3s-looks-PRES-like much more Germanic.
I'm working on a new English descendant. This one looks a lot more Germanic.

[----]

Iginááʔi méʔunaawa?
How far in the future is it spoken?

[Zwap]

Ssjenjarr sjka-tsjubhdh zjenj?
[ˈsʃɛnʲar ʃkaˈt͡ʃuβˌd͡ʒɛnʲ]
And where?

[Ars Lande]

Spehes t Niwéh e t Ghersé ede tsoos fot milennim.
/'spehəst nɪ'weh et ɣəɾ'ze 't͡sos fɔt mɪ'lɛnɪ'm/
speak-PASS.INAN.3s in Niweh and in Gherse in-the beginning fourth millenium
It's spoken in Niweh and Gherse (present day New York and New Jersey) in the beginning of the fourth millenium.

[Kereb]

Digraph nie vedet ue deue sie nie?
/ˈdəɪgraβɪ njɪ ˈβɛdɛts wə zɛʊ z njɪ/
What's wrong with digraphs?

i chot! e kīp sūtstem soh ba `oyu!
nothing! wear them digraphs proudly!

[rr]

Soke kudie hanel ni lar ceget zonyo lar okien naset Iekotanria Ceyen, nisa languya?
What can do I to cause people to want to learn Ikotan Modern, my language?
What can I do to make people want to learn Modern Ikotan, my language?

[clawgrip]

Wihanwihan hunti hunti horo tenme i kapimorunpu to ito huntisi.
usually person person NEG learn DEF language-PL of other person-PL
Usually people don't learn the languages of other people.