Polysynthetic Conlang

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Post by Aurora Rossa »

How about how you'd say "I want you to work" Would you use an affix for work or what?
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Post by jburke »

Eddy the Great wrote:How about how you'd say "I want you to work" Would you use an affix for work or what?
No, an affix for 'want'.

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Post by Aurora Rossa »

No, an affix for 'want'.
Explain how'd you say "I want you to work."
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"There was a particular car I soon came to think of as distinctly St. Louis-ish: a gigantic white S.U.V. with a W. bumper sticker on it for George W. Bush."

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Post by jburke »

Eddy the Great wrote:
No, an affix for 'want'.
Explain how'd you say "I want you to work."
The root is always the central idea of the word; other "auxillary" notions--like 'want' in 'I want you to X'--are handled by affixes. In 'I want you to work,' the central idea would be the working; so the basic structure would be I+work+you, with an affix on 'work' the means 'want'.

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Post by Aurora Rossa »

If I wanted to say "I want to you build build a building." how would I handle that? It would be like "I-want-build-you-building". I know this annoying but can you give an example?
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"There was a particular car I soon came to think of as distinctly St. Louis-ish: a gigantic white S.U.V. with a W. bumper sticker on it for George W. Bush."

jburke

Post by jburke »

We already went over a similar one of these; it would take topic-comment form, like "A-building, I-want-you-to-build-it." Always keep in mind that a verb will be the equivalent of a sentence with imbedded pronominals for subjects and objects.

I highly suggest you start in on learning a poly language, or get a grammar of one. Many of these things won't become intelligible (much less natural) to you until you do. I can explain things, but you won't be able to generalize from my examples and construct a realistic poly grammar unless you know how these languages work from the inside.

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Post by Glenn »

Eddy the Great wrote:If I wanted to say "I want to you build build a building." how would I handle that? It would be like "I-want-build-you-building". I know this annoying but can you give an example?
Before Jeff replies, I'm going to give my guess: given the information above, it seems clear that in a statement like this one, the root verb would be "build", with affixes added to indicate "I", "you", and "want" (making clear that "I" is doing the wanting, and "you" the building), and "building" as the direct object of "build", which could be incorporated into the verbal structure as well.

Thus, the entire sentence could be encapsulated in a single verb. I should also note that in a highly "verby" language like Jeff's Noyatukah and the languages it is based on (Mohawk and Cheyenne), the incorporated object "building", which we might think of as an noun, is probably a form of a verb phrase itself: "They-dwell-within", or "Piled-high-and-strong" (for a fortress), or something of the sort.

p@,
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Post by Aurora Rossa »

I have never seen a grammer of a poly lang on the internet and it costs a lot of money to learn a language, so both are out for me. So it would be a-building, build-want-it-you-I or something? At least try to explain it to me.
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"There was a particular car I soon came to think of as distinctly St. Louis-ish: a gigantic white S.U.V. with a W. bumper sticker on it for George W. Bush."

jburke

Post by jburke »

Thus, the entire sentence could be encapsulated in a single verb. I should also note that in a highly "verby" language like Jeff's Noyatukah and the languages it is based on (Mohawk and Cheyenne), the incorporated object "building", which we might think of as an noun, is probably a form of a verb phrase itself: "They-dwell-within", or "Piled-high-and-strong" (for a fortress), or something of the sort.
Yeah, you can easily incorporate almost any direct object noun in Mohawk into a verb. The DO and the root form what's called a stem that acts as a single unit.

As for verbiness: yes also. The Cheyenne word for 'house' maheo is a frozen noun root, but comes from a verb meaning to settle. (The Iroquois languages contain fewer frozen noun roots than the Algonquian ones, and show more what these kinds of languages were like before any freezing occured; the freezing phenomenon is responsible for the relatively recent formation of noun roots and a nominal morphology in both language families. I mimick this with Noyatukah's evolution into its daughters; in the daughters, Noyatukah initial forms[1] become indepdenent words that can stand outside of verbs; and a nominal morphology grows up around them.)

[1] Initial forms = incorporated forms of verbal nominals.

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Post by Aurora Rossa »

I understand what you have said so far, except for how to make it clear that I is the wanter and you, the builder.
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"There was a particular car I soon came to think of as distinctly St. Louis-ish: a gigantic white S.U.V. with a W. bumper sticker on it for George W. Bush."

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Post by jburke »

Eddy the Great wrote:I have never seen a grammer of a poly lang on the internet and it costs a lot of money to learn a language, so both are out for me. So it would be a-building, build-want-it-you-I or something? At least try to explain it to me.
It costs a lot of time to learn a language; not a lot of money. You can get grammars and tapes cheap, esp. for these languages; Algonquian and Iroquois materials are almost all academic, and are not sold for profit.
There are grammars of Ojibwa and Mingo on the net (search other threads for these; I don't have them bookmarked); though they don't go into this level of detail.

The Cheyenne for the above is (without incorporation):

maheo nepe?manome

maheo 'building' 'structure' 'house'

ne 'you' pronominal

pe? preverb denoting 'want'

man root for 'build'

(o)me 'I' pronominal (with inserted vowel /o/ to prevent a nn cluster)

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Post by Glenn »

jburke wrote:Yeah, you can easily incorporate almost any direct object noun in Mohawk into a verb. The DO and the root form what's called a stem that acts as a single unit.
That's another useful piece of information--the use of root+object as a single unit. (The concepts of "frozen" noun roots and independent initial nominal forms are also interesting--something of a move from "verbyness" toward "nouniness".) Thanks!
Eddy the Great wrote:I have never seen a grammer of a poly lang on the internet and it costs a lot of money to learn a language, so both are out for me. So it would be a-building, build-want-it-you-I or something? At least try to explain it to me.
From what I understand, that's basically correct. Don't get too hung up about the order in which the various elements come; there is often a certain sequence, but it varies with the language. So if you had a polysynthetic language whose verbs were constructed as follows:

subject marker + (direct object) + noun root + other modifiers + object marker

I would think that the sentence could be written "A-building, you-build-I-want-it," or, with the object incorporated, "You-building-build-I-want-it"

(i.e., basically "A building, I want you to build it").

Languages like Mohawk or Noyatukah incorporate both subject and object into a single marker, which here might indicate 2nd person subject and 3rd-person object ("You-it"). As for "I want..."
Eddy the Great wrote:I understand what you have said so far, except for how to make it clear that I is the wanter and you, the builder.
If I were creating a conlang, I might have an affix that indicated that a particular action was wanted ("build-want"), with different forms or additional personal affixes to indicate who was doing the wanting ("build-I-want", "build-you-want", etc.) Just a thought.

On a slightly different note, in a language such as Kazakh, where infinitives are essentially verbal nouns, personal possessive endings can be attached to accomplish a somewhat similar purpose: (Mening) baruym kerek = "I need to go", with the 1st person possessive -ym added to baru "to go, going"--in effect, "My going is needed". Here the affix can be used to indicate whose going is needed; a similar affix might be added to the sentence above to indicate who is doing the wanting.

p@,
Glenn

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Post by jburke »

Maybe this will help:

The word for "You want me to build you a house" would be almost the same as the above, because in Cheynne, second persons are always expressed by the prefix (they're higher on the person hierarchy than first persons). To "reverse" the meaning, you change the preverb 'want' to she?.

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Post by Aurora Rossa »

So basically it means "I want to build you" but the addition of the word for building and context make sure that it means "I want you to build a building."
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"There was a particular car I soon came to think of as distinctly St. Louis-ish: a gigantic white S.U.V. with a W. bumper sticker on it for George W. Bush."

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Post by Glenn »

Running behind again! I'm going to pull out of this while I still can...
jburke wrote:The Cheyenne for the above is (without incorporation):

maheo nepe?manome

maheo 'building' 'structure' 'house'

ne 'you' pronominal

pe? preverb denoting 'want'

man root for 'build'

(o)me 'I' pronominal (with inserted vowel /o/ to prevent a nn cluster)
Ah...so the pronomials "you" and "I" can be added, together with the modifier for "want," and the order in which they come indicated whose is doing the building, and who the wanting? That's even simpler than I was thinking...

p@,
Glenn

EDIT: Wrong again! I'd forgotten what you'd said about the hierarchy of persons in Cheyenne. So it's the form of "want" that changes in this case...Thanks!

Much food for thought....I'll leave you two to continue. :wink:

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Post by jburke »

Ah...so the pronomials "you" and "I" can be added, together with the modifier for "want," and the order in which they come indicated whose is doing the building, and who the wanting? That's even simpler than I was thinking...
No, not the order; what changes the meaning is the preverb (which always comes before the root). This is one of those "more complex" things I talked about a few days ago, and which I find hard to explain in English grammatical terms.

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Post by Glenn »

jburke wrote:
Ah...so the pronomials "you" and "I" can be added, together with the modifier for "want," and the order in which they come indicated whose is doing the building, and who the wanting? That's even simpler than I was thinking...
No, not the order; what changes the meaning is the preverb (which always comes before the root). This is one of those "more complex" things I talked about a few days ago, and which I find hard to explain in English grammatical terms.
Actually, I think I do understand, now that I've read your full explanation--I posted before seeing your reply to Eddy above. And the basic concept doesn't seem that hard to grasp (in this case, the form of the preverb indicating the nature and direction of the relationship of "wanting" between the two persons involved--am I any closer?).

As Eddy indicated, I think one of the things that tripped us up is wanting to have agreement on the verb with "I", "you", and "it" (the building). In the Cheyenne example above, head-marking of the last of these is apparently unnecessary in this context (which might be related to the topic-comment structure, I suppose). In a conlang, of course, I could see a variety of possible approaches.

Many thanks again...

p@,
Glenn

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Post by Aurora Rossa »

So ne- in Cheyenne is 2nd person object? Doesn't the verb have to agree with the building? There is no affix for this on your sample. Does the prefix indicating wanting have to come right before the verb? I assume it only has to in Cheyenne. The literal translation appears to "Building. I want to build you."
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"There was a particular car I soon came to think of as distinctly St. Louis-ish: a gigantic white S.U.V. with a W. bumper sticker on it for George W. Bush."

jburke

Post by jburke »

As Eddy indicated, I think one of the things that tripped us up is wanting to have agreement on the verb with "I", "you", and "it" (the building). In the Cheyenne example above, head-marking of the last of these is apparently unnecessary in this context (which might be related to the topic-comment structure, I suppose). In a conlang, of course, I could see a variety of possible approaches.
In Cheyenne, when there are three participants like this, one oftentimes gets bumped out and agreement is essentially ignored for it; incorporation is not done in these cases, and instead you put the object as a topical. Ordinarily, this might cause confusion, except those prevebs I mentioned will clue you in on what's happening. But, really, Cheyennes don't go around saying "I want you to do X" much; they'd just use an imperative--which isn't a direct order, but merely a suggestion (as in "please sit down".)

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Post by Aurora Rossa »

So in my conlang it would be like this:

K'?la xe'ik?kama.
building want-build-you(object)-I(subject).

Can you explain what a topical is? I think I know, but I want to be sure.
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"There was a particular car I soon came to think of as distinctly St. Louis-ish: a gigantic white S.U.V. with a W. bumper sticker on it for George W. Bush."

jburke

Post by jburke »

So in my conlang it would be like this:

K'?la xe'ik?kama.
building want-build-you(object)-I(subject).
You don't have to copy how Cheyenne does it; there are many possible ways to handle it. This is what I'm talking about when I urge you to learn a poly language: only then will you be able to see all the possibilities of how things might work. This will allow you to construct a poly grammar that isn't a ripoff of any single natlang.
Can you explain what a topical is? I think I know, but I want to be sure.
A topical or topic phrase is, in this context, a free-standing subject or object.

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Post by Aurora Rossa »

So I could have "you" be in a special case denoting that it is the doer in X wants Y to do something to Z? Here is a sample:

St?t?l@u?tq? mli?tniquxliksama.
St?-t?l@u-?-tq? mli-?-tniqu-xli-ksa-ma
all-person-plural-doer you-equat.-nice-wish-be-1SSA
I wish everyone was as nice as you.

"doer" is the case ending for the Y in a X wants Y to do something to Z.
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"There was a particular car I soon came to think of as distinctly St. Louis-ish: a gigantic white S.U.V. with a W. bumper sticker on it for George W. Bush."

jburke

Post by jburke »

Eddy the Great wrote:So I could have "you" be in a special case denoting that it is the doer in X wants Y to do something to Z? Here is a sample:

St?t?l@u?tq? mli?tniquxliksama.
St?-t?l@u-?-tq? mli-?-tniqu-xli-ksa-ma
all-person-plural-doer you-equat.-nice-wish-be-1SSA
I wish everyone was as nice as you.

"doer" is the case ending for the Y in a X wants Y to do something to Z.
Yeah, that works. (I'm thinking about just skipping over subbordinate optatives for the Noyatukah grammar and suggesting that imperatives be used instead. I just feel that including them wouldn't be right--theoretically, you can use them in Cheyenne, but no one ever does hardly. It doesn't seem right to try to shoehorn every possible formal structure of English into a language so different from English. An imperative expresses the wish just fine, so what's the need for anything else, esp. if people don't tend to use it?)

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Post by Aurora Rossa »

How do express need, wishing, hoping, etc. using an imperitive? Yo need some way of expressing this kind of thing.
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"There was a particular car I soon came to think of as distinctly St. Louis-ish: a gigantic white S.U.V. with a W. bumper sticker on it for George W. Bush."

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Post by jburke »

Eddy the Great wrote:How do express need, wishing, hoping, etc. using an imperitive? Yo need some way of expressing this kind of thing.
It may partly be cultural or idiom; Cheyenne imperatives aren't orders, but more like suggestions. If I say ve?hoome 'Look-at-me!', there's the implication that I want you to look at me.

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