Conlang Texture ... Starting Off * Texture * Grammar: isolating * Corpus-driven The Hundred Words * a, about, after, all, am, an, and, are, as, at, away * back, be, because, big, but, by * call, came, can, come, could * did, do, down * for, from * get, go, got * had, has, have, he, her, here, him, his * I, in, into, is, it * last, like, little, live, look * made, make, me, my * new, next, not, now * of, off, old, on, once, one, other, our, out, over * put * saw, said, see, she, so, some * take, that, the, their, them, then, there, they, this, three, time, to, today, too, two * up, us * very * was, we, were, went, what, when, will, with * you - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4514106.stm ... "'You' and 'they' are regular plurals, formed by adding the plural suffix to the singular pronouns. That's a regularity that didn't occur to the inventor of Esperanto!" - http://www.zompist.com/quechua.html Perl6... kia ma, tokti. A'Tuin (turtle), amuz (like), aunos (sound), awan (piece), bagrap (broken), biti (small), da (adjective copulative), dun (past tense), duna (adjective past tense copula), elamu (apple), elamubiti (strawberry), ema (it), eyan (good), feni (every), fortu (word), gad (foot), glina (diamond), goro (noun copulative), ib (and), ishi (but), ka (imperative marker), kalun (future), kape (love), kauno (dog), kauze (house), kia (of), kome (eat), kua (cow), kuay (moon), leotta (gold), loatra (story), lok (located at), lol (humour), ma (I, me, my), mafortu (pronoun), miqi (mouse), multa (many), mung (feces), murarat (slowly), neuditi (new), nezres (know)... ... Are semantic types inherent? Cf. stonying vs. stone. * Noun: can co-occur with articles and attributive adjectives. * Verb: usually denotes action ("bring", "read"), occurrence ("decompose", "glitter"), or a state of being ("exist", "stand"). * Adjective: noun modifier, making it more specific attaching a quality. ... Verbs are like functions in procedural programming languages. The argspec is called the valency in linguistics. Arguments/Valency: 1 => Intransitive runs(he), falls(it) Arguments/Valency: 2 => Transitive eats(she, fish), hunt(we, rabbits) Arguments/Valency: 3 => Ditransitive gave(I, her, flowers), sent(she, me, book) gave(subject, object=None, thing=None) runs(he), falls(it) ... Stative verbs... the redded house? Playing about with the Gricean maxims. Employer, employee. Morphosyntactic alignment: SaO in EA, SAo in NA. Ergative/Absolutive: arrived(THE-MAN), saw(the-man, THE-BOY) Nominative/Accusative: arrived(THE-MAN), saw(THE-MAN, the-boy) Ergative/Absolutive is a bit like OSV or something. "Ergativity may be manifested through syntax in addition to through morphology. Syntactic ergativity is quite rare, and while all languages that exhibit it also feature morphological ergativity, few morphologically ergative languages have ergative syntax." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergative-absolutive_language Isolating languages are also called "Analytic languages". Cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphological_typology I don't think it's wise to be so isolating that you don't have natural things such as undo, rather than un do. English has not do rather than notdo though. Chinese analytic example: "I possessive friend(s) all want eat chicken egg(s)" Words often follow sounds: "Bulgarian is the only analytic Slavic language - in its noun system - acquiring this feature from the Balkan linguistic union. This allows us to study the process. In the beginning, cases began to mix sounds; this paved the way for the distinctions between forms to be forgotten." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_language Oligoanalytic or oligoisolating: few morphemes, and isolating. Toki Pona! Some really unusual languages mix Ergative and Nominative. This system is called Austronesian alignment. English "methinks" and Active/Stativeness. -ness is a cool morpheme. English does have OSV! *Bill* I can see. But it's mainly SVO, along with French and Chinese. Latin and Finnish have no fixed word order though SOV is most common in Latin, and SVO in Finnish. SOV: premodifiers, postpositions. VSO: prepositions, postmodifiers. ... "Some languages are more complicated: in German and in Dutch, an ancestral AOV order is retained in subordinate clauses even though AVO is the unmarked order in main declarative clauses." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_Verb_Object Switching between SVO and VSO might be possible, as a linguistic typology. VSO is like (non-reverse) Polish notation. Ah, this swapping is called inversion: "There are many languages which switch from SVO (Subject Verb Object) order to VSO order with different constructions, usually for emphasis. For example, sentences in English poetry can sometimes be found to have a VSO order; French and Spanish questions may reverse the order of the subject and verb into the VSO order" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verb_Subject_Object OSV is rare, OVS the rarest. Natural syntactic metalanguage is an interesting idea: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_semantic_metalanguage Here are the primitives, to be compared with the 100 above: substantives: I, YOU, SOMEONE, PEOPLE, SOMETHING/THING, BODY mental predicates: THINK, KNOW, WANT, FEEL, SEE, HEAR speech: SAY, WORD, TRUE actions, events and movement: DO, HAPPEN, MOVE existence and possession: THERE IS, HAVE life and death: LIVE, DIE time: WHEN/TIME, NOW, BEFORE, AFTER, A LONG TIME, A SHORT TIME, FOR SOME TIME, MOMENT space: WHERE/PLACE, HERE, ABOVE, BELOW; FAR, NEAR; SIDE, INSIDE; TOUCHING "logical" concepts: NOT, MAYBE, CAN, BECAUSE, IF intensifier: VERY augmentor: MORE quantifiers: ONE, TWO, SOME, ALL, MANY/MUCH evaluators: GOOD, BAD descriptors: BIG, SMALL, (LONG) taxonomy, partonomy: KIND OF, PART OF; similarity: LIKE determiners: THIS, THE SAME, OTHER No AND? OR? ... From the horse's mouth (oh right, idioms...): Substantives: I, YOU, SOMEONE, PEOPLE, SOMETHING/THING, BODY Determiners: THIS, THE SAME, OTHER Quantifiers: ONE, TWO, SOME, ALL, MANY/MUCH Evaluators: GOOD, BAD Descriptors: BIG, SMALL Intensifier: VERY Mental predicates: THINK, KNOW, WANT, FEEL, SEE, HEAR Speech: SAY, WORDS, TRUE Actions, events, movement, contact: DO, HAPPEN, MOVE, TOUCH Existence and possession: THERE IS / EXIST, HAVE Life and death: LIVE, DIE Time: WHEN/TIME, NOW, BEFORE, AFTER, A LONG TIME, A SHORT TIME, FOR SOME TIME, MOMENT Space: WHERE/PLACE, HERE, ABOVE, BELOW; FAR, NEAR; SIDE, INSIDE; TOUCHING "Logical" concepts: NOT, MAYBE, CAN, BECAUSE, IF Augmentor: VERY, MORE Taxonomy, partonomy: KIND OF, PART OF Similarity: LIKE [[[ For an example of an explication of a meaning which will be unfamiliar to most readers, we can take the Japanese word 'amae'. According to Takeo Doi (1974, 1981), 'amae' is "peculiarly Japanese emotion" which "runs through all the various activities of Japanese society" and represents "the true essence of Japanese psychology". So what exactly is amae? Doi explains that it is the noun form of 'amaeru', an intransitive verb which means 'to depend and presume upon another's benevolence'. It indicates 'helplessness and the desire to be loved'. 'Amaeru' can also be defined as 'wish to be loved' and 'dependency needs'. Various bilingual dictionaries define 'amae' as 'to lean on a person's good will', 'to depend on another's affection', 'to act lovingly towards (as a much fondled child towards its parents)', 'to presume upon', 'to take advantage of'; 'to behave like a spoilt child', 'be coquettish', 'trespass-on', 'take advantage of', 'behave in a caressing manner towards a man'; 'to speak in a coquettish tone', 'encroach on (one's kindness, good nature, etc.)'; 'presume on another's love', 'coax', and so on. ]]] - http://www.une.edu.au/lcl/nsm/explications.php Superusage of small words. Wikipedia says that AND, OR, and BUT are prototypical conjunctive coordinators, and that NOR is close. It appears to be easier to create a language than to understand it. Aplenty, elect, galore, proper: irregularly positioned adjectives. Attributive: the big book Predicative: the book is big Atttibutive only: main, former, ... Predicative only: alone, ... Substantive: the merciful Misses out the noun entirely. His farewell letter: an adjectivalised noun. No one has a clue about adjective order. I asked clsn for ideas on places to start with vocabulary. He suggests: * Lojban gismu * Basic English, Esperanto, and Klingon ... Ooh, a conlang taxonomy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructed_language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artistic_language * 1.1 Fictional languages * 1.2 Alternative languages * 1.3 Micronational languages * 1.4 Personal languages * 1.5 Jokelangs * 1.6 Experimental languages * 1.7 Language games ... * http://www.phreacs.com.au/tanerai/ * http://www.geocities.com/bprice1949/vab1.html * http://www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/ling/stories/s693291.htm [[[ I describe Taneraic as a "hermetic" language after the style of Mallarmé or Stefan George: a private pact negotiated between the world at large and the world within me; public words simply could not guarantee me the private expression I sought. Taneraic was born of the unconscious ("The unconscious is structured like a language." -- Jacques Lacan); of an inchoate poetic personality; of conflict between artist and middle-class upbringing; of variant sexuality. English, my native tongue, would have submerged me in its long, magnificent yet etiolated history -- and prejudices. I needed the immediacy of a marginal language, a creole, so to speak, arisen out of need, and adaptable yet of central importance. A language whose culture was that of a single individual. ]]] - http://www.phreacs.com.au/tanerai/ What a paragraph! George's philosophy is interesting. ... John Cowan suggests this book: http://amazon.co.uk/dp/0521588057 Describing Morphosyntax: A Guide for Field Linguists by Thomas Payne It outlines how to describe languages in the field; for doing a conlang, you can simply define the language that you want to make. ... So, which languages are beautiful? * Welsh (often) * English (sometimes) * Finnish (sometimes) * Greek (rarely) * Proto-Germanic (rarely) ... Roles and grammar... The adverbialising morpheme, if -ly is such, could be separated out: "Frankly, I don't care." Here, "Frankly" modifies the whole sentence. Adverbs seem to have a habit of modifying everything but nouns, which is what adjectives do. We could separate out the -ly... "FRANK(adj) LY(part) I(pronoun) DO(verb) NOT(part) CARE(verb)" "FRANK(adj) LY(part) I(pronoun) CARE(verb) NOT(part)" Anyway, adverbs clearly do a million things; it might be better to have a particle for each modern recognized function, or something. Wikipedia hits the nail on the head: [[[ However, modern grammarians recognize that words traditionally grouped together as adverbs serve a number of different functions. Some would go so far as to call adverbs a "catch all" category that includes all words that don't belong to one of the other parts of speech. ]]] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverb Shades of meaning depending on function... He has a lot of goodness. He is good. He does things well. HE POSSESSES GOOD <- implies some disassociation HE POSSESSES QUALITY GOOD <- directermost association HE POSSESSES ACTIONS QUALITY GOOD <- but he himself... Taxonomy, partonomy: KIND OF, PART OF Existence and possession: THERE IS / EXIST, HAVE HE HAVE GOOD HE KIND-OF GOOD POSSESSES QUALITY probably is a weirdness for KIND-OF "Adverbs that modify adjectives typically express something about the degree of the adjective, such as `very'. Such adverbs are usually called degree adverbs for obvious reasons." - ibid. Descriptors: BIG, SMALL Intensifier: VERY Hmm: "Nahuatl, as well as some other Amerindian languages, has no copula. Instead of using a copula, it is possible to conjugate nouns or adjectives like verbs." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_copula Closed vs. Open "Typical closed classes found in many languages are adpositions (prepositions and postpositions), determiners, conjunctions, and pronouns. [...] Typical open classes such as nouns and verbs can and do get new words often, through the usual means such as compounding, derivation, coining, borrowing, etc." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_class_word Kalusa's copulatives typed their objects... English: You are a man Kalusa: YOU COPULATIVE-NOUN MAN English: You are manly Kalusa: YOU COPULATIVE-ADJECTIVE MAN Wikipedia says there are sub-uses Identity, i.e. equality Class membership, e.g. be married, is a city Predication, i.e. link to adjective Predication also includes location and temporality, says Wikipedia. Hmm. [[[ Most English verbs (traditionally known as "weak verbs") have just four separate forms, e.g. "start", "starts", "starting", "started". A large minority of verbs (traditionally known as "strong verbs") have five separate forms, e.g. "begin", "begins", "beginning", "began", "begun". "To be" is a very special case in having eight forms: "be", "am", "is", "are", "being", "was", "were", "been". Traditionally, it had even more, including "art", "wast", "wert", and, occasionally, "beest" as a subjunctive. ]]] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copula States and Qualities... tired, hungry, located at, stupid... Japanese is a topial language, and topical languages are funny. This beer be-tasty! Tasty beer! "Conjugation may be affected by person, number, gender, tense, aspect, mood, voice, or other grammatical categories." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_conjugation Conjugation is so boring. PERSON: I make, you make, she makes NUMBER: the fish swims, the fishes swim GENDER: - TENSE: When It Happened (cf. Chris's diagram) ASPECT: Is It Happening? MOOD: Reality vs. Intent VOICE: the mouse ate the cheese, the cheese was eaten by the mouse Ooh, gerundive verbs denote something that should be or is deserving of the action in question. gender marks size sometimes un barco is bigger than una barca but un charco is smaller than una charca barco: ship, barca: boat charco: puddle, charca: pond ... The Gender Disambiguator "He took the book from the suitcase and threw it in the ocean." "it" agrees with either book or suitcase "sacó el libro de la maleta y la tiró al océano" "sacó el libro de la maleta y lo tiró al océano" lo: el libro; la: la maleta [[[ Since a Pidgin strives to be a simple and effective form of communication, the grammar, phonology, et cetera, are as simple as possible, and usually consist of: * A Subject-Verb-Object word order in a sentence * Uncomplicated clausal structure (i.e., no embedded clauses, etc) * No codas within syllables (Syllables consist of a vowel, with an optional initial consonant) * Basic vowels, like /a/ /i/ /u/ /e/ /o/ * Separate words that indicate tense, usually before the verb * Words are repeated twice to represent plurals, superlatives, and other parts of speech that represent the concept being increased * A lack of morphophonemic variation ]]] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin Aspect vs. Tense "Aspect is a somewhat difficult concept to grasp for the speakers of most modern Indo-European languages, because they tend to conflate the concept of aspect with the concept of tense." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_aspect Bei in Mandarin is like is ... of or the arrows in Notation3. 'Baltic-Finnic languages such as Finnish and Estonian have a "passive", which conceptually postulates a never-mentioned "seventh person"' - ibid. The distinction between simple and progressive senses seems pretty silly; at least perfect ("completed action") makes some sense. Topicalisers in English: As for... Regarding... Given... ... Principle of least annotation: thing > person > man > etc. When to use words, and when to use morphemes? Handy! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronunciation_respelling_for_English Determiners vs. Adjectives Chinese adjectives NOUN ADJECTIVE NOUN SHI DISJOINT-ADJECTIVE That car. THAT COUNTING-WORD CAR. That cat. THAT OTHER-COUNTING-WORD CAT. ... English more closely aligns Nouns and Verbs, whereas Chinese more closely aligns Adjectives and Verbs. In Japanese, i-adjectives are like intransitive stative verbs. ... -- Sean B. Palmer, inamidst.com Originally circa 2006-12-15 and 2006-12-16.