Imperative Mood - Lortho

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bbbourq
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Imperative Mood - Lortho

Post by bbbourq »

Hello fellow conlangers/glossopoets!

I am having difficulty trying to expand the imperative mood for my language, Lortho. Currently, I have the basic idea where the vocative case is used in conjunction with the present stem, but it doesn't account for first or second person plural. I don't know if I should either expand the vocative marking or do something with the verb stem. Any ideas? I can provide some more information/documentation upon request if it will help. Thank you in advance.
https://lortho.conlang.org

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gestaltist
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Re: Imperative Mood - Lortho

Post by gestaltist »

You could use a periphrastic construction for those, like English (“let's”).
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Sectori
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Re: Imperative Mood - Lortho

Post by Sectori »

bbbourq wrote: 15 Nov 2017 20:42Hello fellow conlangers/glossopoets!

I am having difficulty trying to expand the imperative mood for my language, Lortho. Currently, I have the basic idea where the vocative case is used in conjunction with the present stem, but it doesn't account for first or second person plural. I don't know if I should either expand the vocative marking or do something with the verb stem. Any ideas? I can provide some more information/documentation upon request if it will help. Thank you in advance.
would it be the end of the world to have only one number/person-unmarked form for the imperative? you'd then be relying on the vocative and on context to indicate the subject.

an alternate solution might be to mark the imperative by prefix, since it's kind of a fringe case (like the vocative) — perhaps even with the vocative prefix. then you could just use the normal verb endings.
inida elish, er·jīse pan.
sheb olnezī, on zūl kaid
nyer maudem? māzeye gejegura,
ib·zhiyorī aur mādaresh; kep panī weram.
e pel zherokareshī, onyek ne rād:
izholen tekab. yerogim nyer.

(semar pel, i.1-6)
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bbbourq
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Re: Imperative Mood - Lortho

Post by bbbourq »

gestaltist wrote:You could use a periphrastic construction for those, like English (“let's”)
I have thought about that, but I wanted to keep it within the agglutinative/affix arena

Sectori wrote: would it be the end of the world to have only one number/person-unmarked form for the imperative? you'd then be relying on the vocative and on context to indicate the subject.

an alternate solution might be to mark the imperative by prefix, since it's kind of a fringe case (like the vocative) — perhaps even with the vocative prefix. then you could just use the normal verb endings.
I think this actually might work. I have pronouns, thus I can use the first person plural pronoun in the vocative case with the verb stem. Thank you both for the input!
https://lortho.conlang.org

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Re: Imperative Mood - Lortho

Post by Reyzadren »

bbbourq wrote: 15 Nov 2017 22:53
gestaltist wrote:You could use a periphrastic construction for those, like English (“let's”)
I have thought about that, but I wanted to keep it within the agglutinative/affix arena
My griuskant conlang is agglutinative, and all I did was pronoun + verb+imperativesuffix; so it works for all person/number, because all one needs to do is vary the pronoun while keeping the imperative suffix.

I don't see why you can't just do this:
fa+1PLpronoun, konphar; (Hey us, let's speak); OR
nathar fa+2PLpronoun (Be quiet, all of you)
(Pick whichever word order appeals to you more)
Image conlang summary | Image griushkoent thread
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Re: Imperative Mood - Lortho

Post by bbbourq »

Reyzadren wrote: 16 Nov 2017 00:25
My griuskant conlang is agglutinative, and all I did was pronoun + verb+imperativesuffix; so it works for all person/number, because all one needs to do is vary the pronoun while keeping the imperative suffix.

I don't see why you can't just do this:
fa+1PLpronoun, konphar; (Hey us, let's speak); OR
nathar fa+2PLpronoun (Be quiet, all of you)
(Pick whichever word order appeals to you more)
This is the route I decided to take and it totally simplified things. Now to just input these findings on Linguifex. Thank you for the additional information.
https://lortho.conlang.org

"Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't." - Mark Twain
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