Pancake (working title) - Collaborative conlang

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Esmelthien
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Re: Proposing to create a conlang with multiple people

Post by Esmelthien »

Squall wrote:Semitic languages have many uvular consonants, do not they?
Not per se. Hebrew doesn't distinguish velar/uvular consonants, and Maltese has no uvulars at all.


I can type any diacritics save for the horns used in Vietnamese. I've tried rigging my layout so that I can type other characters like the engma, ezh, etc., but... No luck there.
Segano
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Re: Proposing to create a conlang with multiple people

Post by Segano »

Since Semitic seems to be the most popular language family here, I looked up some Amharic, Arabic and Hebrew grammar. Suffice it to say that without someone fluent in any of those languages, creating grammar for a Semitic language is going to be a bit of a problem.
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DesEsseintes
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Re: Proposing to create a conlang with multiple people

Post by DesEsseintes »

I have a working knowledge of Arabic, if you need some grammar guidance. I don't think I would have time to contribute actively to this lang as I'm working on two others at the moment, but feel free to ask me questions.
Esmelthien
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Re: Proposing to create a conlang with multiple people

Post by Esmelthien »

Even if we go mostly Semitic, we can have fun stuff from other families too, right? Also, I'm pretty sure we have two votes for 'create our own', one from me, and one from Squall, at least, concerning the grammar.
Segano
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Re: Proposing to create a conlang with multiple people

Post by Segano »

I apologize, I thought I had already added it:

- 2: Semitic (spec. Hebrew)
- 2: Create our own
- 1: Slavic
- 1: Uralic
- 1: Eskimo-Aleut
- 1: Chukotko-Kamchatkan
- 1: Japonic (spec. Japanese)
- 1: Austronesian (spec. Malay)
- 1: Bantu (spec. Swahili)
- 0: Eastern Romance (spec. Romanian)
- 0: Germanic (spec. Afrikaans)
DesEsseintes wrote:I have a working knowledge of Arabic, if you need some grammar guidance. I don't think I would have time to contribute actively to this lang as I'm working on two others at the moment, but feel free to ask me questions.
Thanks, that sounds great. [:)]
Even if we go mostly Semitic, we can have fun stuff from other families too, right?
Yeap, indeed.
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kanejam
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Re: Proposing to create a conlang with multiple people

Post by kanejam »

Just a bit of advice, collaborative projects tend to run out of steam (collablangs less so than collabworlds but it still happens) so the best way to do it is either quickly or with one person taking charge and driving it.

Otherwise, I think creating an original lang would be best for collaborative efforts, but at the same time I quite liked the look of the Hebrew consonant plus Romanian vowel phoneme inventory.
Segano
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Re: Proposing to create a conlang with multiple people

Post by Segano »

kanejam wrote:Just a bit of advice, collaborative projects tend to run out of steam (collablangs less so than collabworlds but it still happens) so the best way to do it is either quickly or with one person taking charge and driving it.

Otherwise, I think creating an original lang would be best for collaborative efforts, but at the same time I quite liked the look of the Hebrew consonant plus Romanian vowel phoneme inventory.
Thanks for your input, I agree. :)

I'd like to propose doing both things (do it quickly and with one person taking charge).
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Squall
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Re: Proposing to create a conlang with multiple people

Post by Squall »

This project may be abandoned.
Someone should lead the development. Segano, maybe you should lead it. The best way to proceed is to ask about the desired features of the language.
Examples:
How will the gender system work?
Will it have adjectives?
Will the noun inflect according to gender, number, degree or case?
Will the verbs inflect according to person?
How will TAM be expressed?
English is not my native language. Sorry for any mistakes or lack of knowledge when I discuss this language.
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Segano
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Re: Proposing to create a conlang with multiple people

Post by Segano »

I'd like to apologize if I've been annoying, egotistical or arrogant, it certainly hasn't been intentional.
Segano, maybe you should lead it.
I'm honored (thank you :)), but I don't think the project would benefit a lot from my leadership. Perhaps someone more experienced would be a better choice.
How will the gender system work?
Will it have adjectives?
Will the noun inflect according to gender, number, degree or case?
Will the verbs inflect according to person?
How will TAM be expressed?
Two or three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter | masculine/feminine, neuter), with either both/all genders their own plural or just one general plural.
Definitely. :)
I don't have a preference here.
Definitely.
I haven't got a clue what TAM is (Wikipedia says tense-aspect-mood, but it's still a bit vague), so no idea. [:P]
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kanejam
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Re: Proposing to create a conlang with multiple people

Post by kanejam »

I'm not sure why you're apologising, you certainly haven't been any of this this.

And actually, I think you would be the best person to lead this project, mainly because it's your thread and you're the most enthusiastic slash least likely to give up. Experience doesn't matter, as you'll have other collaborators helping you.

So for now I suggest you get a working phonology and an idea of how isolating/fusional/polysynthetic/derivational/suffixing etc the lang will be. Sorry if that was a big wall of slashes, but my point is that I like to work out things like word order and how much inflection there is at the beginning.
Segano
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Re: Proposing to create a conlang with multiple people

Post by Segano »

Thanks for the confidence, unless anyone disagrees I accept. :)
So for now I suggest you get a working phonology and an idea of how isolating/fusional/polysynthetic/derivational/suffixing etc the lang will be.
Whether it's going to be an isolated language depends on the language family, so I have two proposals here: if we create our own language family, I'd say quite a bit isolated (but with some words borrowed from other languages, even Korean has some foreign words). If we choose to go with an existing language family, I'd say pick one main language, e.g. French for Romance, Norwegian for Germanic, Welsh for Celtic, and create a related (but not too similar, I assume we don't want a dialect. Unless we do, of course [:P]) language. A demonstration of what that could look like: laptop = laptopp, house = haus, music = muzik. Semitic and creating our own language family both have two votes. We could do both. Is a language with a Semitic pronunciation and vocabulary, but with a completely unique grammar (let's say Japanese), still a Semitic language?

I'm afraid I have no clue what fusional languages are, and both Wikipedia and Google are being cryptic, but am I correct in assuming that in fusional languages, the suffix is unique to a combination of features (genitive + feminine + singular)? And if one were to change one of those features, it would change (genitive + masculine + singular)? In that case it would probably be more realistic to do so. Since cases might be related: I personally don't care about cases, but if we use them, we shouldn't make them ridiculously difficult (hahaha shouldn't become ahahehia, but hahahe should be fine).

Preferably not polysynthetic, 'Aliikusersuillammassuaanerartassagaluarpaalli.' is a little too long for my taste. :P Derivation sounds good and logical. We should definitely use suffixes, it'd make the language a lot easier to learn.

As for articles, I don't think they are necessary. Even without them a language can look good.


I also have a few questions:
- We need a name. Does anyone have any ideas?
- Do we want cases?
-- How many cases?
-- Which cases?
- Do we want a country? If so, on Earth or on a human colony?
-- What continent should our country be on?
-- How big should our country be?
-- Do we want regions, provinces, states, counties, or ...?
-- Should the territory of our country cover existing countries (as in create a country out of Bavaria, Bohemia, northern Austria, whatever)?
-- What's the country going to be called?
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Esmelthien
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Re: Proposing to create a conlang with multiple people

Post by Esmelthien »

I like the idea of a mildly fusional language, though nothing silly like Latin. I'd actually really like to have something like transfixes. Like for my own conlang I have things like llevaq eat, llevaşqa eat-1s. Transfixes are nice. Although, if we go for triliteral roots à la Hebrew, we'd have those anyhow.

I'd enjoy doing something silly with our conlang, though. How about, say... Tripartite alignment? Maybe even with another three different cases for ditransitive verbs, hehe. Another thing: I'd like to have, like, case particles or whatever, like Japanese does. This'd fit nicely with the previous idea, seeing as our speakers wouldn't have the trouble of having to know a shitton of declensions or whatever.

For it being a country... Maybe. I think it's best we just work out things as we go along, i.e. as needed.
Segano
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Re: Proposing to create a conlang with multiple people

Post by Segano »

I've never used transfixes before, but it could be interesting. If case particles mean what I think they mean, they'd be really nice to have in our language. And true, but I was merely asking so we could create a Wikia with our country or language name. :)
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Esmelthien
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Re: Proposing to create a conlang with multiple people

Post by Esmelthien »

Alright, let's get on with the basics. We've practically decided on a phoneme inventory at this point, but I want to raise some other questions.

What will the rest of our phonology be like? Will we have fixed stress, moraic stress? Maybe even contrastive stress or pitch accent?
What will our phonotactics be? How will this affect our allophony?

On a more grammatical note, what kind of morphosyntactic alignment will we have, and, if any, verb agreement?
Squall
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Re: Proposing to create a conlang with multiple people

Post by Squall »

Will it have adjectives?
Some languages do not have adjectives. They use verbs to replace adjectives.
If "strong" were a verb, it would be:
The strong man -> The stronging man
The man is strong -> The man strongs

It is like replacing "alive" with "to live".
The man is alive -> The man lives


Such language would lack the verb "to be".
The progressive aspect would be verb inflections or it would be absent.
To say "He is a doctor", 'doctor' would receive a suffix to make it a verb.
To say "He is the employee that we need", you would have a special version of "to be" only for this case.
- Do we want a country? If so, on Earth or on a human colony?
-- What continent should our country be on?
-- How big should our country be?
-- Do we want regions, provinces, states, counties, or ...?
-- Should the territory of our country cover existing countries (as in create a country out of Bavaria, Bohemia, northern Austria, whatever)?
-- What's the country going to be called?
This is a long and complex work. It would be better to finish the language first. The cultural features for the language can be developed on demand.
- Do we want cases?
-- How many cases?
-- Which cases?
There are 6 combinations of word order. If we are able to distinguish the verb, we will be able to choose 3 word orders freely.


We could have a language without adpositions. Cases and verbs in the gerund would replace the adpositions.


A list of cases:
*nominative-accusative
*genitive (of)
*locative (in, at)
*lative-dative (to)
*ablative (from)
*instrumental-prolative (with, by)
*abessive (without)
English is not my native language. Sorry for any mistakes or lack of knowledge when I discuss this language.
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tezcatlip0ca
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Re: Proposing to create a conlang with multiple people

Post by tezcatlip0ca »

Squall wrote:To say "He is the employee that we need", you would have a special version of "to be" only for this case.
Or you could just ignore definiteness and do something like:

3sg.NOM employee-PRS need-GER-GEN 1pl.GEN
"He is the employee of our needing"
Esmelthien
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Re: Proposing to create a conlang with multiple people

Post by Esmelthien »

Squall wrote:A list of cases:
*nominative-accusative
*genitive (of)
*locative (in, at)
*lative-dative (to)
*ablative (from)
*instrumental-prolative (with, by)
*abessive (without)
Before jumping into this, why don't we first decide what kind of aligment we'll have? I'm liking the idea of either tripartite or active-stative aligment.
Segano
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Re: Proposing to create a conlang with multiple people

Post by Segano »

Active-stative sounds good to me. I'm not so sure about ditching adjectives and using verbs instead, but if it looks good, I'm all for it. Contrastive stress sounds logical. Fixed stress sounds fine to me as well, as long as it doesn't sound weird. Regarding verb agreement, I agree. I think it'd look much nicer if verbs were conjugated according to the subject. As a general guideline, we could add vowels between consonants in consonant clusters of more than two or three consonants.
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Squall
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Re: Proposing to create a conlang with multiple people

Post by Squall »

What about the pronouns?

A suggestion:
1SG.MASC
1SG.FEM
2SG.MASC
2SG.FEM
3SG.MASC
3SG.FEM
3SG.NEUT (Unlike in English and Esperanto, this pronoun can be used with humans. This usage was present in Esperanto, but the English influence forbade it, because they translated it as "it".)
1PL.EXCL
1PL.INCL
2PL.NEUT
3PL.NEUT
English is not my native language. Sorry for any mistakes or lack of knowledge when I discuss this language.
:bra: :mrgreen: | :uk: [:D] | :esp: [:)] | :epo: [:|] | :lat: [:S] | :jpn: [:'(]
Esmelthien
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Re: Proposing to create a conlang with multiple people

Post by Esmelthien »

Sounds fine to me. As for agreement, I think I'd really like bipersonal agreement.
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