(Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here [2010-2020]

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Frislander
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Frislander »

Iyionaku wrote:
All4Ɇn wrote:Not exactly sure if this in the right place but I started working on a Chữ Nôm based conlang and wanted to make a topic about it but much to my surprise it turns out the forum doesn't accept Chữ Nôm characters in posts [:(] . Any recommendations on what I could do to circumvent it?
Well, you could go the really, really inconventient way and use graphics instead (i.e. use Snipping Tool or Hypersnap for your characters). Or you link directly to a google drive file.
The same people that made the IPA typing web-page also have one for Vietnamese.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by All4Ɇn »

Iyionaku wrote:Well, you could go the really, really inconventient way and use graphics instead (i.e. use Snipping Tool or Hypersnap for your characters). Or you link directly to a google drive file.
I've never used Snipping Tool or Hypersnap before. Is there a way I could use those and have the sizes of the pictures be the same size as how they'd be if typed?
Frislander wrote:The same people that made the IPA typing web-page also have one for Vietnamese.
Characters in the Vietnamese alphabet work fine. It's just the former Chinese characters that don't work
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Frislander »

All4Ɇn wrote:
Frislander wrote:The same people that made the IPA typing web-page also have one for Vietnamese.
Characters in the Vietnamese alphabet work fine. It's just the former Chinese characters that don't work
Oh yeah, I'd forgotten that's what you were referring to.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Salmoneus »

You could use a romanisation. That might be helpful anyway, since not all of us can read chu nom fluently.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by shimobaatar »

I assumed they were going to be using a romanization anyway, but wanted to also include the characters themselves.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by KaiTheHomoSapien »

Does anyone ever think their conlang is too unrealistically regular? Like, I have almost no irregularity in my conlang. Even forms that appear unusual at first can be explained as part of a regular system. It seems almost too mathematical and unlike natlangs. But I don't want to just throw irregularity in there...I'm not sure.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Egerius »

KaiTheHomoSapien wrote:Even forms that appear unusual at first can be explained as part of a regular system.
Don't worry.
If I may cite a Spanish example: The verb tener 'to have, to own' has those forms in the present:
'tengo 'tienes 'tiene te'nemos te'néis 'tienen

Irregular, right?
Not quite: Stressed short Latin E was diphthongised in Spanish, unstressed short E wasn't. The same applies to dormir 'to sleep': 'duermo, but dor'mimos, due to stress placement.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by All4Ɇn »

shimobaatar wrote:I assumed they were going to be using a romanization anyway, but wanted to also include the characters themselves.
Yep [:)]. I like the romanization system but it doesn't give the full feel of the language like the characters do
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by alynnidalar »

Honestly, the only thing I can think of is to have a "full" version of the posts hosted somewhere else (e.g. Google Drive) and link them here. (maybe with a summary or partial version here?) Adding an image for each one of the characters just seems prohibitively tedious!
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by LinguoFranco »

KaiTheHomoSapien wrote:Does anyone ever think their conlang is too unrealistically regular? Like, I have almost no irregularity in my conlang. Even forms that appear unusual at first can be explained as part of a regular system. It seems almost too mathematical and unlike natlangs. But I don't want to just throw irregularity in there...I'm not sure.
I do it, and I don't see much wrong with that. I start off making my conlangs pretty regular, and let irregularities develop on their own. I hear that the verb "to be" is pretty prone to irregularity, but I don't know why, though.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Frislander »

LinguoFranco wrote:
KaiTheHomoSapien wrote:Does anyone ever think their conlang is too unrealistically regular? Like, I have almost no irregularity in my conlang. Even forms that appear unusual at first can be explained as part of a regular system. It seems almost too mathematical and unlike natlangs. But I don't want to just throw irregularity in there...I'm not sure.
I do it, and I don't see much wrong with that. I start off making my conlangs pretty regular, and let irregularities develop on their own. I hear that the verb "to be" is pretty prone to irregularity, but I don't know why, though.
Well Turkish and Quechua exist, so highly regular morphology is not totally unattested in natlangs.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Dormouse559 »

LinguoFranco wrote:I do it, and I don't see much wrong with that. I start off making my conlangs pretty regular, and let irregularities develop on their own. I hear that the verb "to be" is pretty prone to irregularity, but I don't know why, though.
The general trend is that the more common a word is, the more likely it is to be irregular. For example, a lot of irregularities are introduced through sound change, and all words are equally susceptible to sound change, but less-common words tend to lose through analogy any weirdness they develop. Very common words like "to be" resist leveling precisely because they're used so often, so they hold onto irregularities more easily.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by LinguoFranco »

What do you think of having paucal and plural affixes based on noun class, person, or case?

Basically, I can see having a different affix depending on whether the noun is animate or inanimate, first person having a different number affix than second person, or the affix changing depending on the noun's role in the sentence.

I think the first two kinda tie in together, as there is a distinction between third person animate and third person inanimate, though 3rd person animate is not treated as animate as say 1st or 2nd person. Well, there is just 3rd person, but some of the 3rd person nouns are treated as animate while others are treated as inanimate.
No matter what I go with, I see an opportunity to make a complex and interesting grammatical number system.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by All4Ɇn »

Dormouse559 wrote:
LinguoFranco wrote:I do it, and I don't see much wrong with that. I start off making my conlangs pretty regular, and let irregularities develop on their own. I hear that the verb "to be" is pretty prone to irregularity, but I don't know why, though.
The general trend is that the more common a word is, the more likely it is to be irregular. For example, a lot of irregularities are introduced through sound change, and all words are equally susceptible to sound change, but less-common words tend to lose through analogy any weirdness they develop. Very common words like "to be" resist leveling precisely because they're used so often, so they hold onto irregularities more easily.
Another common irregularity, especially with "to be" verbs is the the merging of different pieces of different verbs into one such as English's merging of Proto-Germanic *beuną and *wesaną, both of which were already merged forms from various PIE verbs
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by KaiTheHomoSapien »

Egerius wrote: Don't worry.
If I may cite a Spanish example: The verb tener 'to have, to own' has those forms in the present:
'tengo 'tienes 'tiene te'nemos te'néis 'tienen

Irregular, right?
Not quite: Stressed short Latin E was diphthongised in Spanish, unstressed short E wasn't. The same applies to dormir 'to sleep': 'duermo, but dor'mimos, due to stress placement.
Thanks. I feel like some irregularities in natlangs can be traced to more regular developments and aren't quite as divergent as they seem. In Latin I was taught that "ferre" and "velle" are just irregular, but once you realize they're athematic relics, they make a little more sense.
All4Ɇn wrote: Another common irregularity, especially with "to be" verbs is the the merging of different pieces of different verbs into one such as English's merging of Proto-Germanic *beuną and *wesaną, both of which were already merged forms from various PIE verbs
Yeah, see I don't have any suppletion in my conlang. Not yet at least. I also don't have any defective nouns or verbs. There are some nouns that only have singular (or plural) forms, or some verbs that only have 3rd person forms, but it's semantically determined and predictable. It's not like how in Russian some nouns just don't have a genitive singular or whatever for some unknown reason, or how in Latin there's no perfect active infinitive.

Either way, I'm open to irregularities developing :)
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by felipesnark »

KaiTheHomoSapien wrote: Thanks. I feel like some irregularities in natlangs can be traced to more regular developments and aren't quite as divergent as they seem. In Latin I was taught that "ferre" and "velle" are just irregular, but once you realize they're athematic relics, they make a little more sense.
I like irregularity and it is a struggle for me to add it sometimes. You can have particular phonological processes that make the appearance of irregularity. For example in Shonkasika, neuter nouns pluralize with -i /i/. For i-stem nouns, this causes palatalization of the previous consonant. Here are the accusative indefinite singular and plural forms for the noun for "tea":

<hegi> /hegi/ <heje> /hed͡ʒe/

Similar things happen with the perfect forms of verbs, since stems end in vowels and the perfect suffixes are -ipe and -uka. That creates interesting vowel mergers or diphthongs.
KaiTheHomoSapien wrote:
All4Ɇn wrote: Another common irregularity, especially with "to be" verbs is the the merging of different pieces of different verbs into one such as English's merging of Proto-Germanic *beuną and *wesaną, both of which were already merged forms from various PIE verbs
Yeah, see I don't have any suppletion in my conlang. Not yet at least. I also don't have any defective nouns or verbs. There are some nouns that only have singular (or plural) forms, or some verbs that only have 3rd person forms, but it's semantically determined and predictable. It's not like how in Russian some nouns just don't have a genitive singular or whatever for some unknown reason, or how in Latin there's no perfect active infinitive.

Either way, I'm open to irregularities developing :)
Suppletion is also neat. I haven't used it a whole lot, but I want to use it more. The Wikipedia article on it can give you ideas.
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Omzinesý »

If a language uses compounding to derive 'to speak' -> 'language', what would the noun be?
A speak-system?
A speak-practice?
A speak-routine?
?
My meta-thread: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5760
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Post by Omzinesý »

Salmoneus wrote:
Ælfwine wrote:What "types" of words can be grammaticalized to become future tense markers/auxiliary verbs? (I.e. from a semantic point of view, could the word "could" for example become an auxiliary word?)
Anything could become a future tense marker.
But the most likely, I'm guessing, are:
- temporal adverbs, obviously
- modals ["I will eat it"]
- verbs and adverbs of motion ["I'm going to eat it"; "going forward, we see an increase in eating rates"]
- possessive structures ["I have to eat it"]
- locational structures ["It's on me to make sure it's eaten", "He has it in him to eat it"]
- verbs of perception and report ["I see him eating it at some point in the next month"]
- verbs of cognition, consideration, etc ["I'm thinking of eating it"]
Komi and Udmurt did gain a future from a SG3 agreement marker.
Something like "John he-likes girls" started meaning 'John will like girls.' while the present doesn't have a marked SG3.
My meta-thread: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5760
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Salmoneus »

Omzinesý wrote:If a language uses compounding to derive 'to speak' -> 'language', what would the noun be?
A speak-system?
A speak-practice?
A speak-routine?
?
The question makes no sense. It would be whatever it was. In the case of a conlang it would be whatever you wanted it to be.
[speak-barrel. speak-time. people-speak. one-speak. speak-herd. repeating-speak. speak-law. good-speak. speak-whittling. speak-music. epic-speak. speak-drone. torrent-speak. speak-line. mind-speak. hand-speak. speak-memory. not-no-speak. double-speak.]
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Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Lambuzhao »

Salmoneus wrote:
Omzinesý wrote:If a language uses compounding to derive 'to speak' -> 'language', what would the noun be?
A speak-system?
A speak-practice?
A speak-routine?
?
The question makes no sense. It would be whatever it was. In the case of a conlang it would be whatever you wanted it to be.
[speak-barrel. speak-time. people-speak. one-speak. speak-herd. repeating-speak. speak-law. good-speak. speak-whittling. speak-music. epic-speak. speak-drone. torrent-speak. speak-line. mind-speak. hand-speak. speak-memory. not-no-speak. double-speak.]
Erm... makes some sense to me.

Some other possibilities:

way.speak
custom.speak
word<COLL>.speak
manner.speak
we.speak
our.word<PL>.speak
speak.tongue
speak.Ø<NMLZ><COLL>
speak.deed<PL>
speak.mouth<PL>
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