Yay or Nay? [2011–2018]

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Creyeditor
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Re: Yay or Nay?

Post by Creyeditor »

Interesting idea, definitely a yay. Is there a certain preposition that you would use?
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Re: Yay or Nay?

Post by Ælfwine »

Creyeditor wrote:Interesting idea, definitely a yay. Is there a certain preposition that you would use?
Not entirely sure. Some interesting prepositions would be
cantrar, from contrá
entrar, from intrá (also its similar to entrar[e], "to get in")
juftar, from juxtá

etc.

New yes/no question:

Pannonian pretonic vowels are deleted.

coāctus -> caftu
sapere -> speri
credentia -> cřdentsja

I don't know any romance languages that delete pretonic vowels wholesale, but I thought it would be an interesting way to get some new consonant clusters (including syllabic r/l).
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loglorn
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Re: Yay or Nay?

Post by loglorn »

Ælfwine wrote:
Creyeditor wrote:Interesting idea, definitely a yay. Is there a certain preposition that you would use?
Not entirely sure. Some interesting prepositions would be
cantrar, from contrá
entrar, from intrá (also its similar to entrar[e], "to get in")
juftar, from juxtá

etc.

New yes/no question:

Pannonian pretonic vowels are deleted.

coāctus -> caftu
sapere -> speri
credentia -> cřdentsja

I don't know any romance languages that delete pretonic vowels wholesale, but I thought it would be an interesting way to get some new consonant clusters (including syllabic r/l).
One could argue that pretonic vowels are deleted wholesale for some speakers of European Portuguese. So you're not that far off.
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Re: Yay or Nay?

Post by DesEsseintes »

Huh.

Something weird came up.

Híí has a process whereby the diphthong becomes weı when following another vowel, like so:
e + oı → eweı
ı + oı → ıweı
o + oı → oweı

And here I was happily encoding this in SCA2 when the rule just refused to work whenever the preceding vowel is o.

The relevant rules go:
oi/wei/U_
óí/wéí/U_
öi/wëi/U_

And yet SCA2 gives me:
ón’ooımo → ón’ooımo

I even added a rule:
oi/wei/o_

Still no luck. (And yes I have a rewrite rule to make sure my unjotted i's don't mess with the code and besides the rules work fine when the preceding vowel is either of e i/ı.)

And then I realised ón’ooımo is pretty pretty.

tl;dr

Should I allow ooı as the only Híí diphthong with a long first component as the o-counterpart to eweı ıweı?

And if you're dying to, please tell me why my code isn't working.
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Re: Yay or Nay?

Post by Creyeditor »

It works for me, if I use undotted i's in the input of the rule, like so

U=o
oı/wei/U_
óı/wéí/U_
öı/wëi/U_
ón’ooımo → ón’oweimo


I still have to say that ón’ooımo looks more beautiful to me than ón’oweimo.
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Re: Yay or Nay?

Post by Frislander »

DesEsseintes wrote:The relevant rules go:
oi/wei/U_
óí/wéí/U_
öi/wëi/U_
How about you move the i's from the input/output to the environment, like so:

o/we/U_i
ó/wé/U_í
ö/wë/U_i

Will it work then?
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Re: Yay or Nay?

Post by DesEsseintes »

Frislander wrote:
DesEsseintes wrote:The relevant rules go:
oi/wei/U_
óí/wéí/U_
öi/wëi/U_
How about you move the i's from the input/output to the environment, like so:

o/we/U_i
ó/wé/U_í
ö/wë/U_i

Will it work then?
Nope.

Regardless of how I rearrange and rephrase the rules, I cannot get two unaccented o's to work. Every other combination works:

U=eioéíóèìòēīōêîôëïö
o/we/U_i (← just for good measure)
oi/wei/U_
óí/wéí/U_
öi/wëi/U_

Rewrite rule: ı|i

ón’oóímo → ón’owéímo
ón’ıoımo → ón’ıweımo
on’oȯimo → on’owėimo
on’óoımo → on’óweımo
onıoımo → onıweımo
oneoımo → oneweımo
ón’ooımo → ón’ooımo

I think the gods of conlanging are telling me to go with the new ooı diphthong, and I'd still be interested in yays and nays on that.
Edit: I'm an idiot. The reason why the rule doesn't work is because my code recognises the two o's as a long vowel and rewrites them as ō before it gets to this part of the code. Mystery solved.
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Re: Yay or Nay?

Post by cedh »

DesEsseintes wrote:I think the gods of conlanging are telling me to go with the new ooı diphthong, and I'd still be interested in yays and nays on that.
Yay.
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Re: Yay or Nay?

Post by Thrice Xandvii »

DesEsseintes wrote:
Edit: I'm an idiot. The reason why the rule doesn't work is because my code recognises the two o's as a long vowel and rewrites them as ō before it gets to this part of the code. Mystery solved.
While I'm glad you solved your issue, I do so hate when a problem is entirely of your own making and somehow you just can't find it!
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Re: Yay or Nay?

Post by Ælfwine »

loglorn wrote:
Ælfwine wrote:
Creyeditor wrote:Interesting idea, definitely a yay. Is there a certain preposition that you would use?
Not entirely sure. Some interesting prepositions would be
cantrar, from contrá
entrar, from intrá (also its similar to entrar[e], "to get in")
juftar, from juxtá

etc.

New yes/no question:

Pannonian pretonic vowels are deleted.

coāctus -> caftu
sapere -> speri
credentia -> cřdentsja

I don't know any romance languages that delete pretonic vowels wholesale, but I thought it would be an interesting way to get some new consonant clusters (including syllabic r/l).
One could argue that pretonic vowels are deleted wholesale for some speakers of European Portuguese. So you're not that far off.
Hmm, can we find any sources on this? I'm definitely interested.

Another cool thing is that there would be some interesting alternations in the grammar depending on the stress, mostly it seems in verbal conjugations. So some words would syncope the pretonic vowel if stress is penultimate, except initially where the post-tonic vowel is syncoped. So to use my "sapere" example, I could have "spere" in one conjugation but "sabre" in another.
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Re: Yay or Nay?

Post by shimobaatar »

Ælfwine wrote: Hmm, can we find any sources on this? I'm definitely interested.
I think loglorn is a native speaker of (Brazilian) Portuguese. I don't know if that's enough of a source.
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Re: Yay or Nay?

Post by Iyionaku »

I am thinking of adding a system of evidentiality to Yélian, which would fit neatly by means of verbal participles as prefixes (I've always considered Yélian classifiers as an open class, so structurally it will fit and even be plausible to raise naturally).

Ta tem yiolket. - She killed him.
Ta tem yirîyatsolket. - I heard that she killed him / From hearsay it is known that she killed him. [From rîya - to hear]
Ta tem yivalatsolket. - I saw that she killed him / Obviously, she killed him. [From vala - to see]

And maybe a few more.

What speaks against it is that this will add an additional category to Yélian verbs (that can already be very long) and hence will make speaking even more complicated without fixing something that couldn't be said before. Plus, it will make it hard to distinguish from formally identical constructions that would mean "She killed him audibly"; "She killed him visibly" etc.

Jay or nay?
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Re: Yay or Nay?

Post by loglorn »

shimobaatar wrote:
Ælfwine wrote: Hmm, can we find any sources on this? I'm definitely interested.
I think loglorn is a native speaker of (Brazilian) Portuguese. I don't know if that's enough of a source.
I am indeed native Brazilian Portuguese but i do have contact with European Portuguese speakers. According to the wikipedia article on Portuguese phonology, which is pretty much in line with what i notice, EP only has the three unstressed vowels /ɐ, ɨ, u/, and they are, in wikipedia's words, "often voiceless or elided in fast speech". It approaches your processes and, in extreme cases it can be said to produce the paradigm alternations you seek: [s̩ˈbeɾ] saber vs. [sɐbˈɾa] saberá.

Sadly wikipedia doesn't point to further sources as for that particular process.
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Re: Yay or Nay?

Post by Ashtăr Balynestjăr »

There’s a description of European Portuguese phonetics here, but I‘m not sure how reliable the site is.
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Re: Yay or Nay?

Post by loglorn »

Ashtăr Balynestjăr wrote:There’s a description of European Portuguese phonetics here, but I‘m not sure how reliable the site is.
Don't think I'd ever opened a site so old on mobile. Of the ancient layout and xsampa usage do not elude me, it mentions voiceless vowels, but argues they're never actually deleted, but very often unvoiced. IMO there is deletion, especially of pretonic vowels.
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Re: Yay or Nay?

Post by esoanem »

One idea I've had for a while for one of my conlangs is to give each verb two tenses, one fixing the start of the action (the initial tense) and one fixing the end of the action (the terminal tense). Together with more than one degree of past and future, this would give plenty of opportunity for varying degrees of perfectivity to be expressed.

More concretely, the idea was to have the initial tense as a prefix and the terminal tense as a suffix, with the tenses being distant past, past, near past, (present), near future, future, distant future (I'm tempted to merge the present into either the near past or near future as a near non-future or near non-past respectively to make it a bit less unwieldy) which would give the following tense combinations (with an approximate tense-aspect combination in brackets):

DPAST-be-DPAST (distant past perfective)
DPAST-be-PAST (non-near past imperfective)
DPAST-be-NPAST (past imperfective)
DPAST-be-PRES (non-future imperfective)
DPAST-be-NFUT (present imperfective)
DPAST-be-FUT (present imperfective)
DPAST-be-DFUT (gnomic)

PAST-be-PAST (past perfective)
PAST-be-NPAST (non-distant past imperfective)
PAST-be-PRES (past imperfective)
PAST-be-NFUT (present imperfective)
PAST-be-FUT (present imperfective)
PAST-be-DFUT (present imperfective)

NPAST-be-NPAST (near past perfective)
NPAST-be-PRES (near past imperfective)
NPAST-be-NFUT (present imperfective)
NPAST-be-FUT (present imperfective)
NPAST-be-DFUT (present imperfective)

PRES-be-PRES (present perfective)
PRES-be-NFUT (present imperfective)
PRES-be-FUT (present imperfective)
PRES-be-DFUT (present imperfective)

NFUT-be-NFUT (near future perfective)
NFUT-be-FUT (non-distant future imperfective)
NFUT-be-DFUT (future imperfective)

FUT-be-FUT (future perfective)
FUT-be-DFUT (non-near future imperfective)

DFUT-be-DFUT (distant future perfective)

Obviously, unless we allow for time travel, the other combinations wouldn't make much sense (unless they were to be interpreted as negative forms?).

Does this seem reasonable or interesting?
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Re: Yay or Nay?

Post by shimobaatar »

loglorn wrote:
shimobaatar wrote:
Ælfwine wrote: Hmm, can we find any sources on this? I'm definitely interested.
I think loglorn is a native speaker of (Brazilian) Portuguese. I don't know if that's enough of a source.
I am indeed native Brazilian Portuguese but i do have contact with European Portuguese speakers.
Yeah, that's what I meant. I didn't mean to imply that just because you were Brazilian that you didn't know about European Portuguese.
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Re: Yay or Nay?

Post by Frislander »

esoanem wrote:One idea I've had for a while for one of my conlangs is to give each verb two tenses, one fixing the start of the action (the initial tense) and one fixing the end of the action (the terminal tense). Together with more than one degree of past and future, this would give plenty of opportunity for varying degrees of perfectivity to be expressed.
Spoiler:
More concretely, the idea was to have the initial tense as a prefix and the terminal tense as a suffix, with the tenses being distant past, past, near past, (present), near future, future, distant future (I'm tempted to merge the present into either the near past or near future as a near non-future or near non-past respectively to make it a bit less unwieldy) which would give the following tense combinations (with an approximate tense-aspect combination in brackets):

DPAST-be-DPAST (distant past perfective)
DPAST-be-PAST (non-near past imperfective)
DPAST-be-NPAST (past imperfective)
DPAST-be-PRES (non-future imperfective)
DPAST-be-NFUT (present imperfective)
DPAST-be-FUT (present imperfective)
DPAST-be-DFUT (gnomic)

PAST-be-PAST (past perfective)
PAST-be-NPAST (non-distant past imperfective)
PAST-be-PRES (past imperfective)
PAST-be-NFUT (present imperfective)
PAST-be-FUT (present imperfective)
PAST-be-DFUT (present imperfective)

NPAST-be-NPAST (near past perfective)
NPAST-be-PRES (near past imperfective)
NPAST-be-NFUT (present imperfective)
NPAST-be-FUT (present imperfective)
NPAST-be-DFUT (present imperfective)

PRES-be-PRES (present perfective)
PRES-be-NFUT (present imperfective)
PRES-be-FUT (present imperfective)
PRES-be-DFUT (present imperfective)

NFUT-be-NFUT (near future perfective)
NFUT-be-FUT (non-distant future imperfective)
NFUT-be-DFUT (future imperfective)

FUT-be-FUT (future perfective)
FUT-be-DFUT (non-near future imperfective)

DFUT-be-DFUT (distant future perfective)

Obviously, unless we allow for time travel, the other combinations wouldn't make much sense (unless they were to be interpreted as negative forms?).
Does this seem reasonable or interesting?
Yay. In fact why not go for the time-travelling angle and make it the language of a race of inter-dimensional beings/time-lords?

I wouldn't use the other forms as negatives though because then you can't properly negate a perfective.
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Re: Yay or Nay?

Post by LinguoFranco »

I have an idea for a language that uses suffixes for inflections and prefixes for derivational morphology. One issue that I am having so far is that it can get hysterically redundant. For example, "vuti" means to eat. and "vivuti" means "food" because the prefix "vi-" makes a verb into a noun. So "I eat food is "Uka vuti vivuti." Of course, you'd normally just say "I eat."
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Re: Yay or Nay?

Post by eldin raigmore »

LinguoFranco wrote:I have an idea for a language that uses suffixes for inflections and prefixes for derivational morphology. One issue that I am having so far is that it can get hysterically redundant. For example, "vuti" means to eat. and "vivuti" means "food" because the prefix "vi-" makes a verb into a noun. So "I eat food is "Uka vuti vivuti." Of course, you'd normally just say "I eat."
Well, that would make it like trying to alliterate in Swahili, or trying to rhyme in Latin. In other words; not difficult.
I'm not sure the redundancy is a bug instead of a feature. An L1-speaker's tolerance-setting for "hysterically" might be a good deal less strict than yours.
My advice (to the degree that I can even actually give advice) would be to go for it if you want to.
Trying to avoid saying the same thing the same way too many times in a shortish utterance is something speakers of languages with lots of synonyms -- i.e. English -- can (and some do) have as a goal.
It might be a worthwhile experience for you to develop this conlang along the lines it's already taking.
--------
But of course, the only real advice is "do what you want as long as it fits your design goals; and your design goals are whatever you say they are".
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