New CBB

I have a new phonology (somewhat based on Somali if somebody is interested) That's just the stops:

1. t’ t͡ʃ k’ q’ (or pharyngeal, I'm not sure)
2. [p][β]b], [t][ð][d], [k][ɣ][ɡ], [q][ʁ][ɢ]
3. ɓ ɗ ɗ͡ʒ ɠ

The problem is the romanization. There are three series of stops in that lang and only two in the roman alphabet. The series 2. is the most frequent so I think it should have a simple letter, but should it be marked with a voiced or voiceless series <t> or <d>? They have both voiced and voiceless allophones. [p] word-initially and word-finally, [b] after nasals and [β] in the other places.

I don't think you need separate letters for the conditional allophones. If [p] becomes [b] only after nasals and nowhere else, I think you could represent it with p. You could use <b d g> for the implosives and <t' k' q' > for the ejectives/pharyngeals.

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Colourless green ideas sleep furiously

Somehow I didn't notice this thread before. I've posted a thread in this subforum about a rather odd alienesque language I've been thinking of, and I'd greatly appreciate any comments or criticism people can offer.

Now, Vtain has theree paradigms of number/referentaility: irreferential, singular referential, and plural referentail. These are expressed by prtmanteau mophs with cases. Would I still add the paucal referentail number?

I don't see why not; neither do I see why. Give it a shot and let us see it.

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I am not responsible for the accuracy of my sources; they're responsible for their own mistakes, if any, and also responsible for defending their own statements if you disagree with them.

This is the coin throwing thread!

Should I use [e] or [ə] for <e> in Arimaspean Creole? (now that part of its substrate includes German)

Is there any reason why you couldn't represent both with <e>?

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<äʒƺçķļ>
<áéíóú>

None that I can think of. (lit. I never thought of it like that - I thought that sort of thing would be "making it Englishy")

both it'll be then. thank you.

Xing's last option is exactly the way Géarthnuns operates. When I initially started explaining this to people back in the day (read: high school), it got the response that Omzinesý gave you, namely, that "The not-man/no-man sleeps." is not necessarily the same as "The man doesn't sleep." Once I broke free of the "negating the noun" concept and just looked it as "marking negation on the noun", all of the crises ontologiques happily vanished. If having things yaw in and out of existence mid-sentence is "fun" for you, I'll leave you to it, but I found that a lot more trouble than it was worth. With nouns marking overall clausal negation, Géarthnuns has developed various gizmos to tweak polarity as need be over the course of an utterance, but your strategies/results may vary.

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☯道可道,非常道
☯名可名,非常名

Which of the options should I use?...

si = Definate, and maybe a generalizer. {derived from English "is}
wuru, wurwu = a crippling disease, rare in the Colonial Period.

Option 1:
. wurwu-si = disease (any sickness or ailment)
. si-surwu = is infected, has wuru

Option 2:
. wurwu-si = is infected, has wuru
. si-wurwu = disease (any sickness or ailment)

May I suggest flipping a coin?

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I am not responsible for the accuracy of my sources; they're responsible for their own mistakes, if any, and also responsible for defending their own statements if you disagree with them.

A shame to see this thread die.

So here's a new idea: A verbal mood that expresses sarcasm or sardonic statements, formed from an earlier dubitative:

bear-ACC kill-2SG-PST-SARCASM
Psh...like you actually killed a bear or something.

Fuuuuck representing sarcasm in text is hard as hell

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Banami bhjaddhos rafi mau cy vyaja cecerror.
Fools do not see the sun nor sail the seas
-Azenti Proverb

A fussbudgety "nay" from this contingent. I won't be the first to say this - I've seen it here or elsewhere - hardwiring sarcasm into the grammar really defeats its purpose. Whether it's as subtle as the driest British comedy of manners or as in your face as a Three Stooges coconut cream pie, part of the mechanism of sarcasm is that it's not marked, and as such, subverts expectation. That that may be tough to gauge in text bereft of intonation or body language is what emoticons are for, and if good prose writing involves "showing, not telling", then one ought to be able to convey a character's dripping sarcasm through other methods of description. An evidential that glosses, "I mean the exact opposite of what I'm saying to you."? What fun is that (what use is that)? And for those of us who enjoy sarcasm, we would sarcastically warp the use of the sarcastic mood out of recognition in a sarcastic matter of hours.

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☯道可道,非常道
☯名可名,非常名

Siwa has many preglottalized consonants: ʔp ʔt ʔk ʔŋ

I've long been unsure about this, since they occur a whole lot. I have been thinking of applying metathesis to obtain:

ʔp ʔt ʔk ʔŋ > pʔ tʔ kʔ > p' t' k'

This would only apply in unstressed position:


atakka 'big (gen.) [ˈɑtaʔka] > [ˈɑtak:’a]


Ejectives would not entirely be new in Siwa, since they already exist:




What do you think?

Phenomenally useful. So useful, in fact, that this kind of marking already exists in very many languages, e.g., Japanese!

Boku wa kimi wo shinjiru means "I believe you." However,

Boku wa kimi wo shinjinai, with a -nai marking on the verb, indicates that the speaker means exactly the opposite, namely, that they don't believe you.

Granted, since the -nai marker doesn't necessarily entail derision, people tend to just call it a negative polarity marker rather than a sarcasm marker and call it a day. Still, though, it is precisely what you describe: a verb marking that glosses "I mean the exact opposite of what I would mean without this marking."

I see no reason why you couldn't have a similar negative-polarity marking for verbs that also entailed a derisive attitude.

Note also this contradiction: sarcasm is definitely marked, as you say.


It is certainly not true that sarcasm is not marked. It is typically marked phonologically with intonation patterns, and if not, via body language or pragmatic strategies. So your objection cannot be to marking sarcasm in general, only to marking sarcasm morphologically.

But if your linguistic community had trained you to indicate derision and cynicism by dropping a syllable on the end of a verb, instead of warping your intonation pattern over the phrase....then what would the difference really be?

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任何事物的发展都是物极必反，否极泰来。

I'm gonna stop you right there. While it is indeed verb marking, it's not what would make it sarcasm. The expression of non-X doesn't necessarily entail sarcasm; it could be a totally legitimate expression of sincerity something ain't the case. The positive version could equally be sarcastic tho I note you didn't declare it to have a sarcastic marker.


Aside that it has a nonsarcastic use and has no markers dedicated to expressing sarcasm? Another part of my note on that weird focus on only negative markers.


No problems here I can see.


You know of such a linguistic community?

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Up in blue sky silly blimp goes by
Where it come from where it go
Ziggy-Zaggy it fly high

A negative polarity marker does not need to indicate sarcasm. Though it could perhaps do that, but I'm not sure. I'm not sure sarcasm would entail negative polarity - since one point of sarcasm or irony is to not change the truth-value of the statement (a sarcastic statement still means the same as a non-sarcastic one - the two kinds of statements just serve different purposes in the language-game). Neither am I sure that sarcasm always has to be marked - sometimes context only can tell the difference between a sarcastic or ironic, and a "normal" statement. (It seems there could be occasional misunderstanding, where a statement intended as irony is taken literally, or vice versa.) It seems to me that if the marking is too hard-wired in the grammar of a language, sarcasm would lose some of its point.

But maybe I'm just speaking from a limited point of view. Perhaps there are markers around there that serve to indicate sarcasm - or at least some rhetorical device close to sarcasm.

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constructedlanguages.net

English actually uses "not" as a sarcasm-marking interjection sometimes. It's usually considered juvenile and unsubtle, but no one said sarcasm had to involve great wit. The construction is: "I believe you … not!"

Oh dear, I fear the pragmatic intention of my entry has been derailed.As MrKrov effectively points out, negating an utterance doesn't necessarily negate the truth-value of that utterance. Kimi shinjinai is not the same as "I believe you ... (1Mississippi, 2Mississippi...) NOT!" (and as an aside, as styles of sarcasm go, this is not one of my particular favorites)

Perhaps I was trying too quickly for the rimshot. Perhaps if I had said, "An evidential that glosses, 'I am deliberately saying something to you that I know is categorically untrue.' What's the fun/use of that?" Kind of defeats the purpose of evidentials. We're not in the same realm as, "Well, I heard this from Peter, so you should take this with a grain of salt." or "Mind you, I'm not well-versed in matters like these but...". No, we're saying, "I know this to be untrue, I'm stating it as true, and gosh, aren't I simply a caution ?!" <rimshot?>

When you get right down to it with truth-values (truth-valencies?), there's not a whole lot of difference between sarcasm and lying. Welcome to pragmatics:

I love that dress on you. (sincere; truth+)
I love that dress on you. (I genuinely don't want to hurt your feelings, I mean well, and hell, maybe by the third drink, I'll mean it; truth?)
I love that dress on you. (I'm only saying this because I want some good luvvin' at the end of the evening; truth-)
I love that dress on you. (I hate it, but I will ooze sarcasm -- motives may vary; truth?)

Now if the identical surface structure of those distresses a conlanging heart to such an extent that they each must be explicitly marked grammatically rather than pragmatically, don't let me stop you. Perhaps there's a conrace out there that live in isolation tanks and who can only communicate though speech-generating devices. Which is what I thought I was pooh-poohing in this exchange:
It seems to me that what Chagen was really asking for/about is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony_punctuation, which I don't have a problem with, per se -- after all, it can aid in cuing a reader in to the intended aural intonations of the metamessage of sarcasm. But like other conlangers before, Chagen has wondered why you couldn't go the extra mile and turn it into a grammatical feature. And to that, I say, "meh".I was not suggesting that it couldn't be done -- conlanging often examines such questions -- just that it might not, IMNSHO, be the best option out there. If a conrace can be that socially inept, then why not add something grammatical to indicate that when I ask, "Do you have a pen + verb form X?", I really only want to know about the pen's existence and your ownership relationship to it ("Yes" and walking away will be a perfectly acceptable response); "How are you?" + verb form X = Nope, nothing perfunctory here. I really want to hear in excruciating detail everything that's happened to you since last we spoke. Leave out nothing!; "Can I go to the bathroom + X?" = Don't mind me, I'm just musing, finger touching chin, on my physical ability to urinate.

Okay, so I've taken the argument ad absurdum. It's only sarcasm that always seems to be the pragmatic bugaboo. In which case, instead of having a grammatical feature that's like a troll-like Peter Lorre character tailing after you, constantly explaining the jokes to a race of rubes who do sarcasm badly anyway (or worse, what you really have here is a bunch of people incessantly saying "Just kidding." to each other (-- How is life in PassiveAggressiveLand?)), why not just have a conculture that doesn't do sarcasm. It's not on the pragmatic menu. Plenty of real-world analogues. Or rather, perhaps, a culture that might not define sarcasm, if it does so at all, with Oscar Wilde at his cocktail party rapier-wittiest as the gold standard.

Oh, this rolled in as I was typing:Is all I'm sayin'.

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☯道可道,非常道
☯名可名,非常名