New CBB

What are your conlang's demonstratives like? Is there a distinction between Pronominal and Adnominal Demonstratives? Do demonstratives precede the noun or follow it? Are they affixed?

_________________
"Wait for the starvation of glaciers, chicken hamburger Noel Weber Arthur."

= | = | =

I've never done anything too fancy with demonstratives.

In Amjati demonstratives occur before the noun which will take a definite suffix. There is a proximal, medial and distal distinction. They don't change to agree with gender or case.

Az nuri.
az nuri
INF.ABS girl
'A girl.'

Nuriaz.
nuri-az
girl-DEF.ABS
'The girl.'

Er nuriaz.
er nuri-az
PRX girl-DEF.ABS
'This girl.'

Ja nuriaz.
ja nuri-az
MED girl-DEF.ABS
'That girl (by you).'

Im nuriaz.
im nuri-az
DSL girl-DEF.ABS
'That girl (farther way).'

_________________
Ikasmu ati'uki nai uraiur.
Hinai nimuśim naimi nai sasamiur urukani. Śi'ama nai huhumiur na ni'amuśim nai sasamiur.
Pumaki nimuśim śima'a na ami nimuśim ara'a. Hini nihrasum i'aku tumra urukani na nihrasum sanik hraspir.

Demonstratives in Wateu aren't that exciting.

The basic demonstrative morpheme is ima /iːma/.

In the singular, it's hooked on the singulative article ta - taima. [taˈiːma] or [ˈtai̯ma].

Taima taka
SG.DEM man
'this man'
'that man'

Ima taka
DEM man
'these men'
'those men'

There is no distance or other contrast. If that's necessary, one use the word gii and gaa - 'here' and 'there'.

Taima taka gii
SG.DEM man here
'this man here'

Taima taka gaa
SG.DEM man there
'that man there'

When used pronominally, it usually takes a dummy noun:

Taima kati
SG.DEM thing
'this thing', 'this one'
'that thing', 'that one'

_________________
constructedlanguages.net

Zidhgebzhail distinguishes three levels of proximacy in demonstratives - proximal, medial, and distal.

Demonstrative determiners are suffixed to the noun phrase to which they belong and directly precede the case agglutination (oz-ukh-il - 'this man.ERG') unless the noun phrase also includes a conjunction (oz-ukh-iedzh-il - 'and this man.ERG').

oz
oz-Ø
man-ABS.SG.M
'Man'

ozukh
oz-ukh-Ø
man-PRX-ABS.SG.M
'This man'

ozjukh
oz-jukh-Ø
man-MED-ABS.SG.M
'That man (near you)'.

ozwukh
oz-wukh-Ø
man-DSL-ABS.SG.M
'Yonder man'.

Demonstrative pronouns make the same proximacy distinction, and also mark animacy:

zukh/zjukh/zwukh - this (person)/that (person)/yonder (person)
bukh/bjukh/bwukh - this (thing)/that (thing)/yonder (thing)

And a random sentence:

ozwukh ha-goljev-vae, bwukh har-igaar-zae.
oz-wukh-Ø ha-gol-jev-Ø-v-ae, bwukh-Ø har-igaar-Ø-z-ae
man-DSL-ABS.SG.M COP1-adolescent-relation-ABS.SG.M-1-GEN.SG.M, inanimate.demonstrative.pronoun-ABS.SG.M COP1-house-ABS.SG.M-3-GEN.SG.M
Yonder man is my brother, yonder thing is his house.

Dan

_________________
Valar morghulis.

Zidhgebzhail Orthography

Obligatory for definite, nearly so for specific.



Not sure. If you have adnominal demonstrative + sort of indefinitish pronoun, does that amount to a pronominal demonstrative?



Haven't decided.

There are the following seven variables encoded:
1. Referent is closer to or further from speaker than referent is to addressee.
2. Speaker is closer to or further from referent than speaker is to addressee.
3. Addressee is closer to or further from referent than addressee is to speaker.
4. Referent is or is not visible to speaker.
5. Referent is or is not within speaker's reach.
6. Referent is or is not visible to addressee.
7. Referent is or is not within addressee's reach.

{1, 2, 3} are not independent; there are six possible combinations.

The rest may be logically independent of one another and of the first three, but obviously some combinations will be quite rare (e.g., closer to speaker than to addressee but within addressee's reach but not speaker's; or, within addressee's reach but not visible to addressee).

All told there might be 96 demonstratives.

_________________
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.

In all 3 of my conlangs; Alpic, Mekoshan, and my new one (Karpatian); the demonstranatives are pretty Standard-Average-European-ish and boring.

_________________
Mekoshan
Alpic

As of right now, demonstratives are distinct pronominally and adnominally in that the former requires a dummy noun, they follow and they're independent words. Three distances: proximal maar, medial tʰa, distal tʰe

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

I use partial reduplications of the definite article :

grem wil
city DEF
'the city'

grem wilwi
city PROX
'this city'

grem wiwil
city DIST
'that city'

_________________
grammaire du jrawélien - textes - lexique - miscellanées

Emyt:

dezik /ˈdeʑik/
a/the man

sa-dezik /saˈdeʑik/
this/that man

_________________
(native)
(learning)

--
Języki sztuczne i lingwistyka, po polsku.

Kantaranyan has proximal si/siet, distal ki/kiet and nu/nut for things you can't see.

Si, ki and nu are adnominal, while siet, kiet and nut are pronouns. Si, ki and nu appear at the beginning of noun phrases (e.g. si tareet = 'this bird', ki teve tareer = 'those red birds')

You can also use simak, kimak and numak for 'this person' and 'that person'.

_________________
Languages!
Native: Proficient: Decent: Have dabbled in:

Gevey:
Nothing special. Demonstrative determiners have three distinctions (proximal, medial and distal) and require a noun or pronoun which they modify. They don't act as pronouns.

Ákat:
Uses a noun as a demonstrative, with each of the five number distinctions offering details of definiteness and distance. Can be used as pseudo-pronouns (standing in for previously stated nouns), though this is rare - there are other sets of dedicated reference object nouns that do the same thing, but better. Most often encountered as modifiers to other nouns, and only used for emphasis.

(sg) tapas - the
(pc) telpas - a
(pl) tolpas - this (close to speaker)
(unnumbered) tyhnpas - that (distant from speaker)
(nullar) tupas - not this, not that

O Yis:
A bit more exciting. O Yis nouns are divided into 19 classes, or have a very small set of noun classifier words (the language is moving from a classifier system to a class system). Noun classifiers decline irregularly for demonstration: basic (the); topical (a); near (this); distant (that); genitive (X's); pronominal (it); complement (Y is X); and modifier (Y has/for X).

harf (dog): a communal case noun
in harf - the dog
ín harf - a dog
riŋ harf - this dog
roŋ harf - that dog
am harf - dog's
laŋ - it
arid harf - is a dog
aric harf - has dog-ness

cmas (woman): a human case noun
e cmas - the woman
é cmas - a woman
ej cmas - this woman
eb cmas - that woman
em cmas - woman's
le - she
e cmas - is a woman
ec cmas - has woman-ness

I have a quite new 'Omzinian' feature in my langs to marks definites very distinctly.
Mîzmiz has its demonstratives (and the other (in)definitiveness markers as infixes in the noun classifier.

-i- this 'proximal'
-a- that 'distral'
-u- 'generic'
-e- one 'indefinite'
-y- some 'the speaker doesn't know'

For example Mîzmiz means 'this language (that I'm speaking)' <î> being the demonstrative/article.

I usually keep the distinction fuzzy between this and that, and in my current conlang, Vanga, there is at the moment no distinction at all. I simply gloss the morpheme as DEM.

_________________
= | = | = | = | = | =
‹› · Ḿḿ Ńń Ĺĺ Śś Źź Ąą Ǫǫ Ųų Æ̨æ̨ Ǽǽ Œ̨œ̨ Œ́œ́ Ɣɣ Y̋y̋ Įį Şş Z̧z̧ θ
Āā Ēē Īī Ōō Ūū ↗ Ṭṭ C̣c̣ Łł Ḍḍ Ṣṣ Ẓẓ Ṇṇ Ŋŋ e˞ o˞ ʷ ʲ ʰ ə