Grammar invented for your conlang?

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MONOBA
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Grammar invented for your conlang?

Post by MONOBA »

When describing Siwa, I've often had to make up words for grammatical concepts I've not seen elsewhere. The term I like the most is 'absolutive descriptive', which is verbal infix which says something about the absolutive argument (subject of intransitive verb or object of transitive verb – Siwa is not ergative otherwise).
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eldin raigmore
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Re: Grammar invented for your conlang?

Post by eldin raigmore »

Nice.

I've invented grammar for my conlangs, but so far no grammatical terms.

Adpihi's switch-reference system is an example of a grammar that doesn't occur in any natlang AFAIK, though each little piece of it is similar to something that is attested.

Arpien is the likeliest to need new grammatical terms; I'll probably need new names for its parts-of-speech.

Adpihi's verbs have a ten-valued morpheme that tells
(1) whether the clause has 1-or-fewer participants, or instead has 2-or-more participants; (Note: a group participant, such as a plural pronoun, still counts as just one participant. This is about how many semantic roles, or morphosyntactic argument-positions, are filled.)
(2) whether the clause does, or does not, have a "local person" (a speech-act participant, that is, a 1st person or a 2nd person) as a participant;
(3) whether the clause does, or does not, have a third-person participant;
(4) whether the clause does, or does not, have an animate participant;
(5) whether the clause does, or does not, have an inanimate participant.

I don't know what I ought to call it. I've been calling it "order", but I don't think it's what's meant by "order" in real-life descriptions of the morphosyntax of natlangs.
Last edited by eldin raigmore on 23 Aug 2012 21:23, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Grammar invented for your conlang?

Post by nmn »

I have merged verbs with prepositions for my no-verbs conlang. Basically, when you say X has Y, you actually say Y of X. And when you say X is Y, you actually say X in-state Y.
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Re: Grammar invented for your conlang?

Post by Kuhron »

I probably do this too much.
A grammatical number for mass nouns or extremely large groups (I've been calling it mass or "proplural").
A grammatical number to disambiguate singular nouns which, given the context, could be interpreted to be plural ("prosingular"). One of my minor conlangs has the distinction between: their houses* (proplural; they collectively have more than one house), their houses (they each have more than one house), their house (they each have one house), and their house* (prosingular; they collectively have only one house).

Derived spatial relations that contrast motion, location in the general direction/area, and attachment (onto the table, on/above the table, atop the table). This isn't actually very innovative at all.

I also came up with this idea that I called "separation of equality" (in the same conlang that has the four grammatical numbers). It placed predicate nominatives in a different case from the "subjective" and caused items in a list to be inflected differently. I guess I could exploit this for topic marking or something, but at the time I had no real purpose in mind for it.
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eldin raigmore
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Re: Grammar invented for your conlang?

Post by eldin raigmore »

Kuhron wrote:I probably do this too much.
A grammatical number for mass nouns or extremely large groups (I've been calling it mass or "proplural").
"greater plural" or "omnal" or "omnial". (I think.)

Kuhron wrote:A grammatical number to disambiguate singular nouns which, given the context, could be interpreted to be plural ("prosingular").
"singulative". Probably.

Kuhron wrote:One of my minor conlangs has the distinction between: their houses* (proplural; they collectively have more than one house), their houses (they each have more than one house), their house (they each have one house), and their house* (prosingular; they collectively have only one house).
These:
  • they collectively have more than one house
  • they collectively have only one house
could be distinguished from the others partly by having "their" be in the Collective Plural.

These:
  • they each have more than one house
  • they each have one house
might be distinguished from the others partly by having "their" be in the Distributive Plural.

"They each have more than one house", (and, possibly also, "they collectively have more than one house"), could be distinguished from the others partly by having "houses" be in the Greater Plural, if by "houses" is meant, in context, "more houses than one would expect them to have". So it probably means at least one of "them" has several houses rather than, say, just two houses.

"They collectively have only one house" could be distinguished from the others partly by having "house" be in the singulative, if one meant that in that context one would expect more than one house to be involved unless explicitly told otherwise.

I have a feeling you did not know, or did not consider, the terms "greater plural", "omnal" (or "omnial", whichever is the correct spelling), nor the difference between a Distributive Plural and a Collective Plural. Also, you don't mention inflecting "their" to show what type of plural "their" is, either instead of or as well as inflecting "house" or "houses", as a more efficient/convenient/appropriate/traditional/whatever means of communicating your meaning than just inflecting "house" or "houses". Did you think of any of those things?

It's tres cool [B)] IMO that you've thought of these distinctions and of marking them morphologically.
Also, the terms by which you describe your languages' behavior, is nowhere near as important as the actual behavior itself.
So it might not be all that important that you know how linguisticians refer to these phenomena in natlangs.
It's just that the nature of this thread, judging by the original post, includes having to innovate terminology; and sometimes you don't have to innovate the terminology, because of the ANADEW phenomenon.

Kuhron wrote:Derived spatial relations that contrast motion, location in the general direction/area, and attachment (onto the table, on/above the table, atop the table). This isn't actually very innovative at all.
It's nevertheless a cool idea IMO.

Kuhron wrote:I also came up with this idea that I called "separation of equality" (in the same conlang that has the four grammatical numbers). It placed predicate nominatives in a different case from the "subjective" and caused items in a list to be inflected differently. I guess I could exploit this for topic marking or something, but at the time I had no real purpose in mind for it.
I'm pretty sure ANADEW (A Natlang Already Does (Except Worse)). If I remember correctly one of the "Eskimo" languages that has a separate case for predicate "nominatives". (The language I think I rember about, might be an ergative language, for all I can remember. I don't know how much of a difference that makes.)

One or some or all of the "Eskimo" languages, including IIRC that one, also have an "equative" degree-of-comparison, separate from the positive, comparative, and superlative degrees. "Equative" is used to say "... as (modifier) as ...", just as comparative is used to say "... more (modifier) than ...".

I wonder whether, and how, the case for the predicate "nominatives", correlates with the equative degree?

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equative_case and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Compa ... ive_degree.
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Re: Grammar invented for your conlang?

Post by Kuhron »

eldin raigmore wrote:I have a feeling you did not know, or did not consider, the terms "greater plural", "omnal" (or "omnial", whichever is the correct spelling), nor the difference between a Distributive Plural and a Collective Plural. Also, you don't mention inflecting "their" to show what type of plural "their" is, either instead of or as well as inflecting "house" or "houses", as a more efficient/convenient/appropriate/traditional/whatever means of communicating your meaning than just inflecting "house" or "houses". Did you think of any of those things?
I made the conlang in question about five years ago, way before I was even considering linguistic concepts that exist outside of my then-bubble of English and some common European languages. That was the phase where I just used whatever idea came around, so the efficiency of different ways to accomplish these distinctions was never considered. That language thus contains several extremely inconvenient but interestingly different features.
I had never, and have still never, heard the terms you are using for that grammatical number. I agree with you that terminology doesn't matter so much as the features themselves, but it'd be nice to know what the accepted term is, if there is any one that is prevalent over the others in the linguistic literature.
At the time of this conlang, I had never heard of or thought of distributive plural. Now I use it readily, especially in my main conlang WTL, but I still struggle considerably with its semantics.
As for inflecting "their", that language only makes the singular/plural distinction on possessors, leaving the possessed to do the rest of the work and requiring the extra grammatical numbers. Like I said, inconvenient, but it's just what I came up with at the time.
eldin raigmore wrote:It's tres cool [B)] IMO that you've thought of these distinctions and of marking them morphologically. [...] It's nevertheless a cool idea IMO.
Thanks!
eldin raigmore wrote:One or some or all of the "Eskimo" languages, including IIRC that one, also have an "equative" degree-of-comparison, separate from the positive, comparative, and superlative degrees. "Equative" is used to say "... as (modifier) as ...", just as comparative is used to say "... more (modifier) than ...".

I wonder whether, and how, the case for the predicate "nominatives", correlates with the equative degree?
The articles on Equative features state that they can be thought of as "like X" or "being a X". I would thus think that the equative case for predicate nominatives would be analogous to the positive degree for predicate adjectives. As an analogue to adjectives used as modifiers (term for this, in contrast to PAs?), I think a close example would be appositives. In such a language the appositive could be placed in the equative to make a nicely consistent system.
As for the equative degree, it doesn't seem like there is a noun case that makes a good analogue, but there do exist constructions like "He's as much a man as I am." If a case could accomplish this, it's probably what I'm looking for in my little idealistic system.
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Re: Grammar invented for your conlang?

Post by decem »

I had a conlang called Romarssian that I gave up on, but kept up its daughter languages (Castelese and Cagiesian). Romarssian had fairly complex grammar for a Romance conlang, which three grammatical cases and three genders. The genders were masculine, feminine and neuter. The cases were nominative (or subject), accusative (or object), and a third one that was used for sentences where the noun wasn't really a subject or object. I called this the isolate case. The isolate case was used mostly for titles or short sentences lacking a verb.

For example:
Lo homo sete loso cano. - The man likes the dog.
Lorum cano. - The dog.
Qui ve meids tei? Lârum celle. - Who goes with you? The girl.
Jâ va meids lasâ celle. - I go with the girl.
Lâ celle ve meids mei. - The girl goes with me.

In other languages, this would probably be in the nominative case, as it would be in a regular sentence ("The girl goes with me"), but in Romarssian the nominative case would be used only in the regular sentence whereas when the noun is by itself, the isolate case must be used.
[tick] : :gbr: | [:D] : :deu: :fra: | [:S] : :esp: :ita: :bra: | conlang sxarihe
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eldin raigmore
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Re: Grammar invented for your conlang?

Post by eldin raigmore »

Kuhron wrote:The articles on Equative features state that they can be thought of as "like X" or "being a X". I would thus think that the equative case for predicate nominatives would be analogous to the positive degree for predicate adjectives. As an analogue to adjectives used as modifiers (term for this, in contrast to PAs?), I think a close example would be appositives. In such a language the appositive could be placed in the equative to make a nicely consistent system.
As for the equative degree, it doesn't seem like there is a noun case that makes a good analogue, but there do exist constructions like "He's as much a man as I am." If a case could accomplish this, it's probably what I'm looking for in my little idealistic system.
I was talking about an equative degree of comparison, like "positive, equative, comparative, superlative".

You're talking about an equative case, like "nominative, accusative, dative, genitive, locative, equative".
(What you describe seems to be very similar to what I have heard called the essive case.)

If you come up with a novel or creative or otherwise cool way to accomplish something, please feel free to brag! We'll want to see it!
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Re: Grammar invented for your conlang?

Post by Axiem »

Kuvian has what I'm calling three "animacy grades". Animate and Inanimate aren't surprising, but I also have something in-between, used for animals and slaves, which I'm calling "sub-animate" because I haven't found a better term.
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Re: Grammar invented for your conlang?

Post by DesEsseintes »

Axiem wrote:Kuvian has what I'm calling three "animacy grades". Animate and Inanimate aren't surprising, but I also have something in-between, used for animals and slaves, which I'm calling "sub-animate" because I haven't found a better term.
Euchee (also spelt Yuchi) does something similar, whereby all people who are not Euchee are lumped into the same gender as animals. My conlang Híí has a similar system, but the "lower masculine gender", as I've ineloquently termed it, includes Híí males that haven't been initiated into a hunter-warrior order.
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Re: Grammar invented for your conlang?

Post by Znex »

eldin raigmore wrote:
Kuhron wrote:I also came up with this idea that I called "separation of equality" (in the same conlang that has the four grammatical numbers). It placed predicate nominatives in a different case from the "subjective" and caused items in a list to be inflected differently. I guess I could exploit this for topic marking or something, but at the time I had no real purpose in mind for it.
I'm pretty sure ANADEW (A Natlang Already Does (Except Worse)). If I remember correctly one of the "Eskimo" languages that has a separate case for predicate "nominatives". (The language I think I rember about, might be an ergative language, for all I can remember. I don't know how much of a difference that makes.
Polish and a number of other Slavic languages use the instrumental case for predicate nominals. Russian does as well for instance, but only for non-present tenses.
:eng: : [tick] | :grc: : [:|] | :chn: :isr: :wls: : [:S] | :deu: :ell: :rus: : [:x]
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Re: Grammar invented for your conlang?

Post by eldin raigmore »

Axiem wrote:Kuvian has what I'm calling three "animacy grades". Animate and Inanimate aren't surprising, but I also have something in-between, used for animals and slaves, which I'm calling "sub-animate" because I haven't found a better term.
DesEsseintes wrote:Euchee (also spelt Yuchi) does something similar, whereby all people who are not Euchee are lumped into the same gender as animals. My conlang Híí has a similar system, but the "lower masculine gender", as I've ineloquently termed it, includes Híí males that haven't been initiated into a hunter-warrior order.
Adpihi has three also.
The middle animacy grade I've been calling "bound animate" or "sessile animate".
It differs from "inanimate" in that its members can move under their own power and control;
but differs from "free animate" in that its members cannot, under their own power and control, move their own entire bodies from one location to another.
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Re: Grammar invented for your conlang?

Post by Frislander »

O Kanã uses a verbal suffix which goes on a verb denoting that lat least one of its arguments is masculine. The language also has a plural affix on verbs which behaves the same way: this is a borrowing from some languages of California (I can't remember which) and the masculine suffix was developed on top of that by analogy.

[Examples to arrive soon]
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Re: Grammar invented for your conlang?

Post by jute »

Jutean mixes a split-s alignment with Austronesian triggers, which apparently is unattested

Verb classes: Ergative, Unergative, Transitive
Spoiler:
Verbs in Jutean are usually sorted into two (or three) categories, objectless (the more scientific term being unaccusative or unergative), and split (or ergative). Object-taking or transitive verbs are not always classified as a separate verb class.

The first category refers to verbs which, like their name implies, take no object, are therefore always intransitive, and in addition usually imply at least a vague sense of agency. These are usually verbs of motion, like to ('go'), ato ('come') or static, like nisaido ('feel energized'), though there are some other ones, like mihinido ('sleep') or moo ('meditate'). Unaccusative verbs (agent-lacking ones) are also usually in this category, such as no ('live, exist').
Of course these can all still use adverbs, as in to li tan ('to go to my home').
These also can't ever convey a passive meaning, aside from more convoluted constructions such as noitono mihinido ('be made to sleep', literally 'be lead to sleep), which use a patient suffix as a trigger on an auxiliary verb, but more on that later.

The second, 'split' or 'ergative' variety refers to more complicated ones. These can both stand in objectless (intransitive) sentences as well as sentences with objects (transitive ones), and depending on which is used convey either a passive or active meaning, similar to for example the English verb to break in The door broke and I broke the door. An example in Jutean would be hemo ('to eat'), where Hemo fal would translate to 'They are all eaten', but Hemo fal kiove would mean 'They all eat something'.

The third one, called 'transitive', covers the verbs who always need an object, such as to learn about. These are rare and often homonyms or additional meanings of ergative verbs, so they aren't always seen as a distinct category. A lot of secondary meanings of daho (base intransitive meaning: 'to have space'), such as 'to accommodate', 'to make room', 'to send into space', to name a few, are transitive.
And four triggers:
Spoiler:
Examples for the ergative verb joo (to see), where C. = common gender

Agentive
Joo ta ja I see this. (See 1S this.C)

Patientive
Joono ja he ta This is what I see (See-PV this.C IDR 1S)

Instrumental
Joode dovauhi he ta. The glasses are what I use to see. (See.INSV glass IDR 1S)

Locative
Joohen saanu he ta. The sea is where I see. (See.LOCV sea IDR 1S)
Additionally, I came up with the strange idea to have four clusitivity distinctions.

Image
Jutean: Hawaiian phonology meets Tagalog, with English ergativity and Mandarin tenselessness added.
Also on CWS.
Information on Juteans and their homeland
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Re: Grammar invented for your conlang?

Post by lsd »

Even linguists have a tendency to use concepts in a sometimes slippery fashion.
Often no term corresponds but I reuse the traditional concepts ...
(Eg I do not have parts of speech, everything is at the same level, does not prevent me from sometimes seeing adjectives ... my writing is both picto / logo / syllabo / alphasyllabo / alphabetic, but I like to talk about logography ...)
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Re: Grammar invented for your conlang?

Post by eldin raigmore »

@Frislander, @Jute, @lsd: Those are fascinating!
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