Naduta

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clawgrip
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Re: Naduta

Post by clawgrip »

I am going to try to break down in detail how Naduta script works.

First of all, in order to understand the script, it is necessary to understand the very basics of the language: namely, Naduta is an inflectional/agglutinating language, and all nouns and verbs take mandatory suffixes. Both the roots and suffixes are written out explicitly. The script itself is composed of logograms (gankhi-phahasan), which, in the context of Naduta, means a sign or collection of signs that represent a root and any inflections it may carry.

Logograms comprise two types of glyphs: untu-phahasan, or base signs, and nuugar-phahasan, or subordinate signs. The vast majority of signs are of the first category, but a number of commonly occuring signs belong to the second catgory.

Untu-phahasan - Base Signs
Base signs are any signs that may stand as the only semantic element of a logogram. Many can occur independently, but some do not. Examples include:
Image nur- "eye"
Image yir- "corn/maize"
Image apan- "to manipulate; to operate; to use; to control"
Image "knowledge; thought" in Image yus- "to know"

Base signs can be used in three different ways:
1. unkhi-phahasan "logographic base signs"
2. trekhekhi-phahasan "phonetic base signs"
3. rutrekheebuun-phahasan "ideographic base signs"


unkhi-phahasan - logographic base signs
This is when a base sign is used to represent the base stem of a word. The first three of the four examples above are all logographic base signs. Typically, other signs will be added to logographic base signs to create logograms. As mentioned above, despite similar terminology, it is important to remember that logographic base signs (unkhi-phahasan: roots/stems) are different from logograms (gankhi-phahasan: complete words). We'll use some simple examples to outline the difference:

Logographic base signs:
Image nur- "eye"
Image u- "to locomote; to move/travel on foot"

These two examples represent both the phonetic and semantic values of the stem, but they do not constitute complete words.

Logograms employing the above logographic base signs:
Image nurta "eye (ANIM.NOM.SG)"
Image tah-ura-buru-san "Did you not locomote?"

These are logograms. They represent complete words. Thus, as you can see, the logogram is a combination of the sign(s) for the stem and the sign(s) for the inflection.

trekhekhi-phahasan - phonetic base signs
These are base signs that are used for their sound value only; their meaning is ignored. All phonetic base signs are used for their V or CV sequences only; any coda consonants in the original root are ignored. The inventory of phonetic base signs is limited, and may be viewed in the chart in the post above. These are generally easy to identify, because they appear last in a logogram, and they are typically (but not always) raised above the writing line.

Image thu- "tooth" in Image sithu- "what"
Image ri- "leaf" in Image rin- "to change"
Image na- "wall; fence" in Image na- "wall"
Image wes- "bush; shrub" in Image wer- "to leave; to go away"
Image yhu- "star" in Image yhun- "to think; thought"

You can see that the phonetic base sign tends to be raised above the writing line. Also note the rather unique logogram na-, in which both the semantic and phonetic signs are the same base sign (the base sign alone has been reappropriated as the second person pronoun na).

rutrekheebuun-phahasan - ideographic base signs
This is the most common type of sign in Naduta, and the one that contributes most to the difficulty in reading it. Ideographic base signs are base signs that are used for their meaning alone, and their pronunciations are ignored. They may appear in groups of two, three, or more, and they may or may not occur with phonetic base signs. Generally, there is no overt differentiation between ideographic and logographic base signs, meaning it can be unclear whether a sign is to be pronounced or not.

Examples:
Image apan- "to manipulate; to operate; to use; to control" in Image rin- "to change"
Image tu- "leg" in Image wer- "to leave; to go away"
Image nur- "eye" and Image apan- in Image ku- "to look at"
Image mhir- "arm" and Image gehme- "structure" in Image tru- "to make"

Such characters are called guguphasdan phahasan, or compound glyphs. What makes them most confusing is that compound glyphs may themselves be juxtaposed into compound morphemes, e.g.:
Image dephu- "to crawl; to squirm"
Image wer- "to leave; to go away"
Image dephuwer- "to crawl away"

Image pun- "to move forward; to proceed"
Image then- "tendency; energy"
Image punthen- "tendency; proclivity; disposition; inclination"


Nuugar-phahasan - Subordinate Signs
Subordinate signs are a subclass of signs (obviously) that are essentially supplements to base signs. There are two types of subordinate signs:
1. trekhe-phahasan, or phonetic signs
2. kimi-phahasan, or support signs

trekhe-phahasan - phonetic signs
There are seven signs that are entirely devoid of semantic content, and exist only to indicate pronunciation. They may serve the same role as phonetic base signs, or they may mark certain affixes. These seven signs are all abbreviations of base signs. The full list is as follows:
Image mu
Image ma
Image ru
Image sa
Image yi, yhi, -ey, -y
Image e
Image -h

Of these, only Image -h is is in free variation with the character from which it derives (Image uh-), but only when it serves as a phonetic sign (e.g. Image yah and Image yah (a declined genitive particle) are both acceptable, but only ImageImage uhanta (objective form of "skin") is acceptable). it cannot serve as a phonetic complement in a logogram, only as the objective suffix of known and unknown nouns. Thus, it may in fact be a derived base sign that can only be used logographonetically.

Image e may similarly be considered a derived base sign, in that it is used to write the word e(y) "sometimes; occasionally", without an accompanying logographic base sign.

kimi-phahasan - support signs
Support signs are mainly lines and dots that are more supplements to existing characters than characters in their own right. Some examples include:

The vertical line in Image pemuu- "to hold; to grasp" added to Image mhir- "arm" to show that the arms/hands are grasping something.

The two dots in Image dephu- "to crawl; to squirm; to creep" added between Image de(n)- "foot" and Image mhis- "insect; bug" to indicate footsteps.

The downward stroke in Image ge- "rain" added to Image ye- "water" to indicate downward motion.

The horizontal bar in Image anumenu- "to explain; to show" to differentiate it from Image memenu- "to be reported; to be told", the passive form of Image menu- "to report; to tell".

There is more to come, but this will do for now.
clawgrip
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Re: Naduta

Post by clawgrip »

Not only am I designing a descendant of Naduta, but also the ancestor, Proto-Katug-Naduta (Katug doesn't exist yet, but I will figure it out another day). The plan is to make this a tonal language, and some of the tones will carry phonation types that will eventually disappear but create the breathy/non-breathy distinctions in the stops, nasals, and semivowels. Whatever of the tones will carry into Naduta, whose prosody I never developed, because I always wanted to add a suprasegmental pronunciation distinction not preserved in the writing.

So here are my ideas. If they are unrealistic or you can think of a way to guide me to something better, please do comment.

There will be a total of five tones: 1 neutral tone, 2 short tones, and 2 long tones.

Neutral tone: (/pa˧/ ‹pa›)By default it is a mid level tone which gradually falls slightly over a sequence of multiple neutral-tone syllables. However, its realization is affected by preceding long tones.

Short tones: These only affect the pronunciation of the syllable on which they occur; they do not influence any following neutral-tone syllables.
1. Low breathy tone: (/pa̤˩/ ‹pä›) This is a short, low tone with breathy voice.
2. Mid glottalized tone: (/pˀa˧/ ‹pà›) This is a short, preglottalized mid tone.

Long tones: These are long contour tones that affect the tone of following neutral tones.
1. Rising tone: (/pa̬ː˧˥/ ‹pá›) The syllable carrying this tone has a mid to high rising tone, and all subsequent neutral tones are high. I think I also want the rising tone to have stiff voice or possibly advanced tongue root.
2. Falling tone: (/paː˧˩/ ‹pǎ›) The syllable carrying this tone has a mid to low falling tone, which then rises to high over any following neutral tones.

So the complete inventory is:
Neutral: pa˧ (pa)
Short 1: pa̤˩ (pä)
Short 2: pˀa˧ (pà)
Long 1: pa̬ː˧˥ ◌˥ ◌˥ (pá) (with subsequent neutral syllables)
Long 2: paː˧˩ ◌˩˧ ◌˧˥ ◌˥ (pǎ) (with subsequent neutral syllables)

The idea is that the breathy phonation of short tone 1 tone will create breathy consonants (aspirate stops/voiceless nasals & semivowels) and then disappear from the vowel itself. The preglottalization of Short tone 2 will create the voiced stops and similarly disappear. Long tone 1 may also create voiced stops.

So the syllables above will result in the following Naduta syllables:
pa˧ → pa
pa̤˩ → pha
pˀa˧ → ba
pa̬ː˧˥ → ba
paː˧˩ → pa

ma˧ → ma
ma̤˩ → mha
mˀa˧ → ma
ma̬ː˧˥ → ma
maː˧˩ → ma

For whatever reason, I will need to have more short tone 1 after stops than after nasals/semivowels to account for phoneme frequency in the Naduta lexicon (breathy stops are more common than breathy nasals/semivowels).

After this, I think the tone will simplify to a simple two-pitch system. I'm thinking the following pitch pattern will be standard in Naduta:
pa˧ → pa˥ ◌˥…
pa̤˩ → pha˩ ◌˩…
pˀa˧ → ba˥ ◌˩…
pa̬ː˧˥ → ba˥ ◌˥…
paː˧˩ → pa˩ ◌˥…

So for example:

nöpìspën (/no̤˩.pi˧s.pe̤˩n/) → nhubisphenta (/n̥u˩.bi˥s.pʰæ˩n.tɑ˩/ LHLL)

róyeywèlon (/ro̬ː˧˥.je˥j.wˀe˧.lo˧n/) → truyeywerunta (/t͡ɾu˥.je˥.wæ˥.ɾun˩.tɑ˩/ HHHLL)

Some verbs with two-syllable stems, all conjugated for 3.SG:

pìtimo (/pˀi˧.ti˧.mo˧/) → bitimu (/bi˥.ti˩.mu˩/ HLL)

këmemo (/ke̤˩.me˧.mo˧/) → khememu (/kʰæ˩.mæ˩.mo˩/ LLL)

sǎparmo (/saː˧˩.par˩˧.mo˧˥/) → saparmu /sɑ˩.pɑɾ˥.mu˥/ LHH)

The Naduta words all have different pitch patterns based on the historical tones.

This is what I have so far. Any comments or suggestions?
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Re: Naduta

Post by Creyeditor »

Interesting tone system [:)]
Would you say that the long tones are underlyingly MH and MLH with the last tone spreading over the neutral tones?
Are there any simple high or falling tones?
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Re: Naduta

Post by clawgrip »

There are no simple high or falling tones, so that seems like the best analysis.
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Re: Naduta

Post by clawgrip »

In the "What did you accomplish today?" thread, I said that I finally defined how transitivity works in Naduta, and one of the things I came up with was a prefix (a fused object pronoun) that creates unergative verbs from transitive ones. So, for example:

Yhisuh purgu.
food-OBJ eat-1
"I eat the food."

Inpurgu.
OBJ-eat-1
"I eat."

This contrasts with pronoun use:
Usreha purgu.
"I eat it."

What I'm thinking is that I want this to develop into an applicative construction.

So for example:
Suh ni yhisuh purgu.
spoon-OBJ INST food-OBJ eat-1
"I eat food with a spoon." (awesome sentence!)

becomes:
Suh inpurgu.
spoon-OBJ OBJ-eat-1
"I eat with a spoon."

In the second sentence, the instrumental postposition is dropped, promoting the instrument to direct object.

I think in Naduta, the prefix in- would still kind of be perceived as a contracted pronoun, even though the pronoun itself is obsolete, so the applicative would be limited in use to transitive verbs with unexpressed patients, but by the time of Nandut, this perception would be lost, and the prefix could be applied in a wider variety of situations, including intransitive verbs, where it would become a valency-increasing applicative voice.

So in Nandut, the above sentences are:

Sōni šisō burung.
"I eat food with a spoon."

Suh imburung.
"I eat with a spoon."
(the sō/suh thing is unrelated sandhi)

But the in- now marks a fully grammaticalized applicative mood, which can appear on intransitive verbs to make them transitive:

Mauhedu hang.
home-OBJ-LOC sleep-1
"I sleep at home."

Mauh inang.
home-OBJ OBJ-sleep-1
"I sleep at home."

(the h merged with n to make nh, which then merged with n by the time of Nandut. I will say loss of voiceless nasals and semivowels happened rather late?)

I might actually make that the normal way to express locatives, meaning the first sentence would be grammatically incorrect, or at least unnatural.

Any thoughts on this?
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Re: Naduta

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I noticed recently that I had no strategy in Naduta for forming the attributive of a copular clause with a nominal complement, so I went ahead and solved that. Here is the background, and how I went about it.

There are three distinct attributive forms in Naduta:

Verbs add the attributive suffix -da, which agrees with the head noun:
Predicative:
guta hesmu
fish-ANIM.NOM swim-3.SG
"the fish swims"

Attributive:
hesdata guta
swim-ATTR-ANIM.NOM fish-ANIM.NOM
"the fish that swims"

Adjectives replace the copula with the attributive suffix -da, which also agrees with the head noun:
Predicative:
Guta trun-yumu.
fish-ANIM.NOM COP-3.SG
"The fish is big."

Attributive:
trun-data guta
big-ATTR-ANIM.NOM fish-ANIM.NOM
"a big fish"

Genitives employ a particle which also agrees with the head noun, and which employs the copula in conjunction with the particle in the predicative:
Predicative:
Guta Deygerta yay yumu.
fish-ANIM.NOM Deyger-ANIM.NOM GEN-ANIM.OBJ COP-3.SG
The fish is Deyger's.

Attributive:
Deygerta yata guta
Deyger-ANIM.NOM GEN-ANIM.NOM fish-ANIM.NOM
"Deyger's fish"

So there are three strategies:
1. addition: hes-hes-da-
2. replacement: trun-yu-trun-da-
3. independent particle Deygerta ya-

As I said, I had not until now decided how attributives of copulas with nominal complements would work. I could have done any of these three strategies:
1. treat the copula as a standard verb;
2. treat nominal complement copulas identically to adjective complement copulas;
3. use a particle.

The first two would be easiest, but I have decided on the third strategy, replacing the copula with the genitive particle in attributive position. This is still distinct from the genitive, as the genitive always requires the possessor to be declined in the nominative but nominal complements are always in the objective case.

Here, is an example of the difference:

guta yan purhaun
fish-ANIM.NOM GEN-KNW.NOM food-KNW.NOM
the fish's food

guy yan purhaun
fish-ANIM.OBJ COP-KNW.NOM food-KNW.NOM
"the food, which is (a) fish"

Some more examples:

way-daih kuiih yata arayta
sacred-ATTR-UKNW.OBJ location-UKNW.OBJ COP-ANIM.NOM town-ANIM.NOM
"the town, which is a sacred location"

harey kipatus beyneyeh yanta yhusisinta
horse-ANIM.PL.OBJ for-N problem-KNW.OBJ COP-UKNW.NOM riverbank-UKWN.NOM
"the riverbank, which is a problem for horses"

Switching the object complement to nominative case (i.e. switching it from an object complement relative clause to a genitive construction) results in nonsensical sentences in these cases:

way-danta kuinta yata arayta
"?The sacred location's town"

harey kipatus beyneyen yanta yhusisinta
"?The problem-for-horse's riverbank"

This of course means that it is not possible to have copular relative clauses with where the referent is the direct object, something like "the man he was", but I suspect a lot of languages get by without this sort of construction.
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Re: Naduta

Post by clawgrip »

Another thing I just invented when making that post was the complementiser suffix -s for postpositions that are complements of nouns. You can see it in the word kipatus above.

Image
Rusrena aharna Phaismuh gi tah-ehurmu.
this-PL.NOM good-PL-KNW.NOM Faismun-KNW.OBJ from PST=come-PL.3
"These goods come from Faismun."

Image
Phaismuh gis aharna
Faismun-KNW.OBJ from-COMPL good-PL-KNW.NOM
"goods from Faismun"

You can see that in the first sentence, the phrase Phaismuh gi "from Faismun" is an argument of the verb, and the postposition takes no suffix. But in the second sentence, it is an argument of the noun, and takes the suffix -s, i.e. Phaismuh gis, "(which is) from Faismun"
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Re: Naduta

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In thinking I want to make this nominal complement form actually able to decline as a noun. In my post above, with relative clauses, adjectives, and genitives, you can see that these all take the exact same case marking a regular nouns, and in fact, the noun can be dropped and it will still be grammatical, e.g.

hesdata bata
"a person who swims"

hesdata
"one who swims"

gendanta gahinta
"a small stone"

gendanta
"a small one"

bu yan dene
"my foot"

bu yan
"mine"

The idea I just came up with now is to make that complementizing suffix a sort of nominalizer, but it differs from the three above because it doesn't need to agree with its noun, but the noun can still be dropped, at which point the nominalized postpositional phrase can take case marking of the appropriate gender to stand on its own:

Phaismuh gi (no suffix)
"from Faismun"

Phaismuh gis (nominal complement suffix)
"(which is) from Faismun"

Phaismuh gisun (nominal compliment suffix plus known gender nominative case suffix)
"one (which is) from Faismun"

How does this sound?
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Re: Naduta

Post by DesEsseintes »

I like the idea of using the complement form as a noun directly without a further nominaliser a lot.

“The one swimming saw the one from the mountain.”
etc.
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Re: Naduta

Post by clawgrip »

That would work out as:

Image
Hesdata sarih gisey tah-kumu.
swim-ATTR-ANIM.NOM mountain-UKNW-OBJ from-COMPL-ANIM.OBJ PST=see-3
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