Random ideas: Morphosyntax

A forum for all topics related to constructed languages
User avatar
Creyeditor
MVP
MVP
Posts: 5091
Joined: 14 Aug 2012 19:32

Re: Random ideas: Morphosyntax

Post by Creyeditor »

Omzinesý wrote:Interesting.
I've never had an exam on discourse (particles).
What did you read?
Is that a somehow complete system or could there be more?
The system is complete in the sense that I have used all the concepts that we talked about in class. There might be more though and especially more combinations of the different concepts.
The exam is actually more generally about semantics and pragmatics and the properties do in fact refer to DPs in most theories (but not in my conlang). We read a lot of stuff (e.g. on focus, background, giveness,different kinds of definites), if you have any specific interests just PM me.
Creyeditor
"Thoughts are free."
Produce, Analyze, Manipulate
1 :deu: 2 :eng: 3 :idn: 4 :fra: 4 :esp:
:con: Ook & Omlűt & Nautli languages & Sperenjas
[<3] Papuan languages, Morphophonology, Lexical Semantics [<3]
User avatar
eldin raigmore
korean
korean
Posts: 6352
Joined: 14 Aug 2010 19:38
Location: SouthEast Michigan

Re: Random ideas: Morphosyntax

Post by eldin raigmore »

Creyeditor wrote:So, this is not really morphosyntax, but I did not know where to put it. I made up a system of discourse particles while preparing for an exam tomorrow. The system is kind of engelang-y, because it is modelled after a several formal pragmatic theories and very regular. On the other hand it is naturalistic in the sense that all of the factors are used in some natlang. The words in <> are actually just fillers taken from Indonesian and modified from German. What do you think?

Discourse particles
Name (Gloss) Rough Translation <filler>

New information:
alternative particle (DP.ALT) What I am going to say is not the only possibility, but it's the one I consider true: <dong>
question under discussion particle (DP.QUD) I think the following is what you want to know from me right now; As you might wanna know, ... <lah>
important particle (DP.IMP) The following might be important to you in general: <ya>

Old information:
expectation particle (DP.EXP) As you expected me to say, ... <kah>
community membership particle, world knowledge particle (DP.CM) As we both know, because we share the same background, <hal>
premention particle (DP.PM) As one of us already said a while ago, ... <ne>
recent premention particle (DP.RPM) As one of us recently said, ... <si>
physical copresence particle (DP.PC) As we saw a while ago, ... <so>
recent physical copresence particle (DP.RPC) As we saw recently, ... <doh>
prominent physical copresence particle (DP.PPC) As we cleary saw a while ago, ... <em>
recent prominent physical copresence particle (DP.RPPC) As we saw recently, clearly ... <den>

....
I really like it! That's what I think!
It reminds me of the "executants" in Rob Chilson's stories, and of a comic I saw that took place in future Singapore with characters who spoke "Singlish".
User avatar
Creyeditor
MVP
MVP
Posts: 5091
Joined: 14 Aug 2012 19:32

Re: Random ideas: Morphosyntax

Post by Creyeditor »

Yep, Singlish and Indonesian have very similar discourse particles. Espcially -lah comes to mind.
Creyeditor
"Thoughts are free."
Produce, Analyze, Manipulate
1 :deu: 2 :eng: 3 :idn: 4 :fra: 4 :esp:
:con: Ook & Omlűt & Nautli languages & Sperenjas
[<3] Papuan languages, Morphophonology, Lexical Semantics [<3]
User avatar
LinguoFranco
greek
greek
Posts: 613
Joined: 20 Jul 2016 17:49
Location: U.S.

Re: Random ideas: Morphosyntax

Post by LinguoFranco »

What would you think of a topic-prominent language that marks the topic with a circumfix, so you know exactly where the topic word begins and ends, and that everything after that is the comment?
User avatar
Creyeditor
MVP
MVP
Posts: 5091
Joined: 14 Aug 2012 19:32

Re: Random ideas: Morphosyntax

Post by Creyeditor »

Would that mean that word order is relatively free?
Creyeditor
"Thoughts are free."
Produce, Analyze, Manipulate
1 :deu: 2 :eng: 3 :idn: 4 :fra: 4 :esp:
:con: Ook & Omlűt & Nautli languages & Sperenjas
[<3] Papuan languages, Morphophonology, Lexical Semantics [<3]
User avatar
eldin raigmore
korean
korean
Posts: 6352
Joined: 14 Aug 2010 19:38
Location: SouthEast Michigan

Re: Random ideas: Morphosyntax

Post by eldin raigmore »

LinguoFranco wrote:What would you think of a topic-prominent language that marks the topic with a circumfix, so you know exactly where the topic word begins and ends, and that everything after that is the comment?
  • Spoiler:
    I.
    • I.A. Isn't a circumfixflex a written glyph, not a spoken something?
    • I.B. Or do you mean a spoken diacritic?
      • I.B.1.
        • I.B.1.a. Such as a rise-fall peaking tone?
        • I.B.1.b. Or a fall-rise dipping tone?
      • I.B.2. And which syllable would it be on?
        • I.B.2.a The whole word?
        • I.B.2.b.The primarily-stressed syllable?
        • I.B.2.c. Both the first heavy syllable and the last heavy syllable, if the topic word had two heavy syllables?
        • I.B.2.d.Or what?
  • II. Why must the topic necessarily be a single word?
Even where topics are always noun-phrases, they're not always single words; or are they?
Can't complement-clauses be topics?
Or nominalized things?

There are languages with a "given-new" sentence structure -- similar to a "topic-focus" or "ground-kontrast" organization -- with "transitional material".
"Given" can be interpreted broadly or narrowly; "new" also can be interpreted broadly or narrowly.
Material that's in the overlap between "broad given" and "broad new", or (perhaps synonymously?) in the gap between "narrow given" and "narrow new", is called "transitional material".

Have you ever heard of that?
Edit: LinguoFranco wrote "circumfix".
I mis-read it as "circumflex". [:$]
And then I even went and typed "circumfix" myself in my response! :roll:
So my item "uppercase roman numeral I" is all a big "Never mind"!
Where's Emma Litella when I need her?
Last edited by eldin raigmore on 03 Jul 2017 05:43, edited 2 times in total.
User avatar
Frislander
mayan
mayan
Posts: 2088
Joined: 14 May 2016 18:47
Location: The North

Re: Random ideas: Morphosyntax

Post by Frislander »

@eldin-raigmore: I think you may be confusing the circumflex (the diacritic) with a circumfix (an affix consisting of both a prefix and a suffix).
User avatar
eldin raigmore
korean
korean
Posts: 6352
Joined: 14 Aug 2010 19:38
Location: SouthEast Michigan

Re: Random ideas: Morphosyntax

Post by eldin raigmore »

Frislander wrote:@eldin-raigmore: I think you may be confusing the circumflex (the diacritic) with a circumfix (an affix consisting of both a prefix and a suffix).
Not so much confusing them, as mis-reading.
LinguoFranco wrote "circumfix"; I mis-read it as "circumflex".
Never mind!
[:$] [:x] [:3] [:P]

The rest of that post (less than half of it :roll: ) still applies, however.
Must the topic be just one word, and if so, why?
Mightn't there be a prefix and a postposition, or a preposition and a suffix, or a circumposition?
In case the topic were a phrase with more than one head word, for instance, the conjunction of two noun-phrases?
Or the conjunction of two complement clauses? Or of a noun-phrase and some other kind of phrase?
User avatar
LinguoFranco
greek
greek
Posts: 613
Joined: 20 Jul 2016 17:49
Location: U.S.

Re: Random ideas: Morphosyntax

Post by LinguoFranco »

I want to play around with plurality. I used to always use affixes to make a noun plural, but lately I've been playing around with the idea of marking plurals with a particle. I know of at least one natlang that does it, but idk if I could get it to work consistently with a language that is heavily inflecting, particularly when it comes to marking person and number on the verbs.

For example, in my conlang, the word for sword is /kizo/, but it could be /kizo.jan/ or 'jan kizo' if I decide to make /jan/ a particle instead of a suffix. I guess I do not really have a preference either way. I guess I prefer the idea of marking plural with a particle, but I think /jan/ goes better as a suffix.
User avatar
Imralu
roman
roman
Posts: 960
Joined: 17 Nov 2013 22:32

Re: Random ideas: Morphosyntax

Post by Imralu »

LinguoFranco wrote:but idk if I could get it to work consistently with a language that is heavily inflecting, particularly when it comes to marking person and number on the verbs.
Languages don't have to be even. One thing that often strikes me when I gloss Swahili sentences is that the verbs are heavily inflecting, with words like i-si-po-ku-w-a, but the nouns are quite simple, and even if you count their class prefix, they're still much more simple than the verbs. To me, Swahili feels a bit like a collaborative conlang where one person designed the nominal structures and someone else the verbal structures. In any case, a natlang does it.

Personally, I like to have consistent order. I put things like plural markers in the same direction as the head. If the language is head initial, I put the plural marker or whatever it is at the beginning of its phrase. It prevents bizarre instances where things either get sandwiched in the middle of a phrase or have an ambiguous scope. This is the main reason why my conlangs have come out fairly isolating - I like head initial languages but I don't really like prefixes (although Swahili is changing that for me), and although I like agglutinating languages, having a head-initial but suffixing language bothers me.
Glossing Abbreviations: COMP = comparative, C = complementiser, ACS / ICS = accessible / inaccessible, GDV = gerundive, SPEC / NSPC = specific / non-specific, AG = agent, E = entity (person, animal, thing)
________
MY MUSIC | MY PLANTS
User avatar
LinguoFranco
greek
greek
Posts: 613
Joined: 20 Jul 2016 17:49
Location: U.S.

Re: Random ideas: Morphosyntax

Post by LinguoFranco »

Imralu wrote:
LinguoFranco wrote:but idk if I could get it to work consistently with a language that is heavily inflecting, particularly when it comes to marking person and number on the verbs.
Languages don't have to be even. One thing that often strikes me when I gloss Swahili sentences is that the verbs are heavily inflecting, with words like i-si-po-ku-w-a, but the nouns are quite simple, and even if you count their class prefix, they're still much more simple than the verbs. To me, Swahili feels a bit like a collaborative conlang where one person designed the nominal structures and someone else the verbal structures. In any case, a natlang does it.

Personally, I like to have consistent order. I put things like plural markers in the same direction as the head. If the language is head initial, I put the plural marker or whatever it is at the beginning of its phrase. It prevents bizarre instances where things either get sandwiched in the middle of a phrase or have an ambiguous scope. This is the main reason why my conlangs have come out fairly isolating - I like head initial languages but I don't really like prefixes (although Swahili is changing that for me), and although I like agglutinating languages, having a head-initial but suffixing language bothers me.
I really like head-initial languages, too, and my current project is kinda similar to Swahili in that the nouns are pretty simple but the verbs are more complex. With nouns, its pretty much an analytic language, but more synthetic in its verbs. I used to not like prefixes because I feared it would make the language very redundant with words of the same class always having the same prefix, but now I know that is not necessarily a bad thing.

Even though I prefer head-initial languages and head-marking in general, I like the topic-prominent structure of Japanese and how it can drop pronouns without conjugating its verbs to agree with the subject or object. I've also taken some influences from the Austronesian family in that my languages seem to be somewhere between agglutinative and isolating, like how many Austronesian languages are analytic, but still use affixes in some circumstances.
User avatar
Creyeditor
MVP
MVP
Posts: 5091
Joined: 14 Aug 2012 19:32

Re: Random ideas: Morphosyntax

Post by Creyeditor »

So I thought about a language with core and non core cases marked by prepositions1, and there is an obligatory topic at the beginning of the sentence that will always get stripped of all adpositions and you can onyl see it's a topic, because it is unmarked. Let's look at some made-up examples.

(1)
Krikr nom iyunsi puk ak blab.
letter NOM 1PL receive ACC anwer
'We got an anwer to the letter.'

We have 'letter' as the topic, no preceding prepostion, followed by the subject '1PL' which is preceded by the nominative preposition. The verb 'receive' is then followed by an object letter, that is preceded by the accusative preposition. The topic is interpreted as the thing that was answered.

This sentence is equivalent in meaning (semantic, but not pragmatic) to another sentence

(2)
Iyunsi puk ak blab gen krikr.
1PL receive ACC anwer GEN letter
'We got an anwer to the letter.'

Now the 'letter', that was the topic in (1) modifies the 'answer', the 'letter' is integrated into the whole sentence and gets it's own preposition (yay!). Note that I used the genitive preposition, but it could have used any case really. Also note that the subject '1PL' has lost it's nominative preposition (Oh No!), because it became the topic. I really like the idea of the subject being the topic often, and then only getting a nominative if there is a preceding topic. I also like the idea that the preposition is somehow not able to survive if it would be initial in the sentence. The sentence boundary like to crash prepositions, hehe [}:D]

What do I mean by adposition? It should be independent phonologically (be treated as a word by phonological rules and receive it's own stress), it should have at least one syllable. And it should come at the beginning of a noun phrase (see (3), not just before the noun (in the big house instead of the big in-house) . I also think it should be stranded when you form questions (e.g. what are you looking at) (see 4). Of course that means the language would have to have wh-movement. Not sure though if the topic or the wh-phrase would come first in a sentence.

(3)
Krikr nom iyunsi puk ak laa blab.
letter NOM 1PL receive ACC long anwer
'We got a long anwer to the letter.'

(4)
Krikr hee nom iyunsi puk ak?
letter what NOM 1PL receive ACC
'What did we get to the letter?'


The whole thing gives me a kind of Japanese+Oceanic syntactic vibe. I like that [:D]
Creyeditor
"Thoughts are free."
Produce, Analyze, Manipulate
1 :deu: 2 :eng: 3 :idn: 4 :fra: 4 :esp:
:con: Ook & Omlűt & Nautli languages & Sperenjas
[<3] Papuan languages, Morphophonology, Lexical Semantics [<3]
User avatar
loglorn
mayan
mayan
Posts: 1728
Joined: 17 Mar 2014 03:22

Re: Random ideas: Morphosyntax

Post by loglorn »

Really cool stuff i might be stealing.
Diachronic Conlanging is the path to happiness, given time. [;)]

Gigxkpoyan Languages: CHÍFJAEŚÍ RETLA TLAPTHUV DÄLDLEN CJUŚËKNJU ṢATT

Other langs: Søsøzatli Kamëzet
User avatar
Creyeditor
MVP
MVP
Posts: 5091
Joined: 14 Aug 2012 19:32

Re: Random ideas: Morphosyntax

Post by Creyeditor »

It wouldn't be stealing, because it is so random, I won't even put it in my random ideas language [:D]
Creyeditor
"Thoughts are free."
Produce, Analyze, Manipulate
1 :deu: 2 :eng: 3 :idn: 4 :fra: 4 :esp:
:con: Ook & Omlűt & Nautli languages & Sperenjas
[<3] Papuan languages, Morphophonology, Lexical Semantics [<3]
User avatar
LinguoFranco
greek
greek
Posts: 613
Joined: 20 Jul 2016 17:49
Location: U.S.

Re: Random ideas: Morphosyntax

Post by LinguoFranco »

There might be a natlang that does this, but if there is, then I don't know of it. I have an idea for verb conjugation where the person affixes occur as infixes instead of prefixes or suffixes. In Spanish, "I speak" is "hablo", but in the conlang I'm experimenting with, let's say that "to speak" is "Pawak. -et- is the first person singular infix, so "I speak" would be "Petawak."

Thoughts?
User avatar
Creyeditor
MVP
MVP
Posts: 5091
Joined: 14 Aug 2012 19:32

Re: Random ideas: Morphosyntax

Post by Creyeditor »

Sounds okay. I would like to know how the relation to other verbal inflection is. Person is often an affix category that is more outward than other affixes. And infixes are more inward than other affixes, I would expect that there is only a small set of affixial inflection in this language.
Creyeditor
"Thoughts are free."
Produce, Analyze, Manipulate
1 :deu: 2 :eng: 3 :idn: 4 :fra: 4 :esp:
:con: Ook & Omlűt & Nautli languages & Sperenjas
[<3] Papuan languages, Morphophonology, Lexical Semantics [<3]
User avatar
LinguoFranco
greek
greek
Posts: 613
Joined: 20 Jul 2016 17:49
Location: U.S.

Re: Random ideas: Morphosyntax

Post by LinguoFranco »

Creyeditor wrote: 07 Feb 2018 23:43 Sounds okay. I would like to know how the relation to other verbal inflection is. Person is often an affix category that is more outward than other affixes. And infixes are more inward than other affixes, I would expect that there is only a small set of affixial inflection in this language.
Well, it is a personal lang, and I am still trying to figure out a lot of the morphology.
User avatar
k1234567890y
mayan
mayan
Posts: 2400
Joined: 04 Jan 2014 04:47
Contact:

Re: Random ideas: Morphosyntax

Post by k1234567890y »

LinguoFranco wrote: 07 Feb 2018 22:40 There might be a natlang that does this, but if there is, then I don't know of it. I have an idea for verb conjugation where the person affixes occur as infixes instead of prefixes or suffixes. In Spanish, "I speak" is "hablo", but in the conlang I'm experimenting with, let's say that "to speak" is "Pawak. -et- is the first person singular infix, so "I speak" would be "Petawak."

Thoughts?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakota_language < well, the 3rd plural object mark of Lakota is an infix e.g. waŋyáŋkA "to look at something/somebody". > waŋwíčhayaŋke "He looked at them"
I prefer to not be referred to with masculine pronouns and nouns such as “he/him/his”.
User avatar
Frislander
mayan
mayan
Posts: 2088
Joined: 14 May 2016 18:47
Location: The North

Re: Random ideas: Morphosyntax

Post by Frislander »

Infixed person marking is found in Kuot as well as Conlangery discussed here (a grammar PDF showing the different paradigms can be found on the page).
vo1dwalk3r
cuneiform
cuneiform
Posts: 108
Joined: 17 Mar 2014 22:37
Location: dʰǵʰémi
Contact:

Re: Random ideas: Morphosyntax

Post by vo1dwalk3r »

So I've been trying to work out the details of genitive phrases and the like in Ȧbhannı. I've ended up with two cases, possessive and partitive, which serve various functions (including those suggested by their names). A little quirk of these cases is that the possessive is head marking (i.e. arm-POSS me) but the partitive is dependent marking (some people-PTV). This is a result of the fact that, in Old Ȧbhannı, adpositions of motion were postpositions while the others were prepositions, so you get some [people from] > some people-PTV but arm [of me] > arm-of me. In modern Ȧbhannı, all adpositions have become prepositions (or case markers) except in some circumposition-esque constructions, such as in house from, 'from inside the house.'

I was actually going to post about the usage distinction between the cases, which I've got mostly worked out, but I think I'll actually need a bit more thinking for that.
Post Reply