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DesEsseintes
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Post by DesEsseintes »

Omzinesý wrote:Mention languages with complex tense and aspect systems. I would like to get new input for my lang.
Koyukon is heavy on the aspects. I forget if Axelrod's treatment thereof is in the pile.
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Post by Thrice Xandvii »

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The above is my current system of Aspects and their markers. However, I am wondering if maybe the progressive and imperfective are not distinct enough or perhaps just seem so due to English not having a distinct imperfective? I'm also wondering if the intensive might be better analyzed just as a particle for emphasis and not a part of the aspectual system (at present it is one of the few that could be attached along with any other aspect, and that would make it difficult for them to end up being somewhat mutually exclusive, which is something I sort of want). Further, is there something that one would expect but isn't present? And does the system seem at all naturalistic? I have very little experience with the use of aspects, especially when I plan to have no real tense markers outside of the use of some periphrastic constructions and the use of time words like "yesterday" or "in 3 hours."
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Post by Ahzoh »

What sound changes can lead to |N| becoming /h/ intervocalically and viceversa?

I'm also looking to get rid of the lateral obstruents in some languages, so what can be done so:
1) /tɬ͡/ becomes /kʼ/ in some environments and /x/ in the rest?
2) /dɮ͡/ becomes /l/ in some environments and /ɣ/ in the rest?

The Caucasian languages seem to have lateral obstruents become velar obstruents, ejective or plain. But they are shown in the Diachronica as occurring unconditionally, but I doubt that's actually the case.
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Post by gestaltist »

Ahzoh wrote:What sound changes can lead to |N| becoming /h/ intervocalically and viceversa?
A quick search through the Index Diachronica shows that both changes are attested for /ŋ/ so it's not outlandish to think they could also happen for |N|
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Post by DesEsseintes »

Ahzoh wrote:I'm also looking to get rid of the lateral obstruents in some languages, so what can be done so:
1) /tɬ͡/ becomes /kʼ/ in some environments and /x/ in the rest?
2) /dɮ͡/ becomes /l/ in some environments and /ɣ/ in the rest?

The Caucasian languages seem to have lateral obstruents become velar obstruents, ejective or plain. But they are shown in the Diachronica as occurring unconditionally, but I doubt that's actually the case.
Many languages have ejective /t͡ɬ‘/ without a modal counterpart, so I think you could have sth like this happen:

First t͡ɬ unconditionally becomes ejective (if ejectives are already present this can happen at an early stage; otherwise just have this happen when other ejectives evolve since I can see you plan to have ejectives); subsequently t͡ɬ‘ backs to velar and loses the lateral component, and lenites to x intervocalically (you can choose to lose the glottalisation before or after lenition occurs)

The different outcomes of d͡ɮ could be explained by the fact that as a voiced affricate it failed to ejectivise unlike its unvoiced brother. It lenites to ɮ which then becomes l initially and ɣ intervocalically.
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Post by DesEsseintes »

gestaltist wrote:
Ahzoh wrote:What sound changes can lead to |N| becoming /h/ intervocalically and viceversa?
A quick search through the Index Diachronica shows that both changes are attested for /ŋ/ so it's not outlandish to think they could also happen for |N|
Yep. Nasals becoming any of /h ʔ/ are smeared all over the literature. Rhinoglottophilia.
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Post by Ahzoh »

Could stress maybe block the rhinoglottophilia?
DesEsseintes wrote:
Ahzoh wrote:I'm also looking to get rid of the lateral obstruents in some languages, so what can be done so:
1) /tɬ͡/ becomes /kʼ/ in some environments and /x/ in the rest?
2) /dɮ͡/ becomes /l/ in some environments and /ɣ/ in the rest?

The Caucasian languages seem to have lateral obstruents become velar obstruents, ejective or plain. But they are shown in the Diachronica as occurring unconditionally, but I doubt that's actually the case.
Many languages have ejective /t͡ɬ‘/ without a modal counterpart, so I think you could have sth like this happen:

First t͡ɬ unconditionally becomes ejective (if ejectives are already present this can happen at an early stage; otherwise just have this happen when other ejectives evolve since I can see you plan to have ejectives); subsequently t͡ɬ‘ backs to velar and loses the lateral component, and lenites to x intervocalically (you can choose to lose the glottalisation before or after lenition occurs)

The different outcomes of d͡ɮ could be explained by the fact that as a voiced affricate it failed to ejectivise unlike its unvoiced brother. It lenites to ɮ which then becomes l initially and ɣ intervocalically.
I like that, thank you.
That would would be good for some West Charric languages since their emphatics are ejective, although that family mostly keeps its lateral obstruents.
It is the other three Charric languages that lose all of their lateral obstruents but they have no ejectives (their emphatics had different outcomes). How might they go about the outcomes I posited?
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Post by Porphyrogenitos »

Thrice Xandvii wrote:
The above is my current system of Aspects and their markers. However, I am wondering if maybe the progressive and imperfective are not distinct enough or perhaps just seem so due to English not having a distinct imperfective? I'm also wondering if the intensive might be better analyzed just as a particle for emphasis and not a part of the aspectual system (at present it is one of the few that could be attached along with any other aspect, and that would make it difficult for them to end up being somewhat mutually exclusive, which is something I sort of want). Further, is there something that one would expect but isn't present? And does the system seem at all naturalistic? I have very little experience with the use of aspects, especially when I plan to have no real tense markers outside of the use of some periphrastic constructions and the use of time words like "yesterday" or "in 3 hours."
Aspect usually isn't completely separate from tense; imperfective aspect is commonly also indicates that the action happened in the past, e.g. in Spanish, where the imperfective corría means "I was running" or "I always used to run". So you could add that to your imperfective to make it more distinct. Perhaps the imperfective and progressive could be the same aspectually, but take place in different times - the imperfective in the past, the progressive in the present.
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Post by Sumelic »

Thrice Xandvii wrote:Image

The above is my current system of Aspects and their markers. However, I am wondering if maybe the progressive and imperfective are not distinct enough or perhaps just seem so due to English not having a distinct imperfective? I'm also wondering if the intensive might be better analyzed just as a particle for emphasis and not a part of the aspectual system (at present it is one of the few that could be attached along with any other aspect, and that would make it difficult for them to end up being somewhat mutually exclusive, which is something I sort of want). Further, is there something that one would expect but isn't present? And does the system seem at all naturalistic? I have very little experience with the use of aspects, especially when I plan to have no real tense markers outside of the use of some periphrastic constructions and the use of time words like "yesterday" or "in 3 hours."
My understanding is that a progressive is a type of imperfective aspect, but not all imperfective actions are progressive. For example, general imperfective aspects often can be used to refer to habitual actions, which the English Progressive is not used for. However, you already have a frequentative aspect, which makes that less relevant, since it seems like that would cover some habitual actions. Another limitation of the English Progressive is that it is often not used to refer to unchanging states, although it can be (E.g. we say "I love X", although "I'm loving X" is possible, as shown by McDonald's ads). So the distinction between your language's Imperfective and Progressive might mainly indicate whether a verb is stative or dynamic.

I wonder a little bit about what your Perfective is used for, since you have separate Inchoative and Momentane aspects. Could you give an example of how these three are used differently?
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Post by Thrice Xandvii »

I think that's where my issue lies. Maybe I shouldn't have the Imp/Perf pair as I have several other subcategories? Honestly it's in trying to use them that I start to find my issues. As I've said, I have so little understanding for aspects that aren't intrinsically tied to tense that I find myself confused. Is there a good place to find info not on individual aspects but instead on the systems different languages use? I think that would help a lot just to see some paradigms that are in actual use.

So, I can't really give good examples of use since I am attempting to figure that out and just not really seeing where each one should fit.
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Post by Salmoneus »

If I might suggest: don't think "these are my aspects, what can I use them for?" - think "how should I divide up the semantic space?" (you can keep the former at the back of your mind while considering the latter if you want, of course).

So, here are some questions you might want to consider when looking at different aspectual situations:

1. Does the action itself involve a change? "Eating" and "discovering" involve changes, but "knowing" does not. That doesn't mean it's eternal of course - you can come to know, or cease to know, but the knowing itself does not describe a change.

2. If there is a change, does it have an inherent, natural or intended end-point? ("I walked to the shops" vs "I was out walking", for instance).

3. If there is an end-point, is it reached on this occasion? Or not reached? Or is it unclear, or unimportant?

[English often uses the "perfective" for completed actions, and the imperfective for actions that either have no end point or that haven't reached it yet.]

4. Is the action instantaneous, or does it take some period of time? If it takes a period of time, is it insignificant, or extended? ["I saw him" is instantaneous; "I sighed" takes a negligible amount of time; "I sojourned" takes a lot of time]

6. Is it less time than might be expected, about the amount of time expected, or more time than would normally be expected?

7. During the time the action takes place (if it takes time), does the action notably progress, or merely continue? [for instance, "I was hammering in nails all day" is just continuation, but "I was building a cabinet all day" implies a noticeable progression through the action as time goes on]

8. Does the action take place at a specific, known, point (or points) in time, and is this relevent? ["I've eaten turbot" states the existence of a past event, but does not stress the specificity of any particular time, or even whether it only happened once]

9. Does the action only take place at one, or a small number of times, to which the verb clearly refers, or is the verb refering to only one of many possible times on which the action took place?

10. Does the verb relate only to a single event, or to multiple events on which the action was performed?

11. If the verb relates to multiple events, were there more events than expected, or fewer?

12. Were the events close together in time, or separated by considerable periods of time?

13. On the occasion of each action, did the action occure continuously in a single period of time, or was it interrupted and restarted?

14. If it was interrupted, was it interrupted once, or repeatedly, or many many times?

15. What is the relation between the action's timeframe and that of other events in the surrounding narrative? Do they overlap?

16. What is the relation between the action's timeframe and the deictic centre of the narrative? Is the story taking place before, after, or during the action?

17. If the story takes place during the action, is it entirely bounded (the action began before and ends after the story), or not?

18. If the story takes place during the action, does it take place at the beginning, early on, in the middle, late on, or at the end of the action?



No doubt there are some others, but there's a starting point. Now for each verb and each situation (so, hundreds of possibilities), either:
a) that verb can't be used in that situation
b) the verb can be used but only through not-fully-productive, unpredictable derivation process
c) the verb can be used in that situation only through a regular, productive, predictable inflexion process
d) the verb is naturally used in that situation without any particular inflection or derivation

Now, the inflexion and derivation processes are aspects - but it's not as simple as one aspect per situation. The same aspects cover a vast number of different situations each.
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Post by Ehesh »

Hello. I am looking for languages with noun classifiers that are non numerical or for mass nouns. I still dont understand very much the difference between noun class VS noun classifier
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Post by eldin raigmore »

Ehesh wrote:Hello. I am looking for languages with noun classifiers that are non numerical or for mass nouns. I still dont understand very much the difference between noun class VS noun classifier
WALS.info has a chapter about possessive classifiers.

They're the only other type of noun classifiers (besides numeral classifiers) that WALS currently has data about; but I do not know whether they are the only other known type of noun-classifier.

[hr][/hr]

The other type of noun-class that WALS discusses, other than the types shown by noun-classifiers, is gender.
WALS considers "gender" and "concordial noun-class" to be synonyms.
"Concordial noun-class" is noun-class that is shown by concord or agreement; that is, other words have to agree with the noun's class.
The noun itself, may, or may not, be marked for the concordial noun-class (that is, for gender).
In any case, the noun-class needn't be marked by a classifier-word.

Concerning gender in particular,
See Systems of Gender Assignment
(also chapters 30 and 31 and 44).

[hr][/hr]
[hr][/hr]


For general information about the whole field of noun-class, noun-classification systems, and marking of noun-class, you should check out some of WALS's references;
in particular, for instance,
Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2000. Classifiers: a Typology of Noun Categorization Devices. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hope that helps!
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Post by Ælfwine »

I'm adding new noun cases to my agglutinative romlang. Most of these cases come from various constructions involving Latin prepositions that later became enclitics.

Nominative: -∅
Dative: -ad (from Vulgar Latin ad)
Genitive: -de/s/i (can't decide lol)
Partitive: -en/ne (from Vulgar Latin inde)
Ablative: -ab (from Vulgar Latin ab)
Ellative: -eps (from Vulgar Latin ex)

I'd like to add a few more locative cases besides the Ellative. What are other ways get I can get new affixes?
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Post by Thrice Xandvii »

Salmoneus wrote:[Lots of great information...]
I think you're right. I think I was trying to just pick things willy-nilly and not really do much in the way of planning out what they will do pr how they will function together. As such, I took some ideas from the questions posed (however not all of them, as the list was a bit overwhelming... but did seem really well thought out and comprehensive) and re-tooled the way I thought about the aspects. As such, I added in a bit more description (which will do for now, as I have plans to expand the stubs I've written) of the aspects and mildly adjusted the chart to include logical "opposites" as well as to separate out the "emphatic particle."

My new question is:

Do you think the descriptions here are logical enough to form the basis of the system, and/or, do they fit with what the terms would be expected to mean? Any further suggestions or obvious areas that aren't properly covered?

(I am aware that I probably worded some of the sections a bit awkwardly, but I'm pretty tired at the moment and plan to re-write/correct them in the future.)
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Ælfwine wrote:I'm adding new noun cases to my agglutinative romlang. Most of these cases come from various constructions involving Latin prepositions that later became enclitics.

Nominative: -∅
Dative: -ad (from Vulgar Latin ad)
Genitive: -de/s/i (can't decide lol)
Partitive: -en/ne (from Vulgar Latin inde)
Ablative: -ab (from Vulgar Latin ab)
Ellative: -eps (from Vulgar Latin ex)

I'd like to add a few more locative cases besides the Ellative. What are other ways get I can get new affixes?
One way is combining the endings/prepositions. The Romance languages did this a lot, so there are plenty of examples (e.g. Fr. dès < de+ex, It. da < de+ab, Sp. para < pro+ad).

You might consider glomming on verb forms, like gerunds. Maybe [noun]+sequendum means "after [noun]". Other verbs to consider for locatives are the derivations of sum, sto and sedeo. Derivations of eo would work for dynamic, rather than stative, meanings.

Nouns are also an option. Take French chez "at the house of, among".
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Post by Ælfwine »

Dormouse559 wrote:
Ælfwine wrote:I'm adding new noun cases to my agglutinative romlang. Most of these cases come from various constructions involving Latin prepositions that later became enclitics.

Nominative: -∅
Dative: -ad (from Vulgar Latin ad)
Genitive: -de/s/i (can't decide lol)
Partitive: -en/ne (from Vulgar Latin inde)
Ablative: -ab (from Vulgar Latin ab)
Ellative: -eps (from Vulgar Latin ex)

I'd like to add a few more locative cases besides the Ellative. What are other ways get I can get new affixes?
One way is combining the endings/prepositions. The Romance languages did this a lot, so there are plenty of examples (e.g. Fr. dès < de+ex, It. da < de+ab, Sp. para < pro+ad).

You might consider glomming on verb forms, like gerunds. Maybe [noun]+sequendum means "after [noun]". Other verbs to consider for locatives are the derivations of sum, sto and sedeo. Derivations of eo would work for dynamic, rather than stative, meanings.

Nouns are also an option. Take French chez "at the house of, among".
I like the idea of gerunds, though I am not too familiar with how Vulgar Latin treated them.

How do you mean dynamic meanings?

Also, what I think I might do is have French like liaison in order to make the agglutination a bit more natural. hmm
Last edited by Ælfwine on 24 Oct 2017 04:31, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Sumelic »

Thrice Xandvii wrote:
Salmoneus wrote:[Lots of great information...]
I think you're right. I think I was trying to just pick things willy-nilly and not really do much in the way of planning out what they will do pr how they will function together. As such, I took some ideas from the questions posed (however not all of them, as the list was a bit overwhelming... but did seem really well thought out and comprehensive) and re-tooled the way I thought about the aspects. As such, I added in a bit more description (which will do for now, as I have plans to expand the stubs I've written) of the aspects and mildly adjusted the chart to include logical "opposites" as well as to separate out the "emphatic particle."

My new question is:

Do you think the descriptions here are logical enough to form the basis of the system, and/or, do they fit with what the terms would be expected to mean? Any further suggestions or obvious areas that aren't properly covered?

(I am aware that I probably worded some of the sections a bit awkwardly, but I'm pretty tired at the moment and plan to re-write/correct them in the future.)
Interesting changes. I tried out a few verbs, and I'm having a bit of trouble understanding the use cases for the momentane. Here were my attempts:

example verb "to shoot":
perfective:
"Sandy shot the bear." (and it was hit)
imperfective: maybe can't be used with a verb like "shoot"? Or else, it might have a habitual or generic meaning (if that is intended to be one of the uses of this aspect, you might make a note about it).
momentane:
"Sandy shot at the bear." (this doesn't tell us if it was hit?) I have a bit of trouble distinguishing momentane from perfective and progressive.
inchoative:
"Sandy started to shoot at the bear."
cessative:
"Sandy just shot the bear." (?) at least, a way to express "just shot" seems more useful than a way to express "stopped shooting", but I don't know if the semantics are loose enough for the cessative to be used this way.
progressive:
"Sandy is shooting the bear."
frequentive:
"Sandy shot the bear (multiple times)".

Example verb "to build":
perfective:
"Sandy built the house." (as a completed action)
imperfective:
"Sandy built the house (continuously, over a period of time)". (??) Possible context: "Sandy built the house while fighting off flies."
inchoative: "Sandy started to build the house."
cessative: "Sandy stopped building the house".
momentane:
unsure if it can be used in this context.
"Sandy built the house in a moment" or "Sandy was building the house in a moment" (?).
Progressive:
"Sandy was building the house."
Frequentive:
"Sandy built many houses"? Or would the imperfective be used for a more drawn-out iterative action like this?

Example verb "to love/like".
imperfective:
"Sandy loved/loves ice cream."
Hard to see how most of the other aspects would apply, aside from inchoative and cessative.
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Post by Dormouse559 »

Ælfwine wrote:I like the idea of gerunds, though I am not too familiar with how Vulgar Latin treated them.
Well, the usage I'm drawing from is the adverbial, which is one of the only ones that survive in Modern Romance. It's most similar to Classical Latin's ablative gerund. I think the main difference (EDIT: between modern usage and my suggestion) is that "[gerund] + [noun]" is probably a more common word order nowadays. But the synthetic future and the conditional show that Romance word order has changed over time.
Ælfwine wrote:How do you mean dynamic meanings?
"Dynamic" indicates movement, while "static" (not "stative"; oops [:$] ) indicates a lack of movement, that is, it shows location. Dynamic prepositions in English include "into" or "onto". Their static equivalents are "in" and "on".
Ælfwine wrote:Also, what I think I might do is have French like ghost consonants in order to make the agglutination a bit more natural. hmm
Sounds like an idea there. [:)]
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Post by All4Ɇn »

I'm currently working on a language with a bunch of homophones but is written in Chinese characters and thus avoids them in writing. But I just came across 2 pairs of really weird homophones. As of right now the words for Bandit (匪 Pứy) & Embryo (胚 Pứy) and the words for Neck (估 Tứy) & Foetus (胎 Tứy) are homophonous. Does it seem realistic for spoken language to maintain these homophones without adding suffixes to any of them?
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