Omsin adjective

A forum for all topics related to constructed languages
Post Reply
User avatar
Omzinesý
mongolian
mongolian
Posts: 4079
Joined: 27 Aug 2010 08:17
Location: nowhere [naʊhɪɚ]

Omsin adjective

Post by Omzinesý »

Omsin adjectives have stayed similar so long I would show them. Maybe the structure will not change anymore. We'll see.

There is no positive form of adjectives. Actually, the term positive is used as antonym of negative. So there are only absolute comparative and absolute superlative.
E.g. i'has 'very complicated' i'haz 'quite complicated'
The sibilant/africate sound is adjective marker, all adjectives end in it. es '(very)good' mus, '(very) little'... z is pronounsed [ts]
All nouns can easily be made adjectives, by adding the adjective marker: sëmá '(my)mother' sëmás- 'mather-like'' who is (my) mother'

When the adjective marker is turned palatal, the adjective is negative. After all, it cannot be seen what part of a feature is considered positive and which negative. muś means huge, when mus means (very) little.

Adjectives are never used alone. No Omsin word can end in s. So there is an attributive marker in the end of an adjective. It correlates to its head noun (or verb). In Omsin word order all adjectives normally take their place in the end of the clause.

so. A little girl loves her little cat, is:
ńuolja lailhe niavre muse.
loves girl her-cat little-object

and A girl loves her little cat:
ńuolja lailhe niavre musa.
loves girl her-cat little-subject

Adjectives can also be incorporated in a noun (or verb)
lailmuse 'a little girl'

Adjectives as predicatives:
There are so called verbal classifiers in Omsin, practically they can be added in eny noun/adjective/verb root to make it verb. The root 'to be' is n.
So to be little is: muos+n+a (a is a mood marker)

But no syllable can end in s either. So musna is not a complete word. That's why there happens methatesis and muosna becomes muonsa 'to be small' The o after u is result of ablaut in verb stem.

The adjective marker can still change muozna 'to be rather small' muośna 'very big'

Ask. I should have thought of that and that wasn't all about Omsin adjective.
What do you like? Are they complicated enough?
Last edited by Omzinesý on 15 Feb 2011 16:39, edited 1 time in total.
My meta-thread: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5760
roninbodhisattva
MVP
MVP
Posts: 1686
Joined: 15 Aug 2010 20:03
Location: California
Contact:

Re: Omsin adjective

Post by roninbodhisattva »

But no syllable can end in s either. So musna is not a complete word. That's why there happens methatesis and muosna becomes muonsa 'to be small' The o after u is result of ablaut in verb stem.
This is a cool rule, I like this.

One question: I don't really get what you're saying with this:
There is no positive form of adjectives. Actually, the term positive is used as antonym of negative. So there are only absolute comparative and absolute superlative.
This isn't really naturalistic at all, not to have a base/positive form for your adjectives. Plus, in your examples, you've translated them as simply 'little' not 'quite little' or 'smaller'. So you say you don't have it, and then translate it like you do. Could you delve into this more?
User avatar
Omzinesý
mongolian
mongolian
Posts: 4079
Joined: 27 Aug 2010 08:17
Location: nowhere [naʊhɪɚ]

Re: Omsin adjective

Post by Omzinesý »

roninbodhisattva wrote: One question: I don't really get what you're saying with this:
There is no positive form of adjectives. Actually, the term positive is used as antonym of negative. So there are only absolute comparative and absolute superlative.
This isn't really naturalistic at all, not to have a base/positive form for your adjectives. Plus, in your examples, you've translated them as simply 'little' not 'quite little' or 'smaller'. So you say you don't have it, and then translate it like you do. Could you delve into this more?
Yes I exactly have. When you are consentrating on one thing you forget another. Yes a better translation could be very/quite small. Indeed, the translations are not complete in every other feature, as well. But if something is very small, it is small same time. The adjectives in my cictionary are in positive superessive form, after all, and other forms are formed from it, and they are translated to the easiest form. But well. I'll correct the translations.

Say me a natural language without positive form of an adjective. A language that even has adjectives.
My meta-thread: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5760
User avatar
Omzinesý
mongolian
mongolian
Posts: 4079
Joined: 27 Aug 2010 08:17
Location: nowhere [naʊhɪɚ]

Re: Omsin adjective

Post by Omzinesý »

There is 'an adjective' that appers as a noun. It is gáuh [kauh] that means 'man'. There is also an official word terur 'male human' but gauh is happier.
Gáuh is combined form root goa 'beard' and adjectivial derivational suffix -us that means "-having" "-ful" "who has".
Root goa is shortened, diphotong 'opens', to gá, and the suffix is added. S cannot still end a word so it changes to h (like Sanskrit visagara). But the word is, after all, inflexted with s and metathesis, e.g. gáulso effective 'in man's option' So the word man litarary mean 'the one with a beard'.

Then, there is a nice, inflectional verb, formed from an adjective.
It's eanŋonsa [eaŋgonzɑ] 'to be called' 'one's name is' Literarry it's 'to have a name', but because there is no verb to have in Omsin, it's made 'to be 'nameful''.

It's root is anŋa 'name'. Then the known suffix -us is added, causing a wovel change a+u=o. There are diphtongs only in first, stressed syllables.
so 'nameful' is anŋos. Then the classifier n 'to be' is added, and via metathesis forms anŋonsa. A again goes through ab-laut, to make a verb.
My meta-thread: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5760
User avatar
Yačay256
greek
greek
Posts: 648
Joined: 12 Aug 2010 01:57
Location: Sacramento, California, USA

Re: Omsin adjective

Post by Yačay256 »

What form of an adjective does one use in place of the positive? To clarify by example, the superlative and the comparative are fused in afro-asiatic languages in the form of what is known as the Elative.
¡Mñíĝínxàʋày!
¡[ˈmí.ɲ̟ōj.ˌɣín.ʃà.βä́j]!
2-POSS.EXCL.ALIEN-COMP-friend.comrade
Hello, colleagues!
User avatar
Omzinesý
mongolian
mongolian
Posts: 4079
Joined: 27 Aug 2010 08:17
Location: nowhere [naʊhɪɚ]

Re: Omsin adjective

Post by Omzinesý »

Yačay256 wrote:What form of an adjective does one use in place of the positive? To clarify by example, the superlative and the comparative are fused in afro-asiatic languages in the form of what is known as the Elative.
There is not positive, so you have to use absolute comparative or absolute superlative.
You cannot say "little girl" in Omsin. You have to say very little girl or quite little girl.

Comparison is always needed, because there is no standard for little.
If you see two girls the smaller one could be called the smallest 'mus'.

So about elative, there was elative in Omsin years ago, as I remember right it's marker was p in positive and b in negative. But I have decised there is no real (not absolute) comparative, superlative or elative. It's formd like in Turkish "beautiful of all" = the most beautiful and "beautiful that she" = more beautiful than she.
Because Omsin cnages all the time, the nominal morphology is not ready that I could say which case expresses "than she". I thought oblique but: good at football at him is a little ambiguous. Indeed one must think of if there is absolute superlative or absolute comparative in a real comparative sentence. If something is big, is it very big same time, not necessarily.

mus - very small
muz - quite small
muś - very big
muź - quite big

The degrees of comparison are on X-axis, but there is no point in origo.
My meta-thread: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5760
roninbodhisattva
MVP
MVP
Posts: 1686
Joined: 15 Aug 2010 20:03
Location: California
Contact:

Re: Omsin adjective

Post by roninbodhisattva »

Omzinesý wrote:There is not positive, so you have to use absolute comparative or absolute superlative.
You cannot say "little girl" in Omsin. You have to say very little girl or quite little girl.

Comparison is always needed, because there is no standard for little.
If you see two girls the smaller one could be called the smallest 'mus'.
This is not how natural language lexicalize properties though. Even though there is no absolute standard for 'little' or 'big', languages rely on the context of situations and general standards assumed by the speakers and listeners to encode this. So the semantics of 'little' don't encode that something has to be only 5 inches tall to be considered little, just that little is small by some general standard.

Plus, how does this work when you have only one object. Take your girls example. What if you only see one girl, but you still think she's small. Do you have to use some other object/feature in her environment to compare her to?

Also, how does this work for things that don't encode dimension? Such as colors?
User avatar
Omzinesý
mongolian
mongolian
Posts: 4079
Joined: 27 Aug 2010 08:17
Location: nowhere [naʊhɪɚ]

Re: Omsin adjective

Post by Omzinesý »

roninbodhisattva wrote:This is not how natural language lexicalize properties though. Even though there is no absolute standard for 'little' or 'big', languages rely on the context of situations and general standards assumed by the speakers and listeners to encode this. So the semantics of 'little' don't encode that something has to be only 5 inches tall to be considered little, just that little is small by some general standard.

Plus, how does this work when you have only one object. Take your girls example. What if you only see one girl, but you still think she's small. Do you have to use some other object/feature in her environment to compare her to?

Also, how does this work for things that don't encode dimension? Such as colors?
Yes, languages don't work so, and neither Omsin. When I said comparison is needed I meant like languages normally need it. As you said, there is no standard little, but there is standard big house. Of course, the standart varies by situation and speaker, but we must have an intuition of bigness. That's only what I mean, exactly nothing new. two girls was just an example, how this absolute comparison could be utilised.

The negative form exists but it's not even meant to be capable to express all featuress. There is for example a word vuos/vuoz that means big/vaste. It could be much more idiomatic to use it instead of muś.

Musj could be used in ciscussion like:
- Is it big?
- No it is dissbig. so little

Colours was a good exapmle because it's almost the only feature that really has cauterparts. Abtonyt of blue is orange, of course.

blue is sins- (loaned from Finnish. Sininen is a fine word.) Orange is so sinś-
My meta-thread: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5760
Post Reply