(L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here [2010-2019]

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Post by Trebor »

Creyeditor wrote:I think Micamo is right in that every language has the functional category Adverbials, but not every language has a morphological/morphosyntactical categoy Adverb. They may look the same as Adjectives/Verbs/Nouns and act in the same way.
Right. That's the kind of thing I'm looking for.
I'm sorry that I haven't got any real clear natlang examples.
That's all right. Your German and Indonesian sentences are still noteworthy, though I wonder how Indonesian would handle the more complex sentences with 'unfortunately' that I gave as illustrations above.
1It looks like an embedded clause, but it mostly acts as an adverb. German can actually use an adjective in that sentence:
Gerüchteweise sind Jungen böse.
as_rumor_has_it COP.PL.PRS boy bad
People say, boys are bad.
How does "Gerüchteweise" break down into its component parts?
I'm pretty sure that some languages (not necessarily polysynthetic) would handle some of those sentences in the following manner:

(5)
3.SG>1.SG-like-CONJ 3.SG>2.SG-like
'She doesn't like me or/and you very much.'
I should clarify that examples from highly synthetic languages, which have polypersonal agreement but lack, say, noun incorporation, are still of interest to me.

Regarding your hypothetical example, though, wouldn't one actually expect something like the following?

(5)
3.SG>1.SG-NEG-like-CONJ 3.SG>2.SG-NEG-like
'She doesn't like me or/and you very much.'
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Post by Trebor »

Xonen wrote:They're not polysynthetic, but Uralic languages have historically preferred cases and special verb forms to conjunctions in most situations. Modern Finnish still allows this in some contexts. To use one of your examples:
(2) I hope that you and your family enjoyed the Caribbean cruise.
Toivon sinun perheinesi nauttineen Karibian-risteilystä.
hope.1SG you.GEN family.COM.PX2SG enjoy.PST.PTCP.ACC Caribbean.GEN-cruise.ELAT
'I hope that you and your family enjoyed the Caribbean cruise.'
What does "PX" stand for in your gloss?

I'd also like to know how Finnish would handle "Did you and your family enjoy the Caribbean cruise?"
Also, the coordinator and can often be replaced with an adposition or case form meaning, roughly, 'with'. Thus, Finnish could have...

Tulemme Joen kanssa hyvin toimeen.
come.1PL Joe.GEN with well action.ILL
'Joe and I get along well.'

...or, dialectally:

Myö tullaa Joenkaa hyvi toimee.
we come.1PL Joe.COM well action.ILL
'Joe and I get along well.'
Using the comitative definitely makes sense here.

Is there any way, though, to disambiguate 'I get along well with Joe' from 'we get along well with Joe'?
And of course, some languages just use simple juxtaposition; even English allows this in some contexts:

(3) He needs encouragement, not lecturing.
How do Finnish and other Uralic languages--which may have been less susceptible to possible Indo-European influence over the centuries--handle my original examples labeled (1) and (4-6)?

Edit: Also, is it typical for languages which mandatorily cross-reference verbs for subjects (e.g., Finnish) and objects (e.g., Georgian, Chukchi, Inuktitut) to avoid using an independent pronoun when coordinating with an external noun or proper name? In other words, do such languages show a preference for requiring one to say something which approximates one, two, or all of the following?

(i) a. Joe we-get.along.well.

b. Joe and I we-get.along.well.

c. Joe I-he-get.along.well.

(ii) a. I-hope your family you.all-enjoyed the Caribbean cruise.

b. I-hope you and your family you.all-enjoyed the Caribbean cruise.

c. I-hope your family you-it-enjoyed the Caribbean cruise.
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Post by Trebor »

Chagen wrote:I don't think a tergo would be a very good way to organize a dictionary.

I mean, for Latin, half of the dictionary would be taken up by <s> (ending on many nouns), o (ending of all verbs in 1.SG present tense), and <m> (another common ending).
And a regular dictionary seems less than practical for a Bantu language. If we take Kinyarwanda, just about my favourite member of the family*, as an example: infinitive verbs begin with <k-> or <g->, and citation-form nouns mostly begin with <a->, <i->, and <u-> thanks to the nearly-pervasive noun-class system. I wonder how this problem is handled for Bantu tongues as a whole?

*Nzadi looks really cool, though I don't know much about it and don't plan on learning the language.

Edit: The quoted post originally appeared on page 70 of this thread.
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Post by Micamo »

Trebor wrote:I've read that there's a language from PNG, Waluman or some such, that has a verb meaning 'and'. I have a relevant paper saved on my hard drive which I haven't gotten to yet; I'm curious to know if it has one or more verbs for 'or', 'either(/or)', 'neither(/nor)'. I'll post an update if I learn anything on this issue.
Don't know about Waluman (or some such), but I'd be willing to bet that the "and" verb is actually a comitative verb, meaning "to be with" in the same way there are verbs in some languages that mean "to go in" and "to go out". For that matter it's also possible for a verb to have a comitative applicative:

:bur: Lai

làw ʔakathloʔpìi
làw ʔa-ka-thloʔ-pìi
field 3s.S-1s.O-weed-COM
He weeded the field with me.

A comitative verb (or a comitative case or a comitative applicative) are still conjunctions in my view, even if their morphosyntactic distribution is different than English conjunctions. And I still don't know of any languages that rely upon these exclusively; There always seems to be some kind of independent coordinator as well. That's not to say that you couldn't make a conlang that lacks such a thing, though.
My pronouns are <xe> [ziː] / <xym> [zɪm] / <xys> [zɪz]

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Post by gach »

Trebor wrote:What does "PX" stand for in your gloss?
It's a general label for possessive affixes. Other similar ones you might encounter are VX for predicative person affixes (typically the person-number agreement on finite verbs) and CX for case affixes.
I'd also like to know how Finnish would handle "Did you and your family enjoy the Caribbean cruise?"
If the old comitative -ne isn't too literary for your use that'd be

Naut-i-t-ko perhe-i-ne-si Karibia-n-risteilys-tä?
enjoy-PST-SG2-Q family-PL-COM-SG2.POSS Caribia-GEN-cruise-PART

Otherwise use the postposition kanssa ("with")

Naut-i-t-ko perhee-si kanssa Karibia-n-risteilys-tä?
enjoy-PST-SG2-Q family-SG2.POSS with Caribia-GEN-cruise-PART

which in connected speech can cliticise onto its object forming the new dialectal comitative -kaa you see in Xonen's example.
Is there any way, though, to disambiguate 'I get along well with Joe' from 'we get along well with Joe'?
Not terribly well. You can use a reciprocal construction using keskenämme ("amongst ourselves") as an object to denote an unambiguously two directional relationship,

Tule-mme Joe-n kanssa hyvin toimeen keskenä-mme.
[get.along]-PL1 Joe-GEN with well [get.along] amongst.one.another-PL1.POSS

but otherwise comitative constructions can indicate both a reciprocal relationship (I get along with you and you with me) or a one sided relationship with a plural subject (we get along with you but your relationship with us isn't specified).
I've read that there's a language from PNG, Waluman or some such, that has a verb meaning 'and'. I have a relevant paper saved on my hard drive which I haven't gotten to yet; I'm curious to know if it has one or more verbs for 'or', 'either(/or)', 'neither(/nor)'. I'll post an update if I learn anything on this issue.
As far as I know the only conjunction like verbs in Walman are the two synonymous verbs for "and": aru and a. They have both subject and object agreement functioning with the semantics "SUBJ and OBJ" and only seem to appear as a subject phrase within a clause

ru nyue w-aro-n ngan y-ekiel
3SG.FEM mother 3SG.FEM.S-and-3SG.MASC.O father 3PL.S-go.south
"A mother and father went south."

Thus it might be possible to describe the verb as a comitative unit. On the other hand, the final verb ekiel ("go south") has plural agreement showing that it takes both the mother and the father as its subjects. If the phrase nyue waron ngan has any internal hierarchy, that doesn't transfer outside itself.
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Post by thetha »

Trebor wrote: How does "Gerüchteweise" break down into its component parts?
It's quite simple actually; it's just Gerücht "rumor" + the suffix weise which is cognate with 'wise' in English, as in 'lengthwise'.
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Post by Creyeditor »

Trebor wrote:
I'm sorry that I haven't got any real clear natlang examples.
That's all right. Your German and Indonesian sentences are still noteworthy, though I wonder how Indonesian would handle the more complex sentences with 'unfortunately' that I gave as illustrations above.
Indonesian doesn't handle all of it's adverbials with noun phrases and sometimes the analysis is not that easy.
I will try to translate the sentences (slightly modified) nevertheless.

There are two versions and possible analysis for your first sentence. In the first version I give <sayang> acts like an adjective modified by <sekali> 'very'.

(1) a. i. Sayang sekali kita tidak bisa berlibur.
dear very 1.PL.EXCL NEG can go_on_vacation
Unfortunately, we can't go on vacation.

In the second version <sayang> is modified by the possessive/demonstrative suffix <-nya> and acts like a noun.

(1) a. ii. Sayang-nya kita tidak bisa berlibur.
pity-DEM 1.PL.EXCL NEG can go_on_vacation
Unfortunately, we can't go on vacation.

The same goes true for the second sentence, where it would be more natural for Indonesian to put the adverbial at the end of the sentence.

b. Tadi pagi si ayah bilang kita tidak bisa berlibur, sayang sekali / sayang-nya
earlier morning TITLE dad tell 1.PL.EXCL can go_on_vacation dear very / pity-DEM
Dad told us this morning that, unfortunately, we can't go on vacation after all.


Trebor wrote: Regarding your hypothetical example, though, wouldn't one actually expect something like the following?

(5)
3.SG>1.SG-NEG-like-CONJ 3.SG>2.SG-NEG-like
'She doesn't like me or/and you very much.'
You're right about that.
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Post by Trebor »

Alomar wrote:I've been tinkering around with question words lately, and I came up with the idea of a "question verb" and I can't find anything on the internets about this (evidently "question verb" is a really useless phrase to Google).
I guess it translates in English as "What is ____ doing?" or "What is ______ doing to _____?"

It would effectively be used like this!:

What did you do today?
Ithe tsrau ca Edil?
Ithe tsr-au ca Edil
2s questionverb-Past.Perfective this day-Gen

Or

What will you do to him?

Uv tsres ithe?
U-v tsr-es ithe
3s.masc-acc questionverb-future.perfective 2s.




Has anyone heard of such a thing?
This feature appears in one of my conlangs, and I believe the term you're looking for is 'interrogative verb', a non-declarative pro-verb (which is one type of pro-form (.pdf)).

Here are some papers that should be helpful:

- "Interrogative Verbs in Takic"

- "Interrogative verbs in Kavalan and Amis" (I'm not sure if this item is available anywhere on the Web for free--I downloaded a copy when I had access to "Oceanic Linguistics" and other academic journals as a university student)

- "Interrogative Serial Verb Constructions in Kavalan"

- "Interrogative Verb Sequencing Constructions in Amis"
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Post by Trebor »

What natlangs have anaphora that don't only replace noun phrases, i.e., the traditional personal or possessive pronouns?* See these French examples:

(1) a. As-tu déjà été en France ?
have.2SG.PRES.IND=you.SG already be.PST.PTCP in France
'Have you ever been to France?'

b. Non, je n'y ai jamais été.
no, I NEG=LOC.PRN have.1SG.PRES.IND never be.PST.PTCP [LOC.PRN = locative pronoun]
'No, I've never been there.'

(2) a. Aimerais-tu du thé ?
like.2SG.PRES.COND=you.POL PART.ART.MASC.SG tea [PART = partitive, ART = article, POL = polite]
'Would you like some tea?'

b. Oui, j'en aimerais, s'il vous plaît.
yes, I=PART.PRN like.1SG.PRES.COND, if=it you.POL please.3SG.PRES.IND [PART.PRN = partitive pronoun]
'Yes, I'd like some, please.'

(3) a. Combien de livres vais-tu acheter ?
how.many of book-PL go.2SG.PRES.IND=you buy.INF
'How many books are you going to buy?'

b. Je vais en acheter trois.
I go.1SG.PRES.IND PART.PRN buy.INF three
'I'm going to buy three.'

I've only seen an equivalent of French 'y' in Kinyarwanda/Kirundi, a verbal suffix '-ho' as I recall.

*This question was edited a couple times after it was originally posted.
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Post by Trebor »

Xonen wrote:
Micamo wrote:
Xonen wrote:What's your source for this? I tried googling, but didn't at least immediately find anything with actual numbers... Anyway, that seems surprisingly low, to say the least. I've always been taught that Finnish has relatively few adpositions, and especially prepositions - and yet there are more than five prepositions and certainly more than ten adpositions in total in the language. (Of course, the things we get taught about Finnish always seem to carry an implicit "compared with IE langs" qualification, since that's what we - including myself - tend to be most familiar with... But still.)

I do find it quite easy to buy that English is exceptionally complicated in this respect, though. [:D]
Baker 2004, page 304:
There is also the obvious fact that P is a closed class: languages do not have many adpositions and are reluctant to acquire more. English is rumored to have on the order of fifty prepositions, as compared to its thousands of verbs, nouns, and adjectives. Moreover, the fifty-odd prepositions of English and related languages like Dutch may be close to a world record. Many other languages have significantly fewer clear instances of adpositions, sometimes around ten, and often less than five. Mohawk, for example, has no more than four simple adpositions (–(a)ke ‘at,’ -oku ‘under,’ -(a)ku ‘in’, and –akta ‘near’), which show up as locative suffixes on nouns as a result of incorporation (Baker 1996b:ch. 9). Chichewa has either two prepositions (ndi ‘with,’ ku/kwa ‘at, to’) or five, depending on whether one counts the three locative gender prefixes as prepositions or not (Sam Mchombo, personal communication; cf.Bresnan[1991]). Edo has three clear cases of prepositions (y` e ‘in(to),’ n` e ‘to, for,’ vb` e ‘at, general location’), plus perhaps a few others that have recently evolved from serial verbs (e.g. la ‘into’ from the verb ‘enter’; gbe ‘against’ from the verb ‘hit’). Some languages indeed have only one preposition, such as Wari (Everett and Kern 1997: sec. 2.1.5). In many languages, then, adpositions are just as much of a closed class as uncontroversially functional elements like tenses, complementizers, or determiners.
I must note that this uses words like "many", "sometimes" and "often" where you use "most" and "almost all"... [;)] But still, this is an interesting point I've never considered before; Europe, as a whole, might in fact have exceptionally large adpositional systems as a kind of areal feature. Thanks.
We should take into account that Caucasian languages may have even more preverbs than IE tongues have adpositions. I recall reading that Abkhaz has something like 100-150 preverbs and Ubykh had about forty. Does anyone know of a source that addresses this issue in a comprehensive way?
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Post by Xonen »

gach wrote:
Is there any way, though, to disambiguate 'I get along well with Joe' from 'we get along well with Joe'?
Not terribly well. You can use a reciprocal construction using keskenämme ("amongst ourselves") as an object to denote an unambiguously two directional relationship,

Tule-mme Joe-n kanssa hyvin toimeen keskenä-mme.
[get.along]-PL1 Joe-GEN with well [get.along] amongst.one.another-PL1.POSS

but otherwise comitative constructions can indicate both a reciprocal relationship (I get along with you and you with me) or a one sided relationship with a plural subject (we get along with you but your relationship with us isn't specified).
Right. I could imagine saying something like...

Mä tuun Joen kans iha hyvin toimeen.
I come-1SG Joe.GEN with quite well action.ILL
'I get along well with Joe.'

...but I'm not sure what the difference between this and using the plural is. Perhaps this one carries the implication that while I get along well with Joe, somebody else who's somehow relevant to the context does not? Using the plural does seem to be the neutral, "default" option here, even if it is kind of ambiguous.
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Post by Omzinesý »

What's called a clause that starts 'although'?
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Post by MrKrov »

... Concessive?
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Post by Trebor »

A couple other questions:

- Does anyone happen to know what phonemes are represented in Kinyarwanda by the digraphs <cy> and <jy> and the trigraph <shy>?

- Adding to my above post about preverbs: how do languages with this feature as well as polypersonal agreement handle sentences like the following?

(1) I put the bag on the shelf above me.

(2) I'm sorry I crashed into you. (Assuming the language treats this situation in a similar way semantically.)

Would the solutions resemble one or the other of the below options, or something else?

(1) a. Above-on-I-it-put me the bag the shelf.
b. Me-it-above-on-I-it-put the bag the shelf.

(2) a. I-be.sorry into-I-crashed you.
b. I-be.sorry you-into-I-crashed.
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Post by sangi39 »

Trebor wrote:Does anyone happen to know what phonemes are represented in Kinyarwanda by the digraphs <cy> and <jy> and the trigraph <shy>?
A brief search turns up some inconsistent descriptions of Kinyarwanda phonology but "A Relational Grammar of Kinyarwanda" by Alexandre Kimenyi (1980), which you can find on Google Books, seems to have the best one on page 13, section 1.5 Phonological Rules. However, the orthography given doesn't match up with your question, but it seems that, alongside information given on omniglot.com and kinyarwanda.net, the answer may be this:

<c sh j> /tʃ ʃ ʒ/ vs.
<cy shy jy> /c ɟ ç/

When following other plosives and the nasals <y> seems to indicate some sort of palatalisation, which is realised (colloquially?) as a palatal sound matching the previous one in MOA (so <by> /bɟ/, <mny> /mɲ/ etc.).
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Post by thetha »

Darn you Sangi. Ninja'd. And I was so proud of myself for finding it so quickly. [:'(]
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Post by Micamo »

Trebor wrote:(2) I'm sorry I crashed into you. (Assuming the language treats this situation in a similar way semantically.)

Would the solutions resemble one or the other of the below options, or something else?

(1) a. Above-on-I-it-put me the bag the shelf.
b. Me-it-above-on-I-it-put the bag the shelf.

(2) a. I-be.sorry into-I-crashed you.
b. I-be.sorry you-into-I-crashed.
I don't know much about caucasian preverbs (and some quick googling has lead to no fruitful discussions on how they can interact with agreement) so I'm going to presume that for syntactic purposes what you're intending here is some kind of applicative construction. (Even if the morphological class "preverb" has non-applicative functions as well.)

The answer is; All of the above, actually. Some languages with applicatives allow two applicatives to appear on the same verb; Others do not. (I have never seen more than two applicatives on a verb, however. This may be because sentences which would require three or more applicatives are extremely rare in actual speech, or there may be some principled reason behind this.) Some languages' applicatives cause the verb to gain more agreement factors; Others do not (an applied object must use an existing agreement factor or go unagreed with). I've never personally witnessed an example of both happening at the same time, but my intuition tells me that they could probably exist.

And if you don't mind the unsolicited advice: Go with your gut. You ask lots of this type of question here, and while researching how natlangs behave is healthy and an endless font for ideas, don't let your desire for natlang precedent for your conlang's features to get in the way of making your conlang fun and interesting to make. If you want to do something that sounds cool, and you're not sure if it's naturalistic or not, then when in doubt, go with the cool thing. If you find out it doesn't occur in natlangs later, in my experience it's almost always easy enough to tweak so that you can explain the feature in naturalistic terms, even if the feature is unprecedented.
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Post by eldin raigmore »

Micamo wrote:And if you don't mind the unsolicited advice: Go with your gut. You ask lots of this type of question here, and while researching how natlangs behave is healthy and an endless font for ideas, don't let your desire for natlang precedent for your conlang's features to get in the way of making your conlang fun and interesting to make. If you want to do something that sounds cool, and you're not sure if it's naturalistic or not, then when in doubt, go with the cool thing. If you find out it doesn't occur in natlangs later, in my experience it's almost always easy enough to tweak so that you can explain the feature in naturalistic terms, even if the feature is unprecedented.
[+1] Seconded.
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Post by eldin raigmore »

MrKrov wrote:... Concessive?
Most probably. In English, if the clause that starts with "although" comes second, it could probably start with "but" and mean almost the same thing; but (or although) saying "although" seems (to me) mostly to mean the other clause is the main clause and the "although" clause is the conceded clause, whereas "but" seems mostly to mean the "but" clause is the main clause and the other clause is the conceded clause.
But in English (I think) we wouldn't start the first clause with "but" usually: Although I just did so.
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Post by Trebor »

roninbodhisattva wrote:And I would be able to do some stuff on Seereer, the language I work on, which might be useful for me in its own right.
I'm interested!
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