Sakasõdakakowi

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Shemtov
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Sakasõdakakowi

Post by Shemtov »

Sakasõdakakowi is a a language belonging to the Tall-Islandic branch of Wanian. It is spoken on an Island I am calling "Tall Island" for now, which is north of rhe Shaniija-speaking continent. This language is spoken on the northeast part of the island.
Phonology:
/p b~β t d~ð k g~ɣ/ <p b t d k g>
/m n ŋ/ <m n n̈>
/f s x h/ <f s ch h>
/l/ <l>
/j w/ <y w>

The vocied stops take the fricative allophone intervocally.

/i u e o a / <i u e o a>

Archiphonemes:
/N Q/ <Ṽ V̀>

Archiphoneme /N/ is realized as a nasal vowel word finally, as a homorganic nasal before obstruents, as a geminated nasal befor nasals, as [nˡ:] before /l/, [ɲ:] before /j/ and /ŋʷ:/ before /w/.
Archiphoneme /Q/ is realized as creaky voice word finally, as a geminated obstruent before obstruents, as a geminated pre-nasalized obstruent before nasals, and as /ɬ: ç: xʷ:/ before /l j w/, respectively.

Phonotactics:
C(C)V(A) [A=Archiphoneme]
Clusters must follow sonorant hierarchy.
Verbs:
Present tense:
Verbs come in two voices: Passive (Null morpheme) and Active. For active voice, verbs come in two classes: One with the suffix -kẽ, and the other that inserts -ya- before penault.
N̈otoka: "To gesture at someone/something" Active voice: N̈otokakẽ
Sikon̈i "To scratch; to shallowly cut" Active Voice: Siyakon̈i


Nouns are divided into two genders: Human and Non-Human. For now, I will focus on their effect of plurals. Human nouns take the prefix Ka-
Kowi
"Woman"
Kakowi
"Women"


Non-humans reduplicate the first syllable:
Kusĩ
"Fish"
Kukusĩ
"Fish (plural)"

There are some irregulars:

"Island(s)"

"Subjects" (actually objects in the passive voice) take the prefix N̈u.

Example sentences:
Kowi n̈ukusĩ sikon̈i
"The fish was scratched [in this case: Descaled] by the woman

Kusĩ n̈ukowi siyakon̈i
"The woman scratched [ie. descaled] the fish"
Many children make up, or begin to make up, imaginary languages. I have been at it since I could write.
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Re: Sakasõdakakowi

Post by Shemtov »

Non-Present-Tense is shown on verbs by tense suffixes. Note that some stative verbs form the future with the subjunctive suffix, which will be discussed later:
Past: Sa
Future: Ke

Wòta n̈usõda n̈otokakẽsa
[wot:a ŋusonda ŋotokakensa]
"The man gestured at the pig"

Wòta n̈usõda n̈otokakẽke
[wot:a ŋusonda ŋotokakeŋke]
"The man will gesture at the pig"
Many children make up, or begin to make up, imaginary languages. I have been at it since I could write.
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eldin raigmore
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Re: Sakasõdakakowi

Post by eldin raigmore »

Nonpresent includes both past and future?
That’s unattested in natlangs!
I hope you do this! I want to see your success!

———

Past vs nonpast is common, especially in aspect-prominent languages;
Future vs nonfuture is also common, especially in mood-prominent languages.
Tense-prominent languages tend to have a three way split of present vs past vs future.
But AFAIK that’s all quite approximate and statistical and fuzzyish.

======

======
Edit: Oh, wait. Are you talking about the most basic morphological split of the verbforms? Or did you mean “non-present” in a less-technical usage?
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Re: Sakasõdakakowi

Post by k1234567890y »

eldin raigmore wrote: 08 Aug 2018 13:46 Nonpresent includes both past and future?
That’s unattested in natlangs!
I hope you do this! I want to see your success!
maybe it is something like "perfective aspect"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatic ... _languages

it seems that in Slavic languages, perfective verbs(verbs indicating the perfective aspect) can refer to the past or to the future, but not to present actions
I prefer to not be referred to with masculine pronouns and nouns such as “he/him/his”.
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Re: Sakasõdakakowi

Post by Shemtov »

eldin raigmore wrote: 08 Aug 2018 13:46 Nonpresent includes both past and future?
That’s unattested in natlangs!
I hope you do this! I want to see your success!

———

Past vs nonpast is common, especially in aspect-prominent languages;
Future vs nonfuture is also common, especially in mood-prominent languages.
Tense-prominent languages tend to have a three way split of present vs past vs future.
But AFAIK that’s all quite approximate and statistical and fuzzyish.

======

======
Edit: Oh, wait. Are you talking about the most basic morphological split of the verbforms? Or did you mean “non-present” in a less-technical usage?
I meant Present tense takes zero-marking, while there are special markers for past and future.
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Re: Sakasõdakakowi

Post by eldin raigmore »

Shemtov wrote: 08 Aug 2018 18:44
eldin raigmore wrote: 08 Aug 2018 13:46
Edit: Oh, wait. Are you talking about the most basic morphological split of the verbforms? Or did you mean “non-present” in a less-technical usage?
I meant Present tense takes zero-marking, while there are special markers for past and future.
“Emma Litella” wrote:Oh!
Well, that’s very different!
Never mind!
=======

@k1-90y :
Perfective aspect and past tense do tend statistically to be semantically correlated with each other;
and, irrealis mood and future tense do tend statistically to be semantically correlated with each other.
Which probably has something to do with past-vs-nonpast basic tense-split being common in aspect-prominent languages, and with
future-vs-nonfuture basic tense-split being common in mood-prominent languages.

But that’s not the sort of thing Shemtov turned out to be talking about.
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Re: Sakasõdakakowi

Post by Shemtov »

The main interesting thing about this conlang is syntax. It is an experiment in syntax, if you will, especially an OS word order; however I prefer to have to the morphology somewhat documented before I do the syntax.
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Re: Sakasõdakakowi

Post by k1234567890y »

ok eldin

also, it seems that the basic word order is OSV?
I prefer to not be referred to with masculine pronouns and nouns such as “he/him/his”.
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Re: Sakasõdakakowi

Post by Shemtov »

k1234567890y wrote: 08 Aug 2018 21:50 ok eldin

also, it seems that the basic word order is OSV?
Yes.
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Re: Sakasõdakakowi

Post by k1234567890y »

Shemtov wrote: 08 Aug 2018 22:13
Yes.
nice (:

and I guess it has agreements for persons?
I prefer to not be referred to with masculine pronouns and nouns such as “he/him/his”.
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Re: Sakasõdakakowi

Post by Shemtov »

k1234567890y wrote: 08 Aug 2018 22:15
Shemtov wrote: 08 Aug 2018 22:13
Yes.
nice (:

and I guess it has agreements for persons?
Actually, no, but it marks whether the subject is passive with an active "object" or vice versa. The main bit of morphological interest is in the moods, which can act, in some verbs like a future tense instead of the regular future.
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Re: Sakasõdakakowi

Post by k1234567890y »

ok nice (: and thanks for explanation
I prefer to not be referred to with masculine pronouns and nouns such as “he/him/his”.
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Re: Sakasõdakakowi

Post by Shemtov »

Adjectives are treated like verbs. Attributive Adjectives will not be treated in this post, as they involve verb chains, which needs a post of its own.
Kusĩ pãlapã
"The Fish is red"

The Copula is <Ke>:
Kusĩ fãtawi ke
"The Fish is a tuna"

Moods:
The Optative Mood is the suffix -pĩso. This mood expresses hopes of the speaker. When I post the pronouns, I will show that it can also have a Desidaritive meaning. It is also used with adjectives as a future tense instead of -ke:
Kowi n̈ukusĩ sikon̈ipĩso
"May the fish be descaled by the woman!"

Gfa pãlapãpĩso
"The spear will be red!"

The suffix -kẽ is the imprecative mood, which shows the fears of the speaker:
Kowi n̈ukusĩ sikon̈ikẽ
"I Hope the woman does not descale the fish"


The suffix -Tĩ is the conditional mood, which occurs in the apodosis:
Kusĩ fãtawi ke, kowi sikon̈itĩ
"If the fish is a tuna, the woman will descale [it]
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Re: Sakasõdakakowi

Post by Shemtov »

Personal Pronouns come in Subject and Oblique forms:
Subject:
1P singular: N̈è
1p plr exclusive: Mù
2P sing Tẽ
2P plr: Tĩ
3p sing: Tà
3P plr: Sè

Oblique:
1p sing: N̈õ
1p plr : Mõ
2P : Nĩ
3p sing: Dã
3P plr: Sĩ

Example sentence:
Nĩ n̈è n̈otokakẽsa
"I gestured at you"
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Re: Sakasõdakakowi

Post by eldin raigmore »

Which form do you use when the pronoun is a non-subject core-term of a clause, such as an object of the verb?
Those are arguments, not obliques; but neither are they subjects.
English’s solution is to use the “objective” form of the pronoun for all non-subject uses, including non-subject core terms (I.e. objects of verbs) and objects-of-adpositions (often oblique parts of the clause).
Is that what you intended for your conlang?

Or maybe you’d use the “subject” form whenever the pronoun was a core argument of the clause (e.g. the primary object), and reserve the “oblique” form for non-arguments (i.e. obliques)?
Or, if you have any ditransitive verbs and clauses, the split could be intermediate between those two possibilities? E.g. “subject” for subjects and primary objects, “oblique” for secondary objects and obliques?
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Re: Sakasõdakakowi

Post by Shemtov »

eldin raigmore wrote: 10 Aug 2018 16:21 Which form do you use when the pronoun is a non-subject core-term of a clause, such as an object of the verb?
Those are arguments, not obliques; but neither are they subjects.
English’s solution is to use the “objective” form of the pronoun for all non-subject uses, including non-subject core terms (I.e. objects of verbs) and objects-of-adpositions (often oblique parts of the clause).
Is that what you intended for your conlang?

Or maybe you’d use the “subject” form whenever the pronoun was a core argument of the clause (e.g. the primary object), and reserve the “oblique” form for non-arguments (i.e. obliques)?
Or, if you have any ditransitive verbs and clauses, the split could be intermediate between those two possibilities? E.g. “subject” for subjects and primary objects, “oblique” for secondary objects and obliques?
It's like English; I used "Oblique" instead of "Objective" because if this use. Nouns in General have only two cases- "Subject" and "Other". The syntactic function of "Other" is based on syntax. As I said, a lot of this language is based on syntax; I want to document the Morphology first; A lot of what I post is meaningless until I begin posting Syntax, and my posts are taken as a whole.
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Re: Sakasõdakakowi

Post by Shemtov »

The Benefactive Applicative is added to verbs to make them ditransitive. The applicative marker depends on the verb class. The benefactive applicative is for class 1 Reduplication of penault, and for class 2, prefix Ne-. It cabn change the meaning of the verb.
Class 1:
Bùyehõfati
"To lift"
Bùyehõfafati
"To give"

Class 2:
Dmekò
"To throw"
Nedmekò
"to throw at"

So:
Kusĩ nè tẽ Bùyehõfafatikẽsa
"I gave the fish to you"

Kusĩ wòta nè neyadmekòsa
"I throw the fish at the pig"

We see here where the IO is placed: Between the DO and the Subject for regular nouns, after the Subject for pronouns.
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Re: Sakasõdakakowi

Post by Shemtov »

Attributive adjectives are created by a verb chain. If the described noun is the object, it usually changes the order to SOV:
N̈è gfa pãlapã yadmekò
"I threw a red spear"

Change this particular sentence to passive voice, and the OSV order stays:
N̈õ n̈ugfa pãlapã yadmekò
"The red spear was thrown by me"


For Ditransitive (applicative) sentences, the adjective-verb is followed by the 3P pronoun, which marks it as an independent phrase:
Kusĩ pãlapã dã wòta nè neyadmekòsa
"I threw the red fish at the pig"
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Re: Sakasõdakakowi

Post by Shemtov »

Verbal Derivational Morphology:
This is the last topic in Morphology before I move on to syntax. There is also a lot to say on Nominal Derivational Morphology, but I will leave for later.

The Causitive of Intransitive verbs: Prefix Wã-
Verb "Potaka" "To Die"
Wãpõtaka "To kill"

N̈usõda põtakasa
"The man died"

Sõda n̈utoka wãpõyatakasa
"The autocrator killed the man"

Mù tãbosa
"You walked"

Sõda n̈utoka wãyatãbo
"The autocrator forced the man to walk"

The Causitive of transitives is the infix -p(a)- before the ultima:

Gfa sõda n̈utoka yadmepakòsa
"The autocrator forced the man to throw the spear"

Sõda n̈utoka n̈õ wãpõtapakasa
"The autocrator forced me to kill a man"


Kusĩ kowi nè siyakopn̈isa
"I forced the woman to descale the fish"
Last edited by Shemtov on 15 Aug 2018 02:44, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Sakasõdakakowi

Post by Shemtov »

Now, we get into syntax:
If multiple nouns take the same grammatical role the conjuction Mã may be used. In a simple transitive sentence, objects are stringed together without Mã:
Sõda kowi nè n̈otokakẽ
"I gestured to the man and woman"

But Different subjects take mã:
Gfa n̈ukowi mã kamete siyakon̈i
"The woman and the girls carve [lit. scratch] the spear"
(In the culture, it is the duty of a man's wife and unmarried daughters to decorate his spear with carvings. There is a whole system of meaning to the carvings, including the man's clan, whether he married in the clan or outside- there is no stigma to either, it is simply if he married outside, the carver "Apologizing" for any error in the clan carving- and if he has killed with his spear any "enemy of the Autocrator" or in self-defense.)

However the following is impossible:
*Gfa n̈ukowi mã n̈ukamete siyakon̈i
As the subject was already marked, the mã replaces the n̈u


In Ditransitives, whether applicative or causative, multiple DOs and IOs require mã:
Sõda mã kowi n̈utoka n̈õ wãpõtapakasa
"The autocrator forced me to kill a man and a woman"
Many children make up, or begin to make up, imaginary languages. I have been at it since I could write.
-JRR Tolkien
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