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Phonology





Phonotactics

(C)(C)(V(V),r,l,r,n,m)(C)(C)

<x ȟ h ł ľ> cannot appear in clusters; they reduce to <h h h l l>.

Stress usually comes on the last syllable, unless there is an acute accent, as those mark irregular stress.

Grammar

Proto-Sylphic is VSO and head-initial. It has the following twenty cases, which are marked by mutating or affixing to the noun:

• absolutive, which marks the object of a transitive verb and the core object of an intransitive verb;
• ergative, which marks the agent of a transitive verb;
• abessive, which marks a lack of the marked noun;
• partitive, which marks a noun selected from a larger group;
• vocative, which marks an identifier;
• dative, which marks the indirect object of a transitive verb or the recipient or beneficiary of an item or action;
• genitive, which indicates a noun as modifying another noun;
• instrumental, which marks the means by which the subject does something;
• equative, which marks comparison;
• egressive, which marks the beginning of an action;
• terminative, which marks the end of an action;
• temporal, which marks a time;
• ablative, which marks motion away from something;
• allative, which marks motion onto something;
• comitative, which marks companionship or grouping;
• elative, which marks motion out of something;
• illative, which marks motion into something;
• inessive, which marks motion inside something;
• lative, which marks motion to something; and
• perlative, which marks motion through, across, or along something.

Proto-Sylphic verbs conjugate for one of four voices (active, passive, adjutative, and antipassive), four persons, six noun classes, and three numbers, and agglutinate for one of twelve moods (indicative, energetic, subjunctive, conditional, jussive, potential, imperative, interrogative, dubitative, permissive, precative, and inferential), three tenses (past, present, and future), and four aspects (imperfect, perfect, gnomic, and inchoative). Proto-Sylphic has the following six noun classes:

• celestial I, used for divine, celestial, and astral beings and things (e.g. gods, planets, stars, etc.);
• celestial II, used for abstractions;
• human, used for safir, humans, and other sentient beings;
• animate I, used for animals and plants;
• animate II, used for machines; and
• inanimate, used for everything else.

[/infodump]

Please post comments, constructive criticism, suggestions, and the like below.

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Safirian Empire: Forum | Wiki

Looks kitchen-sinky so far.
Aspects should be named perfective and imperfective.

Might there be some copypasta error? A bunch of your letters/sounds turn up as question marks for me.

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КЕРВЕНСКИЙ

For me also .

How are these used? Can you give examples? Do they only mark beginnings/endpoints of actions, not beginning/endpoints generally? (Like "at the end of the line"?



Location in time? Duration in time? Until a certain time? From a certain point in time? There are plenty of things about time that could be marked by case. A common strategy in natlangs to use regular, 'spatial' adpositions and locational cases with an extended meaning, to also mark various temporal relations: at noon (locative), throughout the night (perlative), from the sixth of June (ablative) to seventh of August (allative), etc.



How will those noun classes be manifested? By agreement of some kind? (I suppose so, since that's pretty much the definition of 'noun class')

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constructedlanguages.net

So? :P


Alright.


I think so *reposts in X-SAMPA*


For example, “kick” + EGR -> “kickoff (e.g. a football game); or “era” + TER -> “end of an era”.


Ah, my bad. Location in time.


Define “manifest”, please.

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Safirian Empire: Forum | Wiki

IMO this looks more like a kind of derivation, rather than a case.

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constructedlanguages.net

Alright, so, I really don't feel like trying to reconstruct Proto-Sylphic (the progenitor of the language family that includes Xylphika), so that is now what this language is.

I also added a whole bunch of cases:

• situative, for comarison
• auxiliary, for the arguments of auxiliary verbs
• videris, for observers
• essive
• translative
• instructive
• adessive
• causal-beneficiary

and now the equative case is used only to mark similarity, not comparison in general.

_________________
Safirian Empire: Forum | Wiki

How do you express, for example, duration or extent in time? Or starting and end points? How do you express, for example:

He slept for two hours.

She will be busy from the 16th of April until the 4th of June.

He will be working throughout the summer.

???

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constructedlanguages.net

Explain, please.

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constructedlanguages.net

I've been taking a closer look at your local cases (those) that usually express spatial movement and/or location). Customarily, local cases can be divided into:
(1) Those that express movement to something.
(2) Those that express movement from something.
(3) Those that express location.

One could also add: (4) those that express path, or movement across something, but I'll focus on (1)-(3).

When it comes to (1), you seem to have a three-way distinction, between illative (which we may call an 'inner local case'), allative (which we may call an 'outer local case'), and lative (which we may call a 'general local case')

What's your rationale for distinguishing these three? Do you need a general lative case, if you have an illative and an allative case? In what situations would you used the respective cases?

When it comes to (2), you only seem to have a two-way distinction, between the 'inner' elative and ablative. I assume that The ablative may correspond to both the allative and the lative. Am I right? But then why do you only have a two-way distinction among the 'from'-cases, when you have a three-way distinction among the 'to-cases'?

When it comes (3), you list a general 'locative' case. You also list an inessive case. This could be interpreted as an 'inner' case, corresponding to the illative and the elative ones. But you say it's for motion rather than location, which is a bit confusing. You later add an 'adessive' case, which would presumably be the 'outer local case'.




Does the above table accurately represent your system of local cases?



Which argument? The subject? The object? (But wouldn't the object of an auxiliary verb typically be a verb phrase??). Can you give any example sentences to show how this case works? (The same also for your other cases; it'd be much more interesting with sample sentences than just a long list of case names.)

_________________
constructedlanguages.net

Personally, I feel like you have way too many cases. For instance, according to Wikipedia, Finnish only has 15 cases and Estonian has 14, (and not all of them are really used!), and these two are languages are generally considered to be the more "extreme" cases. My suggestion is to combine some of the cases that are similar enough to each other, since their meaning is nearly the same anyways. In many languages a case might have more than one use. Additionally, as said above, in a given language with cases, not all the cases it has might be used, and not to mention that even things that may be expressed in case can be expressed through other means, such as particles or sentence structure. Lastly, can you show examples of your cases? It's better that way than just saying "oh this is for comparison," since not every language uses the "same" case in the same way, because in reality the case names are just things linguists use to conveniently group cases together, even though they might have different (but similar) functions in different languages.

Hope that helps.

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I now have a blog. Witness the horror.

I think I think, therefore I think I am.
- Ambrose Bierce

slept.3PS.HUM hours-PER two-TEMP

be.3PS.HUM-FUT sixteen-TEMP April-EGR four-TEMP June-EGR

work.PASS.3PS.HUM-FUT summer-TEMP-PER



evolve.3PPL PL-animal Darwin-VID -> According to Darwin, animals evolve.
turn.4PS-IMP bolt-ERG this.manner-direction-TRNS shop-manual-VID -> The shop manual says to turn the bolt this way.



Yes, except I don't see a locative anywhere???



Shit, I forgot to remove the auxiliary before posting that.

(Alright.)



Examples? Will do.

_________________
Safirian Empire: Forum | Wiki

Basically true. One can analyse a few Caucasian languages as having more cases. But their 'extra cases' basically consist combination of local cases with location markers ('inside', 'outside', 'above', 'nearby, 'behind' etc.). Thereby, one can form a large array of cases with specialised meanings (like 'from behind' (ablative + 'behind'), 'to underneath' (lative + 'underneath'), etc. Whether one wants to analyse all these as cases on their own right may to some extent be a matter of definition.

What I object to is not so much the number of cases, but the fact the the poster has presented not so much a case system, but rather a list of case labels. The explanation behind each case label is extremely brief, and the selection of cases does not seem to be very systematic.



I misread your post, sorry. OTOH, the lack of a locative makes the case system less balanced. Now there is only one 'general' local case (the lative), but no corresponding case for 'movement from' and 'location'.



Does 'TEMP' modify 'two' in relation to 'hours', 'two' in relation to the head verb ('sleep') or is it a clitic that modifies the whole phrase 'two hours' in relation to the head verb ('sleep')?

work.PASS.3PS.HUM-FUT summer-TEMP-PER[/quote]

Could one analyse the combined TEMP-PER as a case in its own, rather than as an instance of double case marking?

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constructedlanguages.net

The essive can be used to mark (temporary) location; for permanent location, the allative could be used. The ablative marks movement away from things.



Could one analyse the combined TEMP-PER as a case in its own, rather than as an instance of double case marking?[/quote]

One could, but that wouldn't be the prevailing opinion (at least I don't think so).

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Safirian Empire: Forum | Wiki

Couldn't one regard TEMP as somehow modifying the case-marker (PER), or at least form a unit with it (much like locational markers - like 'inside', 'above', etc. - can be said to form units with local cases)? It seems to me like TEMP would here in fact behaves much like a locational marker.

Could one not just drop TEMP, and say just summer.PER? Or could summer.PER be interpreted in any other way?

Are there any other instances of case-stacking (multiple cases on the same word?) Are there fixed order in which the case-markers occur?

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constructedlanguages.net

What's that?

If it is just:
I saw ONE BOY of them. and ONE BOY of them saw me.
the clauses will be ambigue.

I would suppose that 'of them' would be in the partitive.
Cup OF COFFEE

Do all cases occur in all six noun-classes? Is there any neutralisation of cases in some nouns? Do the case-markers have any allomorphs, or are case-markers always the same, for all nouns?

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constructedlanguages.net

I've not worked out the interaction between cases and noun classes yet.

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Safirian Empire: Forum | Wiki