Yay or Nay?

[Omzinesý]

I was thinking about how to deal with topic and focus and foreground and background in Omlueuet. Right now the word order is OVS. I thought maybe the object is backgrounded or topicalized in these constructions and there is a focus on the subject. I was then thinking, that I could topicalize the subject by fronting and leave behind a resumptive pronoun, yielding a SOV[S:resumptive pronoun] order for topicalized subjects or focused objects. I feel like this fits the vibe of Omlueuet but I also really like rigid OVS. Maybe the topicalized subject could get an oblique case? What do you guys think?

What do you with topicalization in this context?
It seems that all(?) languages have a topicalization construction where the topic is somehow fronted (passives etc.), but it varies much important it is, ie. how often it is used. I'm very interested to see counterexamples!

It could be interesting that topicality is morphologically marked without changes in word order. Subjects are quite topical in the first place, so what does topicalization really express?

[Creyeditor]

I was thinking about how to deal with topic and focus and foreground and background in Omlueuet. Right now the word order is OVS. I thought maybe the object is backgrounded or topicalized in these constructions and there is a focus on the subject. I was then thinking, that I could topicalize the subject by fronting and leave behind a resumptive pronoun, yielding a SOV[S:resumptive pronoun] order for topicalized subjects or focused objects. I feel like this fits the vibe of Omlueuet but I also really like rigid OVS. Maybe the topicalized subject could get an oblique case? What do you guys think?

What do you with topicalization in this context?
It seems that all(?) languages have a topicalization construction where the topic is somehow fronted (passives etc.), but it varies much important it is, ie. how often it is used. I'm very interested to see counterexamples!

It could be interesting that topicality is morphologically marked without changes in word order. Subjects are quite topical in the first place, so what does topicalization really express?

You are asking exactly the right questions. I want this to be relatively rare. So maybe it marks a prementioned topic or a contrastive focus on the object. Maybe I can come up with a more narrow context.

[lurker]

By complete accident, the Commonthroat words for "to find" and "to lose" are homonyms: <fCq> [early falling strong whine, huff] I know autoantinyms are a thing, but they're usually a little more niche ("sanction" = approve or interdict, "cleave" = cling to or split apart).

Should I keep this quirk?

Additionally, the words for "outer space" and "night" are accidentally homonyms. This makes total sense for a language whose speakers are just wading out into the gaping void, but the yinrih have been a space faring species for 95 thousand years, and they even have populations living out their entire lives in space on orbital colonies. I think they'd have a single morpheme that's pretty narrowly scoped to refer to outer space.

[WeepingElf]

I'd guess that a homonymy of 'find' and 'lose' would be unstable. In English, the meaning 'to adhere' of cleave is definitely on its way out. The homonymy of 'outer space' and 'night', in contrast, seems to make sense to me and may be stable. Night is, after all, the time of day when one can look out into outer space.

[VaptuantaDoi]

By complete accident, the Commonthroat words for "to find" and "to lose" are homonyms: <fCq> [early falling strong whine, huff] I know autoantinyms are a thing, but they're usually a little more niche ("sanction" = approve or interdict, "cleave" = cling to or split apart).

Should I keep this quirk?

You could potentially distinguish them through aspect – "losing" is an atelic action, while "finding" is telic.

[Keenir]

By complete accident, the Commonthroat words for "to find" and "to lose" are homonyms: <fCq> [early falling strong whine, huff] I know autoantinyms are a thing, but they're usually a little more niche ("sanction" = approve or interdict, "cleave" = cling to or split apart).

Should I keep this quirk?

Yes; off the top of my head, Sumerian has homonyms for "crime" and "law" (or justice)...and I'm told they never got confused.

[Khemehekis]

By complete accident, the Commonthroat words for "to find" and "to lose" are homonyms: <fCq> [early falling strong whine, huff] I know autoantinyms are a thing, but they're usually a little more niche ("sanction" = approve or interdict, "cleave" = cling to or split apart).

Should I keep this quirk?

Yes; off the top of my head, Sumerian has homonyms for "crime" and "law" (or justice)...and I'm told they never got confused.

Doesn't Sumerian also have homonyms for "I" and "you"? Really confusing . . .

And I don't think I've ever actually come across the word "cleave" used to mean "cling" . . . it's something I only read about when contronyms are discussed.

[Kelisot]

I'm thinking of creating a lexicon for a Ryukyuan-inspired conlang. Should I use Proto Japonic as the base and continue evolving it or no?

[lurker]

Been thinking of changing up how Commonthroat handles possessive constructions so I can get rid of the possessive determiners and make Commonthroat truely pronoun free. Right now I have a normal possessive preposition, either <b> or <g>. Originally I had an alienable/inalienable distinction, but I don't think that's leading to any interesting structures, so I'll drop that.

Right now you form possessives as in English:

Code: Select all

rGhqp b khqkhp
rGhq-p   b  khqkh-p
house-3D of guy-3D
that guy's house

I might change this so that the possessive preposition <b> now functions as a proclitic particle, changing relationship between the referent and the word,

Code: Select all

b   rGhq-p
POS house-3D
his house
that (unspecified person's) house

rGhq-l
house-1
I, the house

b   rGhq-l
POS house-1
my house

So the proclitic changes the meaning of the noun suffix. Instead of the suffix matching a noun and its referent, it now means a thing associated with the referent indicated by the suffix. If you want to specify the referent, you put the possessive construction after the noun is the referent.

Code: Select all

khqkh-p b   rGhq-p
guy-3D  POS house-3D
That guy's house 
literally 
that guy his house

Any thoughts?

[Visions1]

I like the idea. (I like the other too.)
What if the person wants to say "I, his house"?

Have you considered maybe keeping it as like a lower register or the sort?

[lurker]

I like the idea. (I like the other too.)
What if the person wants to say "I, his house"?

Have you considered maybe keeping it as like a lower register or the sort?

That loss of specificity is why I'm hesitant to implement this change, though I like it otherwise.

Of course you can't currently say "his house" strictly speaking since there's no 3rd person possessive determiner, you'd have to say something like <rGhql b khqkhp>, which is "I, the house of that guy."

Perhaps I could split it based on the animacy of the possessor the way English does, where the construction with of is preferred for inanimate possessors, but the -'s form is preferred for animate possessors.

[lurker]

I've been thinking about adding a 3rd person medial suffix to the noun declension system. So there would be a distinction in the 3rd person among:

sFsFg "a friend"
sFsFMr "this friend"
sFsFqN "that friend"
sFsFp "yon friend"

whereas right now there are only indefinite, proximal, and distal forms. This would tie back to my earlier question about revamping the possessive, as the medial form indicates something far from the speaker but close to the listener, and the distal form indicates something far from both speaker and listener. So my new possessive constructions could look like:

g sFsFqN "Your friend"
g sFsFMr "My firend"
g sFsFp "his friend"
g sFsFDB "Whose friend?"

<b> would still used like the preposition "of" in English, and <g> would be used in the manner I described above.

I might also start using the 3rd person suffixes for discourse deixis as well as spatial deixis, where the closer the suffix the more important or topical the noun.

[thethief3]

very interesting i like it

[Visions1]

I think it's a good idea. It would make sense considering the communication things that might go in with the Yinrih.
Also, why not /g sFsFg/ - "Someone's friend"? Is lone /g/ tied to something?

I think the discourse deixis thing might get a clogged with three degrees of distance. However, I think I could be very wrong about that.

[Khemehekis]

Should I add the words "nectarine" and "amaranth" under the More Plants section of my Landau Core Vocabulary?

[lurker]

why not /g sFsFg/ - "Someone's friend"?

You're right, I just missed that one in the paradigm.

So now, instead of

Code: Select all

P     sGH-Mr          qpq Kq-p        qN
in    nest-3.PROX     put egg-3.DIST   your
You put your egg in this nest.

We have

Code: Select all

You] put your egg in this nest
P sGHMr qpq g KqqN
P     sGH-Mr          qpq-0     g    Kq-qN
in    nest-3.PROX     put-AUTH  POS  egg-3.MED