What did you accomplish today? [2011–2019]

[Micamo]

Purple, I dunno, if it will have. I dunno what purple things are found in deserts besides flowers. Maybe it is it black-blue.

Well, there's the sky, sometimes. Besides, even if a people have never, ever seen a color before, the way language works means that if asked to describe it, they'll use analogies to things and words they already know: What words would they use?

(Also, very very commonly, the word for "purple" in a language, if there's a separate word for it at all, will derive from the name of a flower.)

[Chagen]

My accomplishment today is accomplishing nothing.

I feel like I've hit a brick wall with Pazmat. I have basic syntax down but this language doesn't have much use until I can get subordinating clauses down 'n' shit. Unfortunately that requires working on the participles, which I can't work on right now given that half of them are 2nd-declension nouns, which I got tore down to rebuild...something that hasn't even gotten past the first STEP yet.

Most subordinates are actually just started with the particle na but this might be kind of boring.

kāna na murēn yēfe
think.IMPERF-1S SUB stupid.person be.IMPERF-2S
I think that you're an idiot

Not to mention I still have no idea how I'm gonna derive a passive. Derive a whole new verb like PIE/Sanskrit/Japanese? A dedicated inflection? I prefer the former, because all you have to do is derive a new verb which enjoys all the benefits and membership bonuses of a full-fledged verb. But that would require a formant, and verbs with a formant already cannot take another one. Maybe those verbs would take an analytic construction? Or maybe I can break that rule solely for the passive formant...

I don't know why I feel so stuck right now.

[Egerius]

Long ago I settled on my Roman chinchilla conpeople having eight days per week.
Between 'Friday' and 'Saturday' there is a day of compulsory education.
The name I just came up with is 'Sabeto', modelled on Castilia/Italian 'Sábado/Sabbato' and the Romanz past participle of sabere (to know).

[Thrice Xandvii]

I assume because he downloaded the template from somewhere (like the body part diagram) and put his own words on it.

I thought that at first, but he said he made the chart, so I thought he had drawn it up in Paint or something.

[Ahzoh]

I assume because he downloaded the template from somewhere (like the body part diagram) and put his own words on it.

I thought that at first, but he said he made the chart, so I thought he had drawn it up in Paint or something.

I didn't make the chart, I made the words on the chart, and I changed some of the colours to fit my conlang's basic colours.

Purple, I dunno, if it will have. I dunno what purple things are found in deserts besides flowers. Maybe it is it black-blue.

Well, there's the sky, sometimes. Besides, even if a people have never, ever seen a color before, the way language works means that if asked to describe it, they'll use analogies to things and words they already know: What words would they use?

(Also, very very commonly, the word for "purple" in a language, if there's a separate word for it at all, will derive from the name of a flower.)

Ok, so what's a purple/violet desert flower an ancient desert culture might find? Lilac?
Oddly enough, Phoenecia get's it's name from the people's trade of a purple dye gathered from a snail.
Since most of my colours are derived from rocks and gemstones, I could try amethyst.

[alynnidalar]

It'd depend on where the desert is, no?

[Aseca]

I accomplished learning more signs from being exposed to friends who only sign to each other because they can't hear.

I already know enough to say basic sentences - and it has only been like nearly two weekends of being fully exposed.
Boy, my head had been swimming from the information overload.

It's not as hard as trying to get around in Japan even after practicing for five years.

[taylorS]

After doing some reading on how preglottalization of fortis coda plosives work in English I've become dissatisfied with Future English's phonology and am thinking of changing it, again. I'm dumping tone and I'm going to do some vowels shifts and mergers, instead. I'm also going to bring back pharyngealized vowels derived from /Vr/.

So the new Future English phoneme inventory looks something like this:

/p pʰ p’ t tʰ t’ k kʰ k’ ʔ/ <b p p' d t t' g k k' '>
/ts tsʰ ts’ tʃ tʃʰ tʃ’/ <dz ts ts' j c c'>
/f v s z ʃ ʒ x ɣ h/ <f v s z š ž x ł h>
/m mʰ n nʰ ŋ ŋʰ/ <m hm n hm ŋ hŋ>
/w j l/ <w y l>

/æ(ː) ɛ(ː) e(ː) i(ː) æu eu/ <á e é i ai eu>
/ɑ(ː) ɔ(ː) o(ː) u(ː) ɑi oi/ <a o ó u ai oi>
/æˤː ɛˤː ɪˤː ɑˤː ɔˤː ʊˤː/ <ár er ir ar or ur>

Length is indicated in the orthography by doubling the letter.

[DesEsseintes]

I'm starting to give TLFKAT some thought again, and decided to do a rough calculation of the possible number of CV(C) roots as I envisage them at the moment.

17 onsets: p m t ts s tn n tł ł tr r tš š k x/y q ʼ
10 nuclei: a ı ı̨ oa u á í ı̨́ óá ú
10 codas: p t s n ł r š k q (zero)

That gives me 17*10*10 = 1700 possible roots, or somewhat less as some combinations are impossible. As this is supposed to be a language with an enormously derivational verb system, that should more than suffice. Apparently, Navajo creates over 15000 verbs from 550 roots, and my Koyukon resource seems to indicate that the corpus only lists 600 roots.

So now I just need to find interesting ways to derive stem sets from the roots. Then I need to try and avoid slavishly copying Athabaskan grammar... That last bit is the most difficult part.

But I feel happy that I did something.

[Egerius]

Phew... after some weeks of transcribing photographed pages into a Pages document, there are all consonantic sound changes from Proto-Italic to Romance (from Sardinian to Brazilian Portuguese)
Source for the sound changes: Konsonantenwandel: Bausteine zu einer Typologie des Lautwandels und ihre Konsequenzen für die vergleichende Rekonstruktion – Martin Joachim Kümmel, 2007

[Ahzoh]

Baḻam ʾašol qar maḅejad ʾīhrōdūm!

I have completed the adjective declension for my conlang!

[Micamo]

bòzhǔt kèzi gəɗmə̀ atmúkeŋî hòdu.
bo2-zhu5t-0 ke2zi g=d'm@2 a=0-tmu1k-eng-i4 ho2du
3s.IRRL-die-NOM tomorrow TOP=man REL=3s.REAL-see-ACC-1s.A yesterday
The man I saw yesterday will die tomorrow.

wǎ nŋaì pahùp!
wa5 n=ngai2 pa-hu2p
NEG CORE=baby IMP-kick
Don't kick the baby!

[Täzari]

I have finally systematize the prefixes that express evidentiality on verbs of my conlang Lözusöteli:

bak- : witnessed
tap- : sensory (visual)
gut- : sensory (sound, taste, smell, touch)
tal- : hearsay (reliable source)
hak- : hearsay (non-reliable source)
rom- : inferential (general knowledge)
tog- : inferential (physical evidence)

Kuti bakbere as beensi.
kut-i bak-ber-e as been-si
something-NOMsm EVID-fall.pres.-3s.imp. from sky-PRE2sm
"Something has fallen from the sky"

Lez tapekkæze.
lez-Ø tap-ekkæz-e
ship-NOMsf EVID-arrive.pres.-3s.imp.
"A ship has arrived" (I see it)

Þaś khuśśi gutär pekbå.
þaś-Ø khuśś-i gut-är pekb-å
this-NOMsm fruit-NOMsm EVID-be.pres.3s rotten-NOMsm
"This fruit is rotten" (I taste it)

Såggde talbüte rellyæ in bæśśel.
sågg-Ø-de tal-büt-e rell-yæ in bæśś-el
rain-NOMsf-DETsf EVID-cause.pres.-3s.imp. damage.ACCpm in city-PRE1sf
"It seems the rain has caused damages in the city" (a reliable source said so)

Såggde hakbüte rellyæ in bæśśel.
sågg-Ø-de hak-büt-e rell-yæ in bæśś-el
rain-NOMsf-DETsf EVID-cause.pres.-3s.imp. damage.ACCpm in city-PRE1sf
"It seems the rain has caused damages in the city" (a non-reliable source said so)

Pai epæbi romekkæze nun.
pai epæb-i rom-ekkæz-e nun
I.GEN friend-NOMsm EVID-arrive.pres.-3s.imp. now
"My friend must have arrived now" (considering the time his journey takes)

Pers togśikle in betel.
pers-Ø tog-śikl-e in bet-el
mother.-NOMsf EVID-return.pres.-3s.imp. in house-PRE1sf
"Mother must have returned (must be at) home" (I see the lights are on)

[Chagen]

bòzhǔt kèzi gəɗmə̀ atmúkeŋî hòdu.
bo2-zhu5t-0 ke2zi g=d'm@2 a=0-tmu1k-eng-i4 ho2du
3s.IRRL-die-NOM tomorrow TOP=man REL=3s.REAL-see-ACC-1s.A yesterday
The man I saw yesterday will die tomorrow.

wǎ nŋaì pahùp!
wa5 n=ngai2 pa-hu2p
NEG CORE=baby IMP-kick
Don't kick the baby!

I can't do the first one but...

zṛtāya jwīpvūya imot!
baby-DEF-ACC kick-INFIN-ACC NEG.DEO_IMP-2S

Usually you could leave the -ot 2S ending off and just get Zṛtāya jwīpvūya im'!

[thetha]

táhe xéeŋu psheyaade'ani'hé kaáhdi manuŋgihúu.
man yesterday AN.TR-PASS-see-VOICE-PERF-NMLZ tomorrow AN.INTR-die-FUT.PERF

[Ahzoh]

I made reflexive patterns for Vrkhazhian, but they don't feel right...

Reflexive:
Infinitive - ʾaCCakīC
Past - nōkCōCaC / nakCūCCam
Past Prog. - yūkCōCaC / yūkCēCCam
Present - kūCCīC / kūCCīCam
Present Prog. - hakCūCīC / hakCūCCam
Future - ʾīkCaCeC / ʾīkCaCCam

[Micamo]

Thinking about how I want to derive noun incorporation in Emerald and Haneko: Haneko has a type 2 system, while Emerald has a type 3. The easiest answer would be to say that Proto-Pakaran had a type 3 (or type 4) system that degraded into a type 2 system in Haneko, but was preserved in Emerald: The problem with that explanation is that I've already established that Proto-Pakaran had no agreement, all Pakaran agreement affixes are independent developments. It's unheard of for a language to have productive type 3 incorporation with no agreement.

The answer I came up with is that Proto-Pakaran had several N->V derivational suffixes. The one I'll focus on is *-b'u, which creates a transitive verb meaning "S removes the N of O":

*d'asib'u "decapitate"
*asudyb'u "flay"
*kygab'u "shave"
*alagab'u "cut off the hand" (the Pakarans had a practice of taking the severed hands of their enemies as trophies)

The salient feature of *-b'u (and most of the other such suffixes) is that due to its semantics it was mostly only used with body part nouns.

In Haneko, the suffixes were reanalyzed as verbs (*-b'u becoming -ma or -mi, in a fashion that's somewhat unpredictable synchronically) and the nouns they attached to were reanalyzed as INs, but the semantic tendency to use them only with body part nouns hardened into a grammatical restriction. Hence, a type 2 NI system was born.

In Emerald, the same thing happened, but without the restriction to body part terms. Thus, we get a type 3 NI system in Emerald.

Also, considering giving Emerald a permanent name: Suéri. Y/N?

I made reflexive patterns for Vrkhazhian, but they don't feel right...

Reflexive:
Infinitive - ʾaCCakīC
Past - nōkCōCaC / nakCūCCam
Past Prog. - yūkCōCaC / yūkCēCCam
Present - kūCCīC / kūCCīCam
Present Prog. - hakCūCīC / hakCūCCam
Future - ʾīkCaCeC / ʾīkCaCCam

Well, how are they derived from the non-reflexive forms?

I can't do the first one but...

Shame on you! Relative clause strategies I usually figure out before I even decide on basic clause constituent order.

[zyma]

Also, considering giving Emerald a permanent name: Suéri. Y/N?

That sounds like a good name to me.

[Ahzoh]

I made reflexive patterns for Vrkhazhian, but they don't feel right...

Reflexive:
Infinitive - ʾaCCakīC
Past - nōkCōCaC / nakCūCCam
Past Prog. - yūkCōCaC / yūkCēCCam
Present - kūCCīC / kūCCīCam
Present Prog. - hakCūCīC / hakCūCCam
Future - ʾīkCaCeC / ʾīkCaCCam

Well, how are they derived from the non-reflexive forms?

It derived from the active forms, but it essentially went the same path as it did in Semetic languages, only with a <k> instead of <t>, both of which coming from reflexive affixes. I'm worried about this, but I don't like the alternate path of just having reflexive affixes appended to the side of the verb.

[Thrice Xandvii]

Also, considering giving Emerald a permanent name: Suéri. Y/N?

I like it!