Conlang Card Exchange 2012e

Ní âre premye babik Yeu ve shapâmet premyeron nenon.

Ossí premyeron nenon wo' a?

Ossí ya dacha pidya údna binnya bina ve milt pena woha.

Ossí pena shapâma premye babik Yeu ve dúde latette nilimwege.

Daka kembí sha.

make.IMP you together

May you do likewise.

The final line of the Conlang Card Exchange is an admonition.  Daka is an imperative, 'make!', 'do!'  The pronoun modifies it to a jussive, 'may you do!', and sha is a useful adverb that adds emphasis, 'very', 'the same', 'just'.

I think one of the reasons for conlanging is putting things together, quite literally, like models. One of the early names for the Secret Vice on the internet was Model Languages.  What I think we are modelling, ultimately, is the universe.  Language shapes perception of the world we live in.  So go play and show what you come up with!

Fiat lingua!

McGuffey 1:1-6

The Journal of an Eclectic Tongue has been dormant for the first half of 2012.  Did you miss it?  I needed an exercise that would give this project some life.  McGuffey's First Reader seemed like a good exercise to challenge me.  It's available from Gary Shannon's website Fiziwig.  Here's a go at the first page.

[1] Bodú bin údnígo taknok,  I see a boy.
[2] Bodú bin údnan kalkan,  I see a girl.
[3] Bodú bin tago taknok ís kalkas,  I see the body and the girl.
[4] Ta taknok pohat bina dan kalkan,  The boy can see the girl. 

[5] Bodú poham bina dan kalkan as taknoka, I can see the girl and the boy.

[6] Bodú poham bina dan kalkan, I can see the girl.

That's a lot of information.

Bodú is the usual word for the pronoun I.

Bin is the word for see, look at.  The infinitive form of the verb is bina.

Poha is the stem for the auxiliary verb can, be able to.  If the subject of poha is bodú then the ending is -m.  If the subject of poha is a noun then the ending is -t.

Údnígo and údnan are both articles meaning a (certain one).  Údnígo is masculine animate accusative, and údnan is feminine accusative.  The Eclectic Tongue is heavily inflected and the inflections have to be learned.

Taknok means child, boy.  It is a masculine noun in the Eclectic Tongue.  Masculine nouns do not alter in the ending in the nominative and accusative forms.  After as in sentence [5] taknok takes the genitive ending -a.

Kalkan means girl, with the accusative ending -n, which is added to feminine nouns.  Feminine nouns in the Eclectic Tongue do have a separate accusative form of the noun, unlike masculine nouns.  The nominative form, kalka, is not used in this group of sentences.  After ís in sentence [3] kalkan replaces the accusative ending with the genitive ending -s.

Ta is the definite masculine nominative article.  Ta takes the ending -go before an accusative masculine noun.  Dan is the feminine accusative definite article.

Ís and as are conjunctions and both mean and-the.  After both conjunctions the noun is always in the genitive form, although it is not always a possessive.  In these sentences it is understood to accompany the previous noun, not to be the possessor of it.

That's enough for this lesson.  Bye for now.

Eclectic Language Made Simple

I have finished making notes on Italian and Spanish Made Simple. New ideas arise...

The pronoun system becomes more complex. I had wondered what had happened to the second person plural was after the honorific kembí entered the language. The example of Spanish suggests that it survives as the plural form of the familiar pronoun ako.

I have also learned some conculture about the People. Their mid-day meal is merenda in the early afternoon. I haven't discovered whether they also practice a mid-day nap. Perhaps they are going to turn out to be a Mediterranean climate culture.

I need to do some more writing on grammar of this language. Where to start?

Pronoun notes: There is

Ten ítí yodin pô nikeye, there is a port in the village

Ei ta pô, there is the port

Bâha has a number of rules about saying 'there is'. I'm settling down to this contrast. Ten ítí, literally 'it is (at)'. If somebody asks if there is a port in the village, you can say 'there is, it exists,' which is what the first sentence means. If you are going to point something out then the topic marker is used to mean 'there is'.

Pronoun notes: What?

Ei petta? What is that? What is this?

A common formation in the language. Ei is the topic marker. It indicates a new subject in talk, or something that has just appeared. So when the conversation changes then this phrase comes up. I imagine it is quite a common phrase.

Pronoun notes

Kude ítí-ten kem kembí yiret?, where are you going?

or Kembí yiret kude?

Today's question word is kude. Bâha ye shente has two words for where. Kude involves motion, to or from where, whither and whence. There is a group of prefixes that can go onto place words, including kude, to show direction.

To look for something in its place the question word is wú. I thought that this was a description about wú. Then I realised going meant motion not location and kude was more appropriate in these sentences.

Bâha ye shente, language of people, can be a good name for this language until such time as I find an ethnonym for it.

Pronoun notes

Otkai tí-ten kem ma tampat am shim gotú?, Why isn't my place ready?

Today's question word is otkai, why?

What puzzled me about this sentence was the original was 'Why isn't the bedroom ready?' Presumably the language has words for rooms, or even a room. I haven't found them yet. There are building words which I have yet to work through. Just not the words for the parts within a building. This creates an interesting conundrum.

Pronoun notes

Petta tí-ten kem kembí brant? What would you like?

My next cluster of notes have to do with question words. The examples are mostly from French, obvious from the sentence structure above. A literal translation of the sentence is What is it that you are-taking?

In the language brannant means to be taking. Some actions use different verbs when the action is a definite, once-and-for-all action; and when it is generic. An unrepeatable action would use weyant, to take. In this case when offered something the verb brannant is used for 'would like'.

And the question pronoun used here is petta, what, which thing.

Pronoun notes

Next on my notes I have the possessive adjectives for 'our':

naste, masculine
nastra, feminine
nastres, neuter
nas, plural

nastres kolon e nas, our bicycle
nas kola ye nas, our bicycles

Nas is the plural of yao, I. It appears nas doesn't have the status shift upwards that has happened to yao. Bodú has the plural bodúta. Nas and bodúta overlap in domains. Nas can be the plural of both yao and bodú.

Pronoun notes

The feminine article is da, accusative dan. Kalka, girl, is a example of a feminine noun; accusative kalkan. So far, so good. Nowela, new, is a feminine adjective, accusative nowelanian. Now that's just odd. The feminine accusative adjective has a long ending! What's more I think the ending is subject to sandhi. Put all three together and it becomes dan nowelaniang kalkan. The fun of language!

I could have used chona, woman, instead of kalka. I decided against it as the accusative takes a longer ending chonakan. Too much information at once.

Because this language has a feminine a-ending I wonder if I've invented a Teach Yourself Alien language.

Pronoun notes

The third person pronouns don't have possessive adjectives. It does have genitive pronouns which come after the possessed object. They are not used with the accompanitive preposition ya. The forms are yiha, masculine; yihes, feminine; and yihon, plural. The neuter genitive is taken from a different stem and I have not sat down and properly documented it yet.

The third person pronouns are ta, he; da, she; and ten, it. The plural pronoun is still lurking out there in the world of potential darkness, I think it is going to be *te. The forms ta and da were borrowed from a language sketch of a language I was using on the Planetpii list when I was a member. They were used as person markers, titles before proper names in the Khamtra language of the Old Dogs Pinclan language. They were borrowed from item markers for male and female objects in notes I took from Linear B. There is something counter-intuitive to me in having da as a feminine pronoun. I like it!

Feminine words: nouns, adjectives and pronouns, add the accusative ending -n. I thought masculine and neuter nouns take no similar marking of the accusative case. I have noticed that the next rule in my file says that animate masculines mark the accusative in the demonstrative pronoun and the adjective form, adding the tag -go. Apparently it is not marked in the noun although the genitive pronoun takes the same tag, yihago. There is no description of what defines a noun as animate. I shall have to decide that as I go along.

Pronoun notes

Súd is invariable and means own, self. It can be used by itself or with a pronoun.

súdam, my own
súd a bodú, my own
súd nas, our own
súdako, your own

If the pronoun is third person or second person addressed as kembí then the reflexive pronoun sebio is used.

Pronoun notes

Ta tent suon kolon as, he has his (own) bicycle.

Ta tent kolon yiha, he has his bicycle. (Hey! Where are you going with that!)

Suon is the third person reflexive possessive. It agrees with the noun. Like the first person possessive the possessed noun is followed by a second possessor after it. The first person is (y)am, the reflexive is (y)as. The reflexive is also used with the second person pronoun kembí.

In the second sentence the reflexive structure is replaced with the genitive pronoun yiha, of him. The possessed noun does not belong to the subject of the sentence. Instead it belongs to a third person. And, unless some agreement has been reached, he may object to someone taking off with his bike. Stop thief!

Pronoun notes

This is what the existing notes say:

Kolon, bicycle, neuter noun.

Ten kolon, the bicycle, correctly ten is the neuter pronoun.

Mes kolon am, my bicycle. Mes is the neuter possessive adjective. Possessive pronouns tend to be a bit belt-and-braces, literally my bicycle of-me. Most people don't even use this language unless they are someone in charge: a boss, a lord, your older sibling. Actually looking at the lexicon the Shente have a lot of language for people in charge. I'll write more about that another time. When people are not pulling rank they say kolon a bodú, (the) bicycle of your servant. There is no possessive adjective for bodú.

There are two words for you: kembí and ako. Kembí is the more common word; ako is used for addressing servants and employees, children, younger siblings and animals. Kembí and ako are like bodú in that they don't have possessive adjectives.

An Occasional Word: Shente

Shente: people, a people, folk, members of an ethnic group

Bodúta dien yodní shente, We become a people.

While I'm battling with deciding where to go next with Pronouns I will post some words. This seemed a good one with which to start. It is the only word that I have listed under Groupings of People. So I will use it as a working name for the Eclectic Language People. They are the Shente.

The word comes from French gens. The ending -te comes from a list of weak plural endings in Gaelic. As a rule it goes on the end of any noun that ends in an non-obstruent, especially n, l, (r) and s. It is the same morpheme at the end of boduúta, so it wonders around a bit; and obviously plays around with a rough rule of vowel harmonisation. -Te if the word is made of front vowels; -ta if the word is made of back vowels. Originally bodú, I, your servant, was written as boduh. I decided that the word-final h was fricative enough to allow the weak plural ending. As the word shifted with use the weak ending has remained.

Note that descriptive words with shente also have to be in the plural, like yodní.

The sentence comes from a creation myth and is the first statement about human beings after they came out of the ground into the world of light. It is an important statement.