rain.UNNOM I.NOM soaked(1sg): the rain soaked me / I got soaked in the rain
I.abs sing(1sg, intrans) song.UNABS: I sing a song
Archive for November, 2015
Detail #236: Unabsolutive / Unnominative Case
Sunday, November 29th, 2015Dairwueh: Adjectives and Comparison
Sunday, November 29th, 2015laxe-bar tond-at
tall-er tree-gen
'taller than a tree'
aras - loved
enabar - more loved
enabəvar - most loved
arasbəvar - the most loved (in the whole world)
side - good
rembar - better
rebəvar - best
sidbəvar - best (in the whole world)
vorge - strong
marbar - stronger
marbəvar - strongest
vorgbəvar - strongest (in the whole world)
but:
laxer - long, tall
laxebar - longer, tallest
laxebəvar - longest, tallest
laxebəvar - longest, tallest (in the whole world)
At his best, he can solve any problem by just looking at it for half a minute, at his worst, he'll get stuck on the smallest problem forever.
nosidbavres (masc) | nosidbavrin (fem) | nosidbavrer (masc plur) | nosidbaverta (fem plur) | nosidbavre (neut sg and pl)
nogarsabavres | nogarsabavrin | nogarsabavrer | nogarsabaverta | nogarsabavre
nolaxebavres | nolaxebavrin | ...
Some More Blackletter-ish Doodling
Saturday, November 28th, 2015Dairwueh: A Restriction on Personal Pronouns
Thursday, November 26th, 2015əre NOUN.ACC: on account of noun, due to noun, on behalf of noun, for the sake of noun.
əre vevna tarna
prep my.acc.masc issue*.acc.masc
sgutavne əre vevna tarna: do not stop on my account
sgutavne əre uvivna greivna: do not stop by my orders (essentially indicating that I never gave such orders - notice that 'order' is always in the plural)
sgutavne əre veve pira: do not stop for my pleasure (indicating that I would not be pleasured by such cessation)
air is aile (revisited)
Thursday, November 26th, 2015Word derivation for "air" :
Basque = aire, Finnish = ilma
Miresua = aile
My previous Miresua conlang word for air was eila. I swapped around the A and the E. I'm trying to lessen the number of nouns ending in -A.
The word air, as in Earth's atmosphere, appears about a dozen times in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
...she noticed a curious appearance in the air: it puzzled her very much at first, but, after watching it a minute or two, she made it out to be a grin, and she said to herself "It's the Cheshire Cat: now I shall have somebody to talk to."
Sargaĺk Phonology, Orthography and Latinization
Wednesday, November 25th, 2015Sargaĺk has a three-way series of stops: voiced, unvoiced, and ejective: /p t k pʼ tʼ kʼ b d g/. The ejectives are normally written with ', e.g. mak'ugu.
The points of articulation are bilabial, alveolar and velar.
Affricates do not fully fill up the three-way system: /tÍ¡s, tÍ¡sʼ, t͡ɕ, t͡ɕʼ, d͡ʑʼ/. . These are written c, c', Ä, Ä', Ê’.
The fricatives are f, s, z, ɕ, ʑ and x. /ɕ/ is transcribed š, /ʑ/ as ž, the others by the obvious Latin letters.
Further there are two laterals - a velarized one, and a (lightly) palatalized one. I will transliterate thesel, ly. There are three nasals, /m n Å‹/, transliterated with the same symbols. An alveolar trill also exists, transliterated r.
All consonants except the ejectives and the fricatives /f, x/ have length distinctions, which are marked by doubling the letter, except for the digraphly, which is lengthened by doubling the y.
The laterals, the nasals and r can all appear as syllabic cores in open syllables. However, the syllables might alternate, due to morphological reasons, between being open and closed. This causes alternations where a vowel is inserted before the syllabic consonant, thus rendering it asyllabic. The symbols used for these are: ḿ, ń, ŋ', ĺ, ĺy, ŕ. The diacritic is retained even when the consonant is not syllabic.
An exceptional word with regards to this is Sargaĺk itself - it is formed from a root sargĺ (an endonym) and the root ĺk (an otherwise almost obsolete word for 'language'). In combining the two of them, *sargĺaĺk would be obtained, which later lead to the loss of the first ĺ.
Vowels
Sargaĺk's vowel inventory consists of six vowels, /a e i o u ə/. /a/ is normally in the vicinity of [ɑ ], although depending on consonants such as lʲ and vowels such as /e/ in the same phonetical vicinity can pull it forward towards [a]. The alveolo-palatal consonants also tend to move /a/ towards [a] and even into the territory just 'south' of [æ] in the vowel trapezoid.
/e/ is normally somewhere between [e] and [ɛ]. The sequence /elʲ/ often has a slightly closed, but not retracted articulation. /eɫ/ retracts and closes /e/ a bit, towards [ɨɫ]. /er/ and /eŋ/ often has a slightly opened articulation as well, almost reaching into [æ]-like territory. A palatal consonant in the onset of a syllable may prevent such opening, though.
The vowels /u o/ often cause rounding on preceding consonants. When close - following or preceding /lʲ/, they may front towards [ʉ ɵ]. Much like /e/, /r/ and /ŋ/ cause it to open up a bit, but unlike /e/, /o/ opens up a bit preceding /ɫ/ as well.
/ə/ seems to roam about its bit of the vowel trapezoid according to a similar logic: /lʲ/ before or after it causes some fronting, /ɫ/ some retraction (and opening), an /r/ after it causes some opening.
/i/ moves between [ɨ] when close to velars, [ɪ] when close to palatals, and slightly widened in the vicinity of all the nasals. The presence of /r/ does not cause any widening.
Word initially, Sargaĺk seldom has any particularly large clusters. Words that begin in consonants almost all have a vowel for their second sound. Inside words, however, up to five consonants in a cluster can appear, although this is not particularly common. For whatever reason, only one cluster is likely to appear in a root.Stress
Stress falls on the first syllable of most words. Syllabic consonants in the first syllable can be stressed too. Secondary and tertiary stresses alternative with unstressed syllables according to patterns along the lines of 10203 and 10302, where 0 stands for unstressed.
Tatediem Verb Prefixes as Derivative Affixes
Tuesday, November 24th, 2015-sudlà hi (là hi in several directions) : to dance
-tagslà hi (là hi clockwise): also to dance
-kugilà hi (là hi towards the subject): to attempt to attract something by singing (or alternatively dancing)
-xemelà hi (là hi due to duty): to sing a working song, or to work rhythmically in coordination with the working song
-kautolà hi (là hi gracefully): to sign or dance a solo part in a performance, or to sing or dance in a very impressive fashion
-cakŋilà hi (to act preparatorily for là hi): to practice some musical skill
-stunlà hi (là hi collaboratively): to dance in a big formation
-kautotÃni: to see with a sharp eye
-akriwtÃni: to be a peeping Tom
-irbuntÃni: to be watchful, to mind something
-gaftÃni: to act so as to appear outwards to be something (gaf normally is a passive)
-lewtÃni: to recall (normally, lew is reflexive momentane)
-hustÃni: to spy (normally, -hus- signifies doing silently), to guard
-Å‹iÅ‹utÃni: to dream of adventure (-Å‹iÅ‹u- signifies 'away from home')
-nnaliktÃni: to be shy (-nnalik- signifies 'turning downwards')
Bringing Up Children in Conlangs: Language Death
Monday, November 23rd, 2015shadow is irjal (revisited)
Monday, November 23rd, 2015irjal = shadow (noun) (Some things Google found for “irjal”: an unusual to uncommon term; a rare last name that can be Indonesian; a rare first name; similar Ãrjál is in Hungarian a conjugation of the verb to write; similar Irja is an uncommon feminine Finnish first name; Irjal ash Shaykhiyah is the name of a place in Iraq; similar Irjala is the name of a place in Finland)
Word derivation for “shadow” :
Basque = itzal, Finnish = varjo
Miresua = irjal
My previous Miresua conlang word for shadow was iljar. I swapped the L and R around, which makes the new word look more similar to the Basque and the Finnish words.
The word shadow isn’t in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, although its plural can be found once in Through the Looking-Glass.
— the mild blue eyes and kindly smile of the Knight — the setting sun gleaming through his hair, and shining on his armour in a blaze of light that quite dazzled her — the horse quietly moving about, with the reins hanging loose on his neck, cropping the grass at her feet — and the black shadows of the forest behind —
shadow is irjal (revisited)
Monday, November 23rd, 2015Word derivation for "shadow" :
Basque = itzal, Finnish = varjo
Miresua = irjal
My previous Miresua conlang word for shadow was iljar. I swapped the L and R around, which makes the new word look more similar to the Basque and the Finnish words.
The word shadow isn't in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, although its plural can be found once in Through the Looking-Glass.
-- the mild blue eyes and kindly smile of the Knight -- the setting sun gleaming through his hair, and shining on his armour in a blaze of light that quite dazzled her -- the horse quietly moving about, with the reins hanging loose on his neck, cropping the grass at her feet -- and the black shadows of the forest behind --