Conlangers

Here is more of the funlang. This time I did the Eye Juggler text from Dirk Elzinga.

Piya was seeing something.

OK, so proper names get classifiers, too

This was as follows.

Children were belonging to Tabuni.

And marking plural on the predicate amuses me, so…

They were playing.

This was as follows.

They were plucking out something.

And with classifiers that can be used as pronouns, there is no need for separate third person pronouns.

Eyes were in hands.

And they (the eyes) were thrown upwards.

And they were made to return.

This was into eye sockets.

Piya wanted to play.

(Piya’s) eyes were dark.

And they were shiny.

Piya plucked out something.

They (the eyes) were in hand.

And they were thrown upwards.

And they begin to come down.

This was interrupted.

This (interruption) was a cedar tree.

Piya made something shake.

The cedar tree shook.

The eyes did not come down.

The children laughed.

They mocked someone.

Piya was mocked.

This caused anger.

This was in Piya.

And this was the reason.

This was as follows.

Piya chased after something.

They (the children) were chased.

And they were not caught.

So this is one way to make things less agglutinative – drop a syllable that is identical to the previous syllable. I suppose I should make sure I didn’t forget to do this elsewhere.

Piya stopped chasing.

Piya left.

Piya must make something new.

These were eyes.

And they were from pine sap.

Piya’s eyes are like pine sap.

And they are no longer shiny.

And they are yellow.

This is a new, unnamed funlang. It is an experiment in topic – comment with only intransitive predicates. So each full sentence is only two words and two words only. Pronouns include one that refers to the topic of the previous sentence (SAME) and one that refers to the comment of the previous sentence (COMMENT). It might even be non-recursive, but not being a theoretician, I won’t swear to that.

I was walking.

This was yesterday.

And this was on the shore.

And this was interrupted.

I tripped.

This (tripping) was on a rock.

This (the rock) might talk.

I picked something up.

And I spoke.

The rock was in hand.

And it was spoken to.

I said something.

This (what was said) was a question.

This was as follows.

Is this a rock?

And it speaks?

And it said something.

This was as follows.

A rock I am.

And I speak.

I said something.

This was as follows.

I was not spoken to.

You did not speak.

And you did not say something.

This was possibly as follows.

I should watch out.

This (watching out) would be for you.

It replied.

This was as follows.

A rock I am.

And I speak.

And I am mean.

This is the reason.

The speech caused anger.

This (anger) was in me.

And was the reason.

This was for the following.

I threw something.

It (the rock) was thrown.

And it was in the ocean.

I did not see (something) again.

It (the rock) was not seen again.

I like the repetitiveness of otherwise transitive verbs. It amuses me.

I also like the fact that speak and spoken to are different, unrelated words. And that the converse of pick up is be in hand.

I like that pronouns come in two sets: new and previously mentioned. With regular nouns, this is accomplished by using noun plus classifier for a new mention and the classifier only as a previous mention.

I am a bit worried about the lack of clarity in where a quote ends. Adding something like “saying finished” might work, but it would probably involve repeating the noun tani-ya rather than just ya, which I don’t like.

The comment words ought to be less cleanly agglutinative, at least when it comes to multiple suffixes, those should blend a bit more, maybe.

What do you think?

I will do the Eye Juggler next, and then maybe the South Wind and the Sun. Short texts become such long texts that I am not sure I dare tackle the longer texts that I usually use.

While I try to figure out how to present the interlude language – a fun project not meant to be a naturalistic conlang on its own…