Conlangers

yóy [ˈjo̞͡ɪ], alienably possessed noun: “cold, low temperature“

Originally posted by png-saturnanimal

So, here we are, Lexember has finally arrived! And for the first word of this month, let’s have something cool :-P.

Seriously, yóy refers to the fact that things can be cold, i.e. objects can have a low temperature. It does not refer so much to the cold sensation nor to a cold weather (we’ll see how Haotyétpi does that in a few days) as to “cold” in general, the property that all cold objects share.

This noun is not commonly used, as one does not usually talk about the concept of cold itself separately from it use to indicate a sensation or a weather phenomenon. However, it is used as the basis for quite a few other words, so I thought it necessary to introduce it first.

No example today due to lack of time. I’ll try to make it up tomorrow :).

(And sorry for the empty post earlier. Unfortunately, IFTTT still seems to have problems with copying the contents of a Tumblr post to Blogger. I'll look into that)

In this series of blog articles—taken (more or less) straight from the current working draft of chapter 5.4 of the new grammar for better visibility and as a direct update of an old article (“Flicking Switches: Ayeri and the Austronesian Alignment”, 2012-06-27)—I will finally reconsider the way verbs operate with regards to syntactic alignment.

Kroeger (1991) observes that in Tagalog, only nominative arguments may be relativized. He refers to Keenan and Comrie (1977)’s accessibility hierarchy of NPs, according to which, he reports, “if only a single argument of any clause can be relativized, that argument must be the subject” (Kroeger 1991: 24). That is, the argument in the main clause which is modified by a relative clause must be the nominative argument, and additionally, Tagalog requires that there must not appear an overt nominative argument in the relative clause itself. The verb in the relative clause carries inflection for the role of the relativized argument in the relative clause, which is itself gapped. Thus, (1a) is grammatical, while (1b) is not.

Ayeri, however, has no such restrictions. Non-topic NPs may be relativized, and relative clauses not uncommonly contain their own agent NP. The relativized NP may even be referred to in the relative clause by a resumptive pronoun or pronominal clitic, since verbs must not go uninflected. Since all NPs are accessible for relativization, it is not a suitable criterion for testing the subjecthood of what we so far identified as the topic NP.

In (2), inunaya ‘the fisherman’, is both the topic of the clause and modified by a relative clause. He is referenced anaphorically by the 3SG.M.A suffix -yāng on the verb in the relative clause, since he is the actor in both. However, as the next examples show, these circumstances are not requirements for grammatical statements.

In (3a), the recipient NP ganyam ‘to the child’ is not the topic of the clause, but it is modified by a relative clause anyway. The relativized NP is again represented within the relative clause by means of verb morphology. The topic marker on the verb identifies the person suffix on the verb as the clause’s topic. In (3b), it is likewise not the topic NP which is relativized, but the patient NP inunley ‘fish’. This NP, however, is not represented in the relative clause because the verb does not inflect for the role of the patient, which the relativized NP carries in the relative clause as well. There is no morphology to alter the voice of the verb in such a way that the matrix clause’s patient NP becomes the subject of the relative clause.

Relative clauses in Ayeri may even just consist of a predicative adjective, as (4) illustrates. In these cases, there is no case-marked noun or topic contained in the relative clause.

So the weather is getting colder, and the days are getting shorter (at least in the Northern Hemisphere). You know what this means: Lexember is upon us!

As I did in the last two years, I’ll participate with Haotyétpi. That language is still very much in its infancy, vocabulary-wise, and a 31-new-word injection would do it good!

Once again, don’t expect me to follow the themes or topics proposed by others, although I will definitely have a look at everyone’s entries and I’ll get inspiration from them as needed :). Haotyétpi still needs some very basic vocabulary, so I’ll try to focus on that.

As usual, all my Lexember posts will be tagged as such, so filter away if you only want to check those out. Also, I’ll post my words on Twitter, Facebook and Google+, as well as on my Blogger blog (if the IFTTT applet I set up deigns to work), but Tumblr is very much the first place where they will appear.

I’m looking forward to see everyone’s entries. Let’s make this a success again!

So the weather is getting colder, and the days are getting shorter (at least in the Northern Hemisphere). You know what this means: Lexember is upon us!

As I did in the last two years, I’ll participate with Haotyétpi. That language is still very much in its infancy, vocabulary-wise, and a 31-new-word injection would do it good!

Once again, don’t expect me to follow the themes or topics proposed by others, although I will definitely have a look at everyone’s entries and I’ll get inspiration from them as needed :). Haotyétpi still needs some very basic vocabulary, so I’ll try to focus on that.

As usual, all my Lexember posts will be tagged as such, so filter away if you only want to check those out. Also, I’ll post my words on Twitter, Facebook and Google+, as well as on my Blogger blog (if the IFTTT applet I set up deigns to work), but Tumblr is very much the first place where they will appear.

I’m looking forward to see everyone’s entries. Let’s make this a success again!

In this series of blog articles—taken (more or less) straight from the current working draft of chapter 5.4 of the new grammar for better visibility and as a direct update of an old article (“Flicking Switches: Ayeri and the Austronesian Alignment”, 2012-06-27)—I will finally reconsider the way verbs operate with regards to syntactic alignment.

Another property usually associated with subjects is the ability of quantifiers referring to the subject NP to ‘float’ into the VP. This is possible also in English, consider, for instance:

Both of these sentences are equal in meaning: for all children in the set, every child is writing an unspecified amount of letters. It is not the case in (1b) that for an unspecified amount of children, together they write the total amount of letters. All refers to the children in both cases, even though all is not placed in the subject NP, the children, in (1b). Kroeger (1991) mentions an example from Schachter and Otanes (1972) concerning lahat ‘all’, which is also able to float into a position right after the sentence-initial verb from the NP it normally modifies and which it would normally occur in:

In (2a), lahat ‘all’ refers to the children, which constitute the subject NP according to voice and case marking, while we get the opposite case in (2b), where it refers to the letters, which are marked as the subject this time. Of course, it is equally possible in English to say The letters are all written by the children, where the letters is the subject that the floated all refers to.

A lot of clitic quantifiers in Ayeri have a double meaning as intensifiers. For instance, -ikan can refer to both quantities and qualities, meaning ‘much, many’ or ‘very’ depending on context. Thus, many of the suffixed quantifiers, if appended to the VP, are understood to modify the verb as an intensifier and are thus unsuitable for floating. The only exception is -aril ‘some’, which only pertains to NPs as a quantifier. However, since the floating of suffixed quantifiers would produce readings which are ambiguous at best, floating of -aril is avoided as well. Example (3) shows an attempt to float -hen ‘all’ into the IP, resulting in a meaning different from the sentence with the unfloated particle for the reasons just stated above.

Besides suffixed quantifiers, Ayeri also has free quantifiers like sano ‘both’ or diring ‘several’, however. These free morphemes only have a quantifying reading, not an intensifying one, and are thus suitable for floating, since they do not produce ambiguities with regards to what is being modified.

Since, as described above, topicalization has no impact on what constitutes the subject, meaning does not significantly change when the topic of a sentence like (4b) is switched to the patient in example (5a). Unlike in Tagalog in (2b) above, yanang ‘boy(s)’ as the agent NP remains as the subject, and the floated sano still refers to this NP rather than the locative NP, layye ‘(at) the girls’. This fact is also reflected in the lack of plural marking on yanang, since sano indicates the NP’s plurality. We would expect the forms yanjang and lay if sano were to refer to ‘the girls’ rather than ‘the boys’, as in (5b).

As we have seen above, the modification of subject pronouns with clitic quantifiers is avoided due to many of them serving a double role as intensifiers with related meanings which could be readily understood as referring to the verb instead of the pronoun. With free quantifiers, this problem does not arise, however, so that there is no problem in placing them right after the finite verb. Ambiguity may be in the phrase structure of the clause here, but not at a functional level, as it is clear that the quantifier modifies the subject pronoun from semantic coherence.

It is possible in Ayeri for pronouns to be modified by enclitic intensifiers indirectly by using sitang ‘self’ as an indeclinable dummy pronoun to carry the clitic so as to avoid ambiguity created by floating the clitic right after the finite verb. This is also possible for the purpose of quantification of pronouns with clitic quantifiers.

Since sitang is indeclinable, it is the pronominal clitic which carries inflection for case, as (7b) shows. An analysis of sitang-hen as ‘self.TOP=all’ is therefore not possible. Moreover, -tang sitang-hen does not constitute a clitic cluster, because it is possible to place word material between the verb and sitang-hen, as (7) shows. The question remains, however, whether sitang-hen is stranded at the end of the verb phrase or located in the position a full agent NP would normally occupy.

A language in which the metaphor of time as a direction uses absolute directions (e.g. past is east); the direction uttered is always given in relative terms, so if something is in your past, you would say it is to your left if you’re facing south. Even if you’re facing west, you can’t know what your forwards holds in store for you.

A language in which the metaphor of time as a direction uses absolute directions (e.g. past is east); the direction uttered is always given in relative terms, so if something is in your past, you would say it is to your left if you’re facing south. Even if you’re facing west, you can’t know what your forwards holds in store for you.