becka_sutton | Entries tagged with conlanging

Post 1 here
Previous post here

*Wonders how many people she's boring with this.*

Pronouns will have to wait because I made a word! *dun dun dun*

It's a verb and I made it primarily to play with inflections.

So what is this word?

Blanot (blan-ot) which is the simple present tense of dance. I think -ot may be indicative of verbness.

I forget to mention this yesterday but verbs do not inflect for person or number.

Now let's get down to business.

Inflection for tense:

Verbs in language one are very regular and inflect via ablaut. If the wiki article is a bit complex then here's an example from English "sing, sang, sung". :-)

This is where those dipthongs from the first post come into things.

Blanot - dance
Blainot - danced
Blaunot - will dance

Inflection for aspect:

Verbs inflect for aspect as follows:

Simple - unmarked
Perfect - suffix lo - Blanotlo - has danced, Blainotlo - had danced, Blaunotlo - will have danced.
Habitual - suffix ta Blanotta - dances, Blainotta - used to dance, Blaunotta - will have been dancing.
Progressive - suffix ap Blanotap - is dancing, Blainotap - was dancing, Blaunotap - will be dancing.

Inflection for mood:

Any of these can be made negative by adding another prefix an.
Indicative - unmarked. Negative- An. Anblanot (not dance)
Subjunctive - prefix za - zablanot (should dance) etc. Negative Anza. Anzablanot (should not dance)
Opative - prefix am - amblanot (want to dance). Negative Anam. Anamblanot (don't want to dance)
Imperitive - prefix aka - akablanot (dance!) (not usually applied to the past tense obviously). Negative Anaka. Anakablanot (don't dance!). I suspect Anaka may come to be used on its own to mean "Stop!" in later languages if not Language one.

I should probably make one of those verb conjugating table things now. Maybe over the weekend and with a few more verbs. I really should try to do that pronoun post as well.

Crossposts: http://firebird157.livejournal.com/183309.html

Post 1 here
Previous Post here

Today I'm thinking about my moods... My grammatical moods that is. I'm also thinking about tense and aspects. Yes, it's verb grammar day.

We'll start with tenses because they're as simple as can be. Just the basic three - Past, Present and Future.

Aspects:

Simple (I eat)
Perfect (I have eaten)
Habitual (I eat every day)
Progressive (I am eating)

Moods:

Indicative
Subjunctive (I think, anyway. It's kind of useful but gives me panic attacks)
Opative
Imperitive
There is also a negative form for each mood made with another affix.

So, there we go. Not to long.

Pronouns are next and I'll actually make some vocabulary this weekend.

Current Mood: Grammatical
Crossposts: http://firebird157.livejournal.com/183047.html

Post One Here

Today I'm going to deal with word order and nominal grammar (that is grammar relating to nouns) in language one.

Word order in Language One is actually fairly free in that people can understand it no matter what order the words are in because the cases. In spite of this it has a definite tendancy towards Verb-Subject-Object (VSO).

So yes the language has cases.

Cases:

It's a Tripartite Language which means the subject of a transitive verb, the subject of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb all take different cases (this gets even worse in language two which manages to add in features of Active-Stative but more on that when we get there). As a result the language has both a passive and an antipassive voice.

So cases:

Ergative: The subject of a transitive verb
Accusative: The object of a transitive verb
Absolutive: The subject of an intransitive verb (also the unmarked base form of the noun)
Genitive: Marks nouns that modifies other nouns. Usually possessive.
Dative: Indirect Objects.
Vocative: Identifies the person or thing being address

In addition the language keeps wanting to have not one but multiple Locative Cases in place of prepositions - in other words it's trying to ape Finnish which among it's impressive tally of fifteen cases includes six locative cases. I told it no. I may regret this when I get to prepositions.

Noun Class (aka Grammatical Gender):

People may remember Mountain (which I'm still working on) with its ridiculous number of Genders. Language one isn't that bad but it does have four noun classes.

Spirit - Things possessed of divine essence. Gods, spirits, human beings, magical creatures and things (even ones with no consciousness).
Physical/Animate - Non-magical animals and plants.
Material/Inanimate - Non-magical things
Abstract Concepts

Other Stuff:

There are markers for dual and plural.
There are temporal markers for things that don't exist anymore (but used to) and for things that don't exist yet (but will). There may also be markers for things that don't exist yet and are not yet planned to exist but which are desired and things which exist but you wish they didn't. These are not cases because they are seperate from the case marker.

This concludes the nouns. Next Verb Grammar and then maybe some wordage.

Go to Part 3 here

Crossposts: http://firebird157.livejournal.com/182880.html

Introduction

As I mentioned I'm going to need to make at least three (well actually at least 3.5) naming languages for this story. A naming language - for those who don't know - is minimalist conlang that has just enough detail to make proper names and possibly an inscription or two.

The first (and oldest) of these languages is the proto-language that the other 2.5 are descended from. This makes life easier because I can just use the Zompist Sound Change Applier to make the child languages.

The second is the language of magic at the time the story is set but was more widespread earlier. It relates to language one very closely being only one step removed (as closely related to language one as Latin is to to its antecedent Latino-Faliscan). Also like Classical Latin it doesn't reflect the language as spoken by the general population (there would have been a vulgar form for that) but the language of nobility, literature and law. Of course these were mutually intelligible so it barely matters. I may sketch up some of the differences as well. It's mostly case collapse and less formality. Also some pronunciation.

The third language (and this is where the 0.5 comes from) is actually a daughter language of the second which is still sort of mutually intelligible with it's parent a great deal of effort and a good vocabulary (sort of Middle English to Modern English). This is the primary language of one of the two cultures I'm detailing.

The fourth language relates to the third in the same way that - for example - French relates to German. That is it's an entirely different branch of the same language family. I'm debating if to sketch out an intermediary language (or two) for that as well. I'm also debating if they use language 2 for magic - but I doubt it. Culture 2 would probably just use their current language rather than a special form.

Hopefully as soon as I get the sounds and morphology sorted out I can actually name these.

Today I'll be working on Language 1. (Also I have the oddest feeling I'm not going to be able to resist going into more detail than a naming language needs.

Language 1:

Consonants:

	labial	labio- dental	alveolar	palatal	velar	glottal
Stops	p b		t d		k g
Fricatives			s z
Affricates			ts dz
Approximates	w		r l	y
Nasals	m		n

Vowels:

Short: a e o
Long: ā ē ō

Dipthongs:

Dipthongs in language 1 are best analysed as vowel-semivowel combinations but are orthographised here using vowels that don't exist as separate sounds in the language.

ai au āi āu ei eu ēi ēu oi ou ōi ōu

(Why, yes I do believe I did steal the vowels wholesale from Proto-Indo-European. Why do you ask?)

Phonological Constraints:

(C)(A)V(S,N) (C=any consonant, A=Approximant, V-Any Vowel, S-Stop, N=Nasal)

CAV(S,N) can only occur when the initial C is not an Approximant.

Type:

Agglutinative (though I suspect the descendant languages will be fusional or even isolating)

Stress:

The first syllable of a word is stressed. Monosyllabic words are not stressed unless they are the final word in a question.

Pitch:

A rising pitch generally occurs on all the penultimate syllable of polysyllabic words but not on monosyllabic words. The exception is the last word of a question where the rising pitch is on the final syllable and monosyllabic words are also have pitch.

--

So that's the basic sound of the Language done. Next Language post will try and make some grammatical decisions like cases, genders/noun classes, verb tenses and moods, word order etc. I will also try and stop this getting out of hand (yes, mountain people conlang with your nine classes and umpteen cases I'm looking at you).

Go on to Post 2 here.

Crossposts: http://firebird157.livejournal.com/182628.html

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Becka's Notes

World Building and other stuff

Entries tagged with conlanging

Conglanging for The Opal Mask post 4

Conglanging for The Opal Mask post 3

Conglanging for The Opal Mask post 2

Conlanging for the Opal Mask

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