Quiet Words

I've been working on a number of sketches, none of them going very far yet. One is yet another attempt at triconsonantal roots (TCR7). It's probably better than the other attempts, but that's not saying much. Another (KL-5) combines features of various other projects. It has a K/L pronoun system, an MNCL-type morphosyntax, and it might use noun indexing, although not exactly like Apr20.

Content words consist of an initial C representing a pronoun or an index, any number of VXC medials representing the content (including TAM), and a final VX specifying the syntactical function, including case.

The verb stem (a root possibly with a derivational prefix) is modified for the semantic role of the subject. This is done by replacing one of the stem short vowels (the prefix vowel if any, else the last vowel of the root including otherwise deleted vowels) with a long vowel or diphthong. There are 4 roles: AGT (actor/agent/donor), PAT (patient/theme), LOC (location/recipient), and neutral (unmarked).

Like K3, K4 uses a K/L person system (see previous entry). These appear as affixes. The possible person and number combinations are KS (K-person Singular), KP, LS, LP, NP, and SS (Same Subject, technically 3rd person but not treated as such). There's also a Reflexive suffix.

Independent Order forms are split into those with no person affixes and those with at least one. The former are used when all verb arguments are either phrases or omitted and consists of the neutral stem; the other stems are used otherwise. The first affix is the subject prefix, chosen according to the person hierarchy K# > L# > SS and NP > SS. Any other person arguments are marked with suffixes; any location/recipient appears first and any agent/donor appears last (K# and NP naturally don't appear as suffixes here).

Imperative Order forms are a subset of the Independent Order forms; the difference in interpretation is due to the context.

Participial Order forms use a coreferential prefix: either HA (Host Agent) or HP (Host Patient). The suffixes may include K# and NP as well as the others. The neutral stem isn't used.

Attributive Order forms are like Participial Order forms except that the coreferential prefixes are replaced by aspect prefixes, these being RET (retrospective), IPF (imperfective), and PRO (prospective) for dynamic verbs. Static verbs usually take the STA (stative) prefix.

I was on the Conlangery podcast today (episode 55), which featured K'tlê and tenseless languages.

Besides TIAL and Apr20, I have some new sketches I'm having trouble with.

May17 is supposed to be triconsonantal roots with some Algonkian features, specifically having distinct animate and inanimate verb stems, and different "orders": in this case, finite, coreferential agent, coreferential patient, and imperative, with the coreferentials used attributively if aspect is marked and as secondary predicates if not. The big problem is coming up with the various stem patterns; I'm completely lost there.

May15 has class prefixes, which means that I have to come up with the various classes and prefixes as well as figuring out how the aspects are marked etc. At least person and number are easy; they use enclitic pronouns attached to the verb (object) or tense particle (subject).

It occurs to me that I'm not really suited for conlanging.

I've been working on _Learn TIAL_, copying material from the reference grammar and then rewriting it. It looks like I'll have to insert 2 more chapters than planned, which means renumbering everything after. I haven't started on the vocabulary and exercises sections of each chapter; those will have to wait until everything else is organized, besides the overall word set not being stable.

Apr20 is an experimental language which treats most classes of words as predicates (or relations) and links the words of a sentence by indexing rather than by word order or cases. I've made a bunch of posts about the syntax over on the CONLANG list. But the more I work on the indexed tense system, the more I realize how little I understand about natlang tense, especially the English simple past and absolute tense in general (at least relative non-present seems to always be temporally indefinite, but I could be wrong there too). One question I have is, how is an indefinite time coreferenced?

Mar30 is similar to Feb24 in overall syntax. The main differences are:

* The phonology has been replaced, eliminating the umlauts.

* The referentiality markers now begin the phrase instead of being noun suffixes.

* The TAM system has been replaced. There are 3 absolute tenses and 3 relative tenses and no other aspects. Absolute tense adverbial clauses require a Dependent particle when not independent or conjunct; relative tense independent clauses require a temporal adverb or temporal clause.

* Person and number markers are clitics.

I'm now having trouble with the partitive, superlative, and ordinal number constructions.

I returned from Boskone late Sunday. I got 3 books, 2 of them signed, and 2 CD's, also signed. That makes 6 signatures, I think.

Actually, syntax might be OVS instead of or as well as SOV. The hierarchy is
2 > 1 > 3 topic > 3 other.

Auxiliary verbs take either a coreferential dependent form (without the secondary predicate suffix) or a full complement clause as object.

For dynamic verbs, the simple past and future are usually perfective, so for a strictly progressive interpretation, the progressive compound verbs must be used. The simple present of dynamic verbs is still progressive (unless I decide to make it jussive or something).

I still haven't figured out a phonology yet; all I know is that something like /kA:fi:ste:n/ should be a valid word. I could use some suggestions.

Feb07 is turning into a large project, even thought there are only 1390 possible roots, of which I plan to use only 1/4 to 1/3. First, I'll need a fairly complete list of glosses for the verbs and adjectives, 200 or so. Then I'll need a much larger list of noun and adverb glosses and then try to figure out which can be transparent compounds and which are arbitrary. This process will hopefully improve the list of classifiers too, which otherwise won't work very well. For example, in a text about a dog and a cat, it would be nice to have 2 distinct classifiers for dog and cat, since the classifiers have to work as pronouns.

And of course once I have a list of words, I have to actually generate the roots. I'm not sure what approach to use.