Re: Conlang Irregularities

Sally Caves wrote:

> Here's a new question that I'm curious about,
> and that I didn't ask on the Lunatic.:
I've been offlist for a while.  Have you published that paper
you were going to write yet?

> I know that one of the difficult tasks of getting
> a conlang up and running is to make the rules
> of grammar.  How many of you established
> conlangers, after having done that, deliberately
> introduce irregularities and contradictions into
> your conlang with an eye to giving it dimension
> and realism?  Or maybe you don't do it so
> deliberately... maybe it just happens and you
> decide to leave it be?
Well, I kinda wonder about this.  What do you mean, exactly?
I mean, most of the times when languages develop "irregularities",
it's 'cause they are trying to get rid of *other* perceived irregularities.
For example, changing the phonology to make it easier to pronounce,
which at the same time confuses the morphology.  Stuff like that.

> In other words, how many exceptions to the rules
> you' ve made will you tolerate?  One of the
> criticisms leveled at invented languages is that
> they are too regular.  Does that bother you?
Well, Degaspregos, as I say on my website, is a "quasi-IAL" insofar
as I'm not trying to make something realistic, but rather something that
might be better to use (under my assumptions of what's better, or easier,
to use, of course).  So, no, when irregularities occur in my conlang, it's
because I haven't noticed some conflict in the overall system, rather than
because I try for it.

> I have the choice of modifying my volitional verbs
> that end with an "n" and that have done so for twenty
> years.  _Euan_, for instance, means "to go," volitionally..
> But I've fairly recently made it a rule that non-volitional
> verbs will end in "n" in their absolute form (retaining the
> vestige of the gerundive suffix that marks them as
> non-volitional:  -ned.)  So:  teprorem, y tepro,  "touch,"
> "I touch"; but teproned, y tepron, "feel," "I feel."  Brilliant!
That's an interesting feature.  So, would that be more of
a derivational suffix, or more of a mode?

> But what do I do with euanrem y euan, "go," "I go," denrem
> y den, "tell, I tell," and uenrem, y uen, "take, I take"?
> Except to make them exceptions to the rule?  These
> are beloved words that I've had for decades and don't
> want to mess with.  And yet I can predict how they might
> change in subsequent usage: _euaned_ "go" but not with
> volition, and a new vol. form,  euarem, y eua--which I'm not
> crazy about.  And an epinthetic vowel inserted between
> root and suffix for uenrem and denrem:  _uenarem, denarem_.
> which are other verbs.  Yikes, what to do?
Well, that's actually quite common.  The other alternative would
be to make a epenthetic consonant in there, which would be homorganic
with the surrounding consonants.  For example, Ancient Greek had
originally *amrotos ("immortal, divine", I think), where the /r/ was a
trill.  This was perceived to be too difficult to pronounce, so they just
stuck in a /b/ inbetween, which took its point of articulation from the
/m/, to give "ambrotos".


=======================================================
Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
ICQ#: 4315704   AIM: Deuterotom
Website: <http://www.angelfire.com/tx/eclectorium/>
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."

There's nothing particularly wrong with the
proletariat. It's the hamburgers of the
proletariat that I have a problem with. - Alfred Wallace
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