Re: Terkunan revision (adding a lot of Rhodrese)
| From: | Benct Philip Jonsson <conlang@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Monday, October 15, 2007, 6:30 |
|---|
> Ämne: Re: [CONLANG] Terkunan revision (adding a lot of
> Rhodrese) Från: Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>
> Datum: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 15:21:59 +0200 Till:
> CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu
>
> Hi!
>
> Shoot! I wanted to work. And now your post. I *must*
> answer *now*. :-))))
Work... I've had Philip jr home with a soar throat for two
days and the internet connexion down all day yesterday. Now
*that's* work!
> Benct Philip Jonsson writes:
>>> Henrik Theiling skrev: ...
>>>> a) I unified the demonstrative pronouns _kul_ 'this'
>>>> and _kus_ 'that' into only one, _kul_ 'this;
>>>> that'. Further adverbs may be used to clarify, if
>>>> necessary (but due to limited lexicon, those do
>>>> not yet exist...).
>>>
>>> Assuming that these may be from HÎC and ILLÁC you might
>>> end up with _kulí_ and _kulá_. I don't know what you
>>> think of accent marks for Terkunan; ... ...
>
> The stress is totally regular so far -- otherwise, this
> seems like what I had in mind, yes. The only difference
> would be that the words would not melt together, but
> 'here' and 'there' would stay separate words.
I thought so. That's why I offered the alternative with
hyphens, though they would only signal that one word is
clitic to the other, not which one.
> I'll keep your post for later consideration when I make
> those words.
>
> Currently, I am struggling whether I really need the
> distinction between 'here' and 'there'. If 'this' and
> 'that' is missing...
Well, the only reason some languages can do without separate
words for 'this' and 'that' is that they use phrases 'the
one here' and 'the one there'. If it was really easy to do
without 'here' and 'there' more languages would do so --
i.e. you'd easily have heard of natlangs doing so; I'm sure
there are some, but it's AFAIK rare. It's a bit like
doing without pronouns: you could do it, but it'd
complicate things. To have to say 'where I am' and
'where I'm not' all the time is of the same order.
>>>...
>>>> This helps my German brain when translating into
>>>> Terkunan...
>>>
>>> I guess _dieses_ has gone out of spontaneous usage, but
>>> hasn't it been replaced by _das hier_ vs. _das da_
>>> rather than just merge into _das_?
>
> Colloquially, 'das da' can be used emphatically even for
> 'das hier' --
> e.g. when you ask 'Das da oder das da?' for 'This one or
> that one?'. Must sound quite strange to speakers of
> languages that actually distinguish 'this' and 'that'
> strictly. Further, without emphasis, I'd say 'das' is
> used most often. But of course, 'das hier' is not
> missing at all, but just not as frequent. At least,
> all this is my impression.
You can say both "den här eller den här" and "den här eller
den här" in Swedish, but it doesn't mean you can do without
the distinction in other situations.
>>>...
>>>> b) I unified the relative pronoun _ki_ and the
>>>> interrogative _ke_ into _ke_.
>>>
>>> I'd expect relative _ke_ and interrogative _ki_.
>>>
>>> The Romance thing to do would be to have no distinction
>>> between relative and interrogative, but have _ki_ for
>>> animates/humans and _ke_ for inanimates/nonhumans.
>
> I considered this, but a single 'ke' won.
>
>>>... Or pronominal _ki_ 'which/who' and conjunction _ke_
>>>'dass/that'. That would seem to me an important and
>>>sensible distinction to make.
>
> Why?
Just feels so.
>
>>>... But then you have Spanish _aquí_ in the mixer too,
>>>which may become Terkunan _ki_. Which means that under
>>>(a) above you might get _kul-ki_ and _kul-la_ -- might
>>> this analogize to _kul-ka_ as if < ECCU'LLE ECCU HAC.
>>> To practically have _kul_ + _a_ vs. _kul_ + k + i_
>>> IMHO calls for an analogic _kul-ka_! Cf. It. _qua_
>>> 'dort' (Meyer- Lübke #3965).
>
> Noted for later consideration! :-)
>
>>>... Have you considered putting the main onus of
>>>distinguishing number on the article?, as modern French
>>>does and as I've found Rhodrese to do to no small
>>>degree.[^1] You might have a system like
>>>
>>> | Indefinite Definite
>>> |
>>> | Singular un kan le kan
>>> |
>>> | Plural kan li kan
>>>...
>
> The article is not mandatory in Terkunan. Of course,
> that's no reason not to put the number distinction
> there, it would just mean that number might go unmarked
> in many cases.
>
> I might consider this indeed because currently, plural
> markers drop when you add numbers. And it might look
> better to have
>
>| kan 'the dog; the dogs; a dog; one dog; dogs'
>| le kan 'the dog'
>| lez kan 'the dogs'
>| un kan 'a dog, one dog'
>| nez kan < un+z with normal special contraction rules for 'un'
>| (or would it be 'nuz'?)
>| 'dogs'
>| do kan 'two dogs'
>
> This looks probably looks more regular than the
> current system:
>
>| kan 'the dog; a dog'
>| kans 'the dogs; dogs'
>| le kan
>| le kanez
>| un kan
>| un kanez
>| do kan -- a bit strange
>
> Right? Because then, number is always marked at the
> same place.
Sure, although IMHO to have _-z/-s_ in some forms and not
in others, even if the ones who have them are monosyllabic
determiners, feels strange to me. The reasonable
explanation for the loss, *especially in an Iberian
context* would be a rule
s > 0 / _#
and so it should apply everywhere. The one plural form I'd
expect to survive would be _li_ < ILLÍ, since there the
plural marker happened to be stressed, and of course in the
pronouns, which were suppletive. So you'd get
| kan 'the dog; the dogs; a dog; one dog; dogs'
| le kan 'the dog'
| li kan 'the dogs'
| un kan 'a dog, one dog'
| ni kan analogical, from contracted _un_ plus extracted
| plural marker from _li_
| 'dogs'
| do kan 'two dogs'
I guess that initially you'd have the inherited
pronoun system:
| mi ~ no
| tu ~ vo
| le/la ~ li
But then honorific _vo_ and royal _no_ come in and disturb
things, and things'd be reorganized to
| mi ~ li mi
| no ~ li no
| tu ~ li tu
| vo ~ li vo
| le/la ~ li
> The only thing that remains would be the 1st and 2rd p.
> pronouns:
>
>| mi ~ miz
>| no ~ noz
>| tu ~ tuz
>| vo ~ voz
>| tor ~ torz
What's _tor_? _otro_?
>
> What about 'the two of us'? Currently 'mi do' (not 'miz
> do'). This might still be ok, don't you think? Your idea
> of suppetive 'mi' ~ 'no', 'tu' - 'vo' is tempting.
Clearly _tu mi_ -- cf. Tok Pisin _yumi_.
> For some reason, even if I avoid French actively (I don't
> like the sound of it), Terkunan grammar becomes Frenchish,
> it seems. I noticed recently, too, when I made a change I
> forgot now.
Because French also had all its morphology eroded away, and
has had to make up for it with analytical constructions.
I don't like the sound of French either, but I like what I
imagine Old French to have sounded like. Rhodrese was meant
to be a compromise between that and Italian, but it's
quickly going its own way, becoming as weird as French, but
in other ways.
>>>... Old French and Old Spanish had forms like _uns_ and
>>>_unos_ meaning 'some, einige', and I thought it be a nice
>>>touch for at least some Romconlang to develop plural
>>>indefinite articles from them. ...
>
> Terkunan has them, too. :-) I like 'unos'.
>
>>>... I'm a bit worried about _one_ as an indefinite
>>>article form, as it must look silly to English speakers,
>>>but I can't make myself believe a stress-change ÚNA > UNÁ
>>>and then > _na_ to be realistic. The U of UNA used to be
>>>long after all, unlike the I of ILLA. ...
>
> I have the same merger in Terkunan (as many languages).
> You'd still be able to add phrase stress to the number, as
> in German. (Ok, ok, colloquial German does distinguish
> _ne_ /n@/ 'a' vs. 'eine' /'?aIn@/ 'one'.)
It's not the merger which worries me -- the masc. is merged
in _un_ too, but the orthographic form being identical to
the orthographic form of the English word for '1', but
pronounced ['OnI]. It looks like a weird Anglicism! However
your German example shows that a _na_ might plausibly have
developed anyway! The spelling with _a_ would probably be
analogical to _la_ rather than historically warranted
though. I wonder if the spelling will keep it from becoming
[nI]? The only problem I can see now is that unstressed NÔN
might become _ne_ > [nI] too. One way or another there will
be clashes between unstressed forms of NÔN (Û)NA and NÔS,
and there is the reduced form of IN, as in _'n el/nel_,
which probably will spawn forms like _netxest_ < IN
ECC'ISTUM_,to reckon with to Seeing how French _la_ 'the'
has failed to become [l@] is anyhow hearthening. To be sure
if there were negation complements like MICAM, NATAM,
GUTTAM, PASSUM, REM in Old Rhodrese, one of them (certainly
not PASSUM, probably not NATAM, possibly MICAM > _mig_) will
have taken the burden of marking negation, probably without
even the vestigal _ne_ of French.
>>> As for the gender syncretism in the plural: if German
>>> and Russian can do it, so can Rhodrese. The
>>> corresponding pronouns have a case distinction too:
>>>
>>> | Masc. Fem. Plur.
>>> |
>>> | Nom. el elle il (_ll_ /l\`/)
>>> | Acc. le la li
>>> | Dat. leu lai laur
>>>...
>
> Note that Sicilian/Calabrese dialects merged noun plurals
> when they merged all unstressed vowels into /a i u/. You
> now have three regular declension classes:
>
>| sg. pl.
>| -u -i
>| -a -i
>| -i -i
>
> I am not sure about the pronouns, though. I *think* it
> has:
>
>| f.sg. idda _dd_ = /d\`/
>| m.sg. iddu
>| pl. iddi
>
> So there would be your Romance natlang that does it.
Thanks! However assuming an _-e_ > _-i_ merger before i-
umlaut would cause too much i-umlaut, e.g. in third
declension singulars!, so i-umlauted plurals of first
declension nouns will probably be analogic in Rhodrese.
However Rhodrese has a /-@/ > /-I/ change later, so that
Latin -A will show up as /-I/! I saw somewhere that
_dimanche_ was "_dimanchi_" in Lyonese patois and had to
seize on it, and then a wholesale reduction of unstressed
vowels to /@ I U/ lay near. It will not be reflected in
spelling however! I really will have to play around with
your schcompile to determine the exact sound changes and
their order.
>>>... Since you have _es/fu_ you are not totally averse to
>>>suppletion, and the Romance thing to do would be to have
>>>_su kan_ for 'his/her dog'.
>
> There is *also* _se kan_ in Terkunan for 'his/her dog',
> but it is restricted to reflexive usage (Swedish 'sin bil'
> vs. 'hans bil').
That's the way SUUS worked in Latin, but *all* Romance
natlangs have changed it to mean 'his/her' In fact that
change was fully completed in Late Latin texts, so the
chance that a Romance language avoided it is slim -- at
least in OTL.
>>>...
>>>> namely the perfect participle _fut_ instead of the
>>>> regular _esat_.
>>>>
>>>> The reason for this is that I found _esat_ really
>>>> ugly.
>>>
>>> Really, and I guess you know that everyone will be
>>> thinking of FUTUTUS/A!
>
> 'Everyone' might be an exaggeration.. :-)
OK, everyone who knows naughty Latin... I wonder how they
managed the equation that people were supposed to read
Catullus and the comedians, but then the words they used
were not in the dictionary.
>
> *_futus_ is the basis for that participle in Þrjótrunn
> and in Terkunan. An analogical reconstruction of
> _futurus_, of course.
Well, _bhûta-_ does exist in Sanskrit, so a *FUTUS **may**
have survived in your ATL.
> BTW, the regularly derived past tense according to my GMP
> would have been 'fi' (like Romanian). Maybe I'll use 'es'
> - 'fi' - 'fut'. But I also like 'fu'. We'll see.
What happens to FIERI?
>
>>>... I spotted a typo there, I think:
>>>
>>>... That should be /o: U/ > /o/ if I'm not wholly
>>>mistaken.
>
> Oops, of course. Thanks for spotting it.
>
>>> BTW I've lost my source for the Corsican system. Any
>>> help to come up with a citeable source will be greatly
>>> appreciated! ..
>
> I haven't worked on Corsian yet, so I'll also be
> interested. :-)
I've been looking through my considerable cache of printouts
and copies of articles, as well as books, although I seem to
remember it was an article, without finding anything yet.
> **Henrik
>
>
>
> Ämne: Re: [CONLANG] Terkunan revision (adding a lot of
> Rhodrese) Från: Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>
> Datum: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 21:50:19 +0200 Till:
> CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu
>
> Hi!
>
> Another reply to this:
>
> Benct Philip Jonsson writes:
>>>... Have you considered putting the main onus of
>>>distinguishing number on the article? ...
>
> Thinking about this for a longer time, I just found
> another reason why this is just great: it removes the only
> full-fletched grammatical affix. Any remaining -z affixes
> would be lexicalised on pronouns and articles and thus
> very, very limited. There are several pros and cons of
> marking number on the article, but I think this is the
> best reason to do it, considering my design goals.
Great!
> Thanks for the ideas, Benct! :-)
Thanks! <doff my hat>
> The only remaining grammatical affix is the perfect
> participle ending on verbs, -at. I think it could very
> well be argued that it is a derivational ending, since the
> word class changes and many perfect participles
> lexicalise.
I agree.
> I am currently also considering dropping the verb's -a
> ending. Another step towards French... We'll see. It would
> mean that nouns and verbs are indistinguishable on the
> phonology level, but then, before vowels, this was always
> the case anyway, and my word class markers are more
> irregular than regular, and thus a but half-hearted. This
> would mean to drop the concept of marked word classes
> completely.
Do *all* verbs, and not only those of the first conjugation
have this -a ending? If so it should probably go! :-)
> **Henrik
>
>
>
> Ämne: Re: [CONLANG] Terkunan revision (adding a lot of
> Rhodrese) Från: Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>
> Datum: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 22:08:59 +0200 Till:
> CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu
>
> Hi!
>
> Henrik Theiling writes:
>>> Another reply to this:
>
> And another one:
>
>>> Benct Philip Jonsson writes:
>>>>>... Have you considered putting the main onus of
>>>>>distinguishing number on the article? ...
>>>
>>> Thinking about this for a longer time, I just found
>>> another reason why this is just great: it removes the
>>> only full-fletched grammatical affix. Any remaining -z
>>> affixes would be lexicalised on pronouns and articles
>>> and thus very, very limited. There are several pros and
>>> cons of marking number on the article, but I think this
>>> is the best reason to do it, considering my design
>>> goals.
>
> Plus, it makes _z_ superfluous! I can use _s_ now, since
> all plurals are in monosyllabics now.
>
> Incredible.
As I said above you should probably not even use -s, but a
plural article/demonstrative _li_ which then can be preposed
to personal pronouns too, and possibly a plural indefinite
_ni_, though you can probably have a system like
| Sing. Plur.
|
| Indef. un kan kan
|
| Def. le kan li kan
Though the fact that this is practically identical to the
state of affairs in Sohlob indicates that it has more to do
with my taste than elegance. The system
| Sing. Plur.
|
| Indef. un kan ni kan
|
| Def. le kan li kan
Removes the 'Sohlobism' of the unmarked form being the
indefinite plural, although I think you can in practice get
that effect in some OTL creoles too.
FWIW French _les_ is pretty much a plurality marker;
they use the 'definite' article in a lot of contexts
where Germanic languages would use an indefinite form,
so that even the singular definite article verges on
being a noun marker.
> Ämne: Re: [CONLANG] Terkunan revision (adding a lot of
> Rhodrese) Från: Douglas Koller <laokou@...> Datum:
> Wed, 10 Oct 2007 23:31:38 +0000 Till:
> CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu
Kou wrote:
> At the relative pronoun level, for me, a ki/ke divide
> falls along nom/acc lines (French qui/que; Italian
> chi/che).
How so? I've learnt that _chi_ is for animates/people and
_che_ for inanimates/things. At least one of us must have
mis(sed|understood) something. Any Italian native
speakers lurking?
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