Re: New language Noygwexaal

On Tue, 22 Mar 2005 21:40:29 +0100, Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>
wrote:

>Hi!
>
>Geoff wrote:
>> y           /N/
>> yw          /Nw/
>
>Haha! :-)
>
>> q           /D/
>
>Hahaha! :-)
>
>> I was thinking of transcribing /S/ as k, but that's just a little too
perverse.
>
>Well, Swedish comes close.  The above romanisations are much more
>special I think. :-)
>
>(Why do the orcs use Latin characters, btw?)
>
>> There are 6 noun classes: warm/bright, hard, soft, liquid/wet,
>> abstract/immaterial, and magical.  Most living things are in the
>> warm/bright category, but so are fire, hot rocks, the sun, the moon
>> and so on.
>
>So I take the classes are grammatically assigned and sometimes
>unexplainably illogical, right?  I mean, there are warm *and* hot
>things, just to give one example.  And the moon -- well -- it is
>neither warm nor bright -- at least it's not bright by emitting it's
>'own' energy.
>
They can see into the infra-red.  I'm thinking their eyes might be able to
distinguish green, red and two wavelengths of IR light, which would give
them a fourfold colour spectrum.  Warm and bright are the same thing
(though they can't see blue).
Though you're right; some of the assignations are a little random.  Most
external body parts come into the "warm" category, and most internal ones
into the "soft" category, but the heart is "warm", the eyes and tongue
are "wet", teeth are "hard" (obviously), and hair is "soft".

>> However, there are 4 levels of evidentiality: direct knowledge,
>> direct report, tradition and hearsay.
>
>Hmm -- 'tradition' is interesting.  Maybe I will have to include it
>in Qthyn|gai.  It has quite a few evidentialities including 'belief' and
>'general fact', but 'tradition' is really interesting.
>
>How do you distinguish 'direct report' from 'hearsay'?  Qthyn|gai does
>not do this [1] -- it generally seems impossible for the listener to
>decide at least if evidence is optional.  Is it if the reporter uses
>'direct knowledge' that you are allowed to use 'direct report', but if
>he uses 'direct report', you'd need 'hearsay'?  What if evidence is
>missing in the report?
Hmm, good point.  I'd kind of got it in my head that "direct report" is
that you were told by someone who was there; and "hearsay" is one of
those "they say that...", but like you said, if the reporter uses "direct
report", what do you do?
I think it's probably a judgement call based on your personal read of the
likely truth of the report.

"Tradition" covers your "general fact" and "belief" categories somewhat.
It's a sort of "this is what everyone says, this is what has been handed
down to us" thing.

>From Qthyn|gai, I explicitly eliminated any levels of hearsay, since I
>didn't want politicians to have a means of expressing 'from liable
>sources' in grammar. :-) Futher, anything you know from media is
>'hearsay' in Qthyn|gai, never 'directly witnessed'. [2]
>
>I see from your examples that evidentiality is optional.  So you
>don't have to think about what evidentiality to use for:
>
>   'Drink the water!'
>   'What's that?'
>
>Qthyn|gai has mandatory evidentiality, but it is the same category as
>speech act, so for anything but propositions, you'd use a speech act
>infix instead of an evidence infix.
It's actually mandatory.  The unmarked examples are in first-level "direct
knowledge" evidentiality.  So I _will_ have to think about it! :P!!!

>I love evidentiality! :-)
>
>> [2] modifiers, especially adjectives, are usually conjoined to the
>> front of their head to create long compound words. The exception is
>> in sentences like "the dragon is black".
>
>I like this!  How do you say:
>
>  'Green is beautiful.'
>
>Or may 'green' be used as a noun, too?  Would you have to say:
>'Green-colour is beautiful'?
>
>> [3] future events are usually couched in less certain evidentiality,
>> as (prophecy notwithstanding) the future is uncertain.
>
>I haven't thought too much about future and evidentiality in Qthyn|gai.
>I should do that!  Good idea! :-)
>
>> What do you think? I'm currently vocabulary-generating as a prelude
>> to working on a Babel translation.
>
>Nice!  (Only I don't like Elvish phonologies much, but that's personal
>taste.  Some clicks, uvulars and pharyngeals are just so nice!)
>
>I have another question: what's orkish about this lang?  Is it your
>definition that it's spoken by orcs?
Exactly.  I'm thinking of following up with a really crunchy, guttural elf-
language, possibly with clicks.  This is in the interests of "It seemed
like a good idea at the time".

>Bye,
>  Henrik
>
Thanks for the comments,

Geoff