Re: Terkunan: rules for deriving nouns, verbs, adjectives

I've been somewhat busy in the last day or so, thus I've not re-entered
this thread (and not progressed with TAKE   :(

But as I IIRC began it, then I think it should add the odd comment.

Henrik Theiling wrote:
> Hi!
>
> Jörg Rhiemeier writes:
[snip]
>>I slowly see what you are getting at.  Your nouns look good to me.
>
> I am very happy to hear this.
I agree - I have little problem with the nouns (except, as I have
already pointed out, the 4th & 5th declensions simply did not survive in
Vulgar Latin *here*)

[snip]
>>I can easily understand how the accusative ending is lost and the
>>bare stem (minus the thematic vowel) remains.  That is what happened
>>in French, after all.  The verbs, however, still look wrong to me.
>>...
>
> Ah.
Yes, it's the verbs that seem to be the problem. that's is why I said I
felt unable yo comment meaningfully without some idea of the conhistory
of the language - its fictional diachronic development. As presented, it
does look like artificial abstractions of forms without regard to any
diachronic development.

>>Why do your verb forms evolve from the *supine*, a form used very
>>little in Latin?
>
>
> I am not deriving it from the *supine*, but (sometimes) from the
> supine *stem*.  The supine stem also formed the perfect participle,
> which was a very common form.
Yes, it might indeed be better termed the perfect participle stem. The
'supine' given in books is very unlikely ever to have been used for many
verbs. It is, in any case, identical to the neuter of the perfect
participle, and _all_ verbs could meaningfully use that form. Yes, the
perfect participle was very common and certainly survives in the modern
Romance languages (tho often reformed through analogy).

>>I'd rather use something like the 3rd person singular present
>>indicative as the starting point. ...
>
> Definitely.  But sometimes the perfect participle felt more prominent
> and typical for the verb in Modern Romance.
Examples?

[snip]
> Note the word 'to discuss' in English?  It is from the supine stem of
> 'discutere'.
Not relevant IMO - English is not a Romance language. It often borrows
using the supine/ perfect participle stem, e.g. communicate, compensate,
unite, digress, confess etc. etc.

But these are learned _borrowings_ - they are not derived diachronically
from Latin or Vulgar Latin.

> And in Vulgar Latin, some verbs have been remodelled to use the supine
> stem + _are_ for a new, more regular present stem.  E.g. Italian
> 'acquistare' (compare English 'acquire', which has the original Latin
> present stem).
Actually, this is found in the Classical language. Such verb were
originally frequentatives, e.g.
cano, canere, cecini, cantum = to sing
canto, cantare etc, = to keep on singing

But in late Latin the frequentatives frequently loose their special
meaning and come to have the simple meaning, so even in late Classical
texts we find _cantare_ simply means "to sing", as it still does in
modern Italian.

> And regularisations happened in Latin already, e.g. in
> the regularised -ficare endings, e.g. 'nidificare' (not *nidificere).
True - tho interesting the forms -ficare and -ficere are not
interchangeable. The former is used when suffixed to nominal roots, the
later when prepositions are prefixed to it.

> I tried to formalise which stem part would be the most likely to
> survive under the assumption that one *one* form survived.
But you have not indicated how this might happen. It certainly did not
happen *here* as the verb 'to do/make' in the Romance languages are all
derived from _facere_.

The only plausibly explanation that I can envisage would be a dialect of
Vulgar Latin in which the marked Latin fondness for compound verbs was
carried to extremes, so that _facere_ died out and only forms like
_afficere, eficere, inficere, perficere_ etc survived and that at a
later date a form, as tho from *ficere, arose as a back formation.


>>
>>>Verbs usually derive from either the present stem or the supine stem
>>>(or the future participle stem)
No - it's not either/or in the Romancelangs, it's both/and.

>>Why these little-used forms?
>
> The *stem* is in very common.  That it is called 'supine stem' is a
> convention, and that I mention the future participle stem is because
> some verbs lacked the perfect participle in Classical Latin.
Only the verb 'to be' IIRC.
[snip]
>>>with the reduced stem vowel found in  compounds (for facere, use fic-,
>>>not fac-).
>>
>>Why?  This looks rather implausible to me.
>
>
> Because it is what survived in Modern Romance.  Many isolated forms
> where lost because the verbs without prefix were often lost.  And the
> regularised forms are usually modelled from the compound stem.
Examples? Tho I have suggested this as a possibility in a Vulgar Latin
dialect *there*.

[snip]

>>>If the supine stem is a regular extension (+ optional vowel + t)
>>>of the present stem, neglecting a possible stem vowel change and
>>>neglecting a possible drop of stem-final glides, and if no consonants
>>>fuse (for vidēre, use vis-, not vid-), and if the present stem vowel
>>>is followed by at least a consonant (for īre, use it-, not ī-), then
>>>the present stem is used including a potential vocalic/glide ending.
>>
>>This is a rule of the sort that is used in auxlangs to extract roots
>>from verb paradigms, but doesn't resemble the way languages change
>>naturally.  Sound changes are *insensitive to the morphological
>>structure of the words affected*.
I agree. This is very auxlangish. Not a problem, of course, if one is
designing an auxlang or a fauxlang.

> This rule is modelled this way in the hope that the result is close to
> what could have happened.  I believe it would be overly simplistic if
> I mechanically used the 3rd person singular present indicative form.
Why? Isn't that what we in fact find in the Romance languages? By all
means use forms derived from frequentatives, if you will, but the rule
as stated would IMO be very unlikely in a diachronically derived language.

>>>To the resulting stub, an /-əm/ ending is added, and this is then
>>>sound shifted with the GMP.
>>
>>This is an artificial process that doesn't look like a plausible
>>development in the language.
>
> This is a technical trick again to produce a good GMP input.
Yes, but if one has to resort to a 'technical trick', does it not
suggest that there is a problem. If you used frequentatives instead of
the bare supine stem, i.e. derived say "to see" from _visare_ (which
actually occurs in Latin), then no technical trick is needed, as....

> I want
> the consonants from the verb endings to be removed (like it happened
> in Afrikaans), so basically the naked stem survives.
The final consonant of the stem visa- can be removed, and .....

> Because the GMP
> treats the last syllable as an ending, I attach something to make the
> GMP happy.
The GMP is kept happy with any 'technical trick'.


[snip]
>
>>As I said above, sound changes are insensitive to the morphological
>>structure of words. ...
>
> I don't think so.  If they are still understood to be two independent
> parts, they should be treated independently.  Especially for
> derivational morphemes like verb prefixes.
They would only be treated independently, surely, if at some stage they
had become independent words.

>>That's the reason why they produce irregularities.  Of course,
>>analogy often steps in to restore regularity.  But your method
>>doesn't look as if it properly simulated that.
>
> I hope it does.
Maybe it does - but the role of analogy - which clearly operated in the
Romance languages *here* is not IMO made clear.

[snip]
>
> Phew, this is long.  Sorry.
>
> I suppose if anyone still reads this, it must be Jörg... :-)
No, I'm still reading    :)
--------------------

Eric Christopherson wrote:
[snip]
 >
 > Regarding Romance conlangs, in my experience anyway, it's customary  to
 > start out with most of your nouns derived from what was originally  the
 > VL accusative. Why?

Well, sort of, because that's what happened. If one wants to create a
*plausible* Romancelang, then it is, may be, a good idea to start with
what we know happened. If, on the other hand, one does not care a hoot
whether the result is plausible or not, then take any form you like -
the ablative plural if you want, for example.

 > I don't know -- I'm sure that in the real  world
 > there was some good reason for the accusative to be  generalized, but I
 > don't know what it is; nor do I think it's all  that interesting to the
 > story of the conlang. (

Depends whether you want plausibility or not.

[snip]
 > Also, there is at least one Romance conlang I know of that doesn't  use
 > a GMP at all, and I don't see anyone bashing it.

I have not the slightest doubt that there are several Romance conlangs
around that are very implausible.

But, as I understand it, Henrik wants his result to be plausible. Nor am
I 'bashing' Terkunan, nor as I understand it, is Jörg. I have already
stated quite explicitly that I am trying to be *helpful*.

Henrik wants his GMP, he also wants a language with a morphological
structure at least as simple as Afrikaans. The criticism have been
'constructive' ones trying to suggests ways in which Henrik might
achieve his goals.

 > Furthermore, AFAIK sound changes do sometimes depend on morphology;  and
 > they are not always completely regular.

Of course not - as I've already said, analogy often steps in and upsets
regular sound changes. Just look the development of modern French from
Vulgar Latin.

--
Ray
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==================================
Entia non sunt multiplicanda
praeter necessitudinem.

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