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

Hi!

Jörg Rhiemeier writes:
> Oh, I'm sorry.  I didn't want to say that "you have a problem".
Ok.

>> > is that you appliy the GMP to *artificially
>> > extracted roots* - units that would *never* exist for themselves
>> > in the natural evolution of the language.
>>
>> Wait, please.  I think you are mixing up layers of the construction
>> now.  It is vital to distinguish the tool from the goal.
>
> The tool ought to be appropriate to the goal, otherwise you end up
> trying to fix a wristwatch with an axe :)  If you want a language
> that evolved from Latin by naturalistic sound changes, you have to
> simulate these sound changes - by applying a GMP to *words*, not just
> artificially extracted roots.  Is that so difficult to understand?
No.

But I am not using *artificially* extracted roots (well, I do, but the
nitpicky argument would be that everything in a conlang is
artificial).  I am using roots that are extracted in a way that I hope
is a good approximation of what might have happened in a yet
unexplained historical development.  The goal is to get just one form
(I want an isolating language) and it should look Romance, the path is
some yet unexplained historical development, and the method to
implement this is the given construction.

>...
> I wonder, why apply an unnatural method if you don't want unnatural
> results?
:-)

I am using unnatural methods because I own a computer and I am a
conlanger.  Both is utterly unnatural.  (No?)  But it does not matter,
because it's just the implementation of a simulation of a (hopefully)
natural thing.

> This way, you arrive at an unnatural language.
I disagree.  This would be the case if I was simulating something
unnatural.  But I am using my computer to simulate something natural.
At least, that's what I hope I am doing.

If you add two numbers, it is unnatural to do it with a pocket
calculator, but the effect is the same when doing it with real apples.
What's missing with the pocket calculator is the nice movement and the
good smell and taste of the apples, but the result is hopefully the
same.

I use the computerised methods to make less mistakes.

> What you get looks like a Latinate auxlang with strangely distorted
> morphemes, not like an actual Romance language.
>...
Ah, really?  Which morphemes are strangely distorted?  Maybe there are
some, I am not asking rhetorical questions now, but this is something
I'd really be interested in.  If you think Terkunan looks that way,
this would be an interesting thing.  I just would not want you to
derive this opinion from the methods I use, but strictly from the feel
of the conlang.

>...
>> In short: I think I do exactly what you want me to do.
>
> I slowly see what you are getting at.  Your nouns look good to me.
I am very happy to hear this.

Could you give me some hints of what was missing in my explanations or
what you would have liked more explicit to make my train of thoughts
clearer?  I could use that to improve the description of Terkunan.

> 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.

> 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.

> 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.  Hence the whole
construction.  It is again my attempt of approximation what part might
have survived if all other verb forms dropped and just one survived.

Note the word 'to discuss' in English?  It is from the supine stem of
'discutere'.

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).  And regularisations happened in Latin already, e.g. in
the regularised -ficare endings, e.g. 'nidificare' (not *nidificere).
I tried to formalise which stem part would be the most likely to
survive under the assumption that one *one* form survived.

> Here is a point-by-point critique of your verb construction:
>
>> Verbs usually derive from either the present stem or the supine stem
>> (or the future participle stem)
>
> 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.

>...
>> 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.  At
least, this is what I feel.  If you have better ideas or even
evidence, this is *exactly* what I was hoping to discuss, because it
would most likely improve my construction.

>
>> 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*.
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.

>...
>> 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.  I want
the consonants from the verb endings to be removed (like it happened
in Afrikaans), so basically the naked stem survives.  Because the GMP
treats the last syllable as an ending, I attach something to make the
GMP happy.  I could write a different GMP, but it is easier this way.
You could attach a lot of things here with the same result, e.g. the
vowel in the ending of the 3rd person singular.  A schwa is neutral,
so I use that.  You could add a simple /@/ (without the -m) if you
felt more comfortable with that.  Imagine a reduced vowel as the
remains of the 3rd person singular ending.

>...
>> Often, prefixes are sound shifted separately so that compound verbs
>> are compounded in Terkunan, too.
>
> Hmmm.  That strikes me as rather unnatural. ...
Why?  If the prefixes are still understood as prefixes by the
speakers, it is likely that they are treated regularly for all verbs
and not sound shifted with each individual word.  In words where they
are not understood to be prefixes, they are shifted together with the
whole word, of course.

> 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.

> 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.  It some cases, hoever, I might decide that it is more
likely that the prefix is not understood to be a prefix, but part of
the verb.  What I describe is a model for the case that the
regularisation is quite strong.

>...
> I still maintain the position that your construction method is
> unnatural, and that it would make *much* more sense to apply the
> GMP to the Latin words *directly*, rather than to root elements
> extracted by the rather artificial rules you give in your yellow
> boxes.
Yes, the construction method is unnatural.  But I tried to find
constructions that produce results that are not different from doing
it directly on Latin words with subsequent stems of regularisation in
the grammar.

Phew, this is long.  Sorry.

I suppose if anyone still reads this, it must be Jörg... :-)

**Henrik

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