Re: Methods of Question-Forming

Emaelivpeith HS Teoh:
>You could keep both. Make them both alternative ways of forming a
>question, perhaps with the option of using both at the same time for
>emphasis.
Ooo, I like the idea of mixing them.  Thanks!

>Very nice. This looks like Ebisedian's _a'ne_ ["an&].
How do you use apostrophes?  Sometimes I see a [?] in your transcriptions,
other times not.

For Asha'ille, the aprostrophe doesn't carry any pronunciation.  Its main
purpose is to allow affixation for things that don't want to fuse totally
with the rest of the word.  It has a secondary purpose of reallocating
stress rules to only the second half of the apostrophe'd word.

I have noticed in my own speech, though, that sometimes a [?] crops up --
|te| "and" plus any vowel-initial word.  For example, "and town" would be
|t'aimenad| [t@_X?ai"mEnAd], while "and home" is |t'cresin| [t@_X"krEsIn].

>doesn't have any punctuation corresponding with a question mark
Is there a native Ebisedian orthography, apart from LaTeX?  :)

>presence of interrogatives like _a'ne_ or _ghi'_ are the only indications
>that it is a question. The particles _ji'ne_ and _my'ne_ are used in place
>of _a'ne_ when anticipating a 'yes' or a 'no', respectively.
What are the words for "yes" and "no"?  Your |ji'ne| has |ji| in it,
looking suspiciously like my |jhi| [Zi] "yes".  I'd accuse you of
word-napping if Asha'ille weren't the younger language.  :P

>The question above in Ebisedian would be:
>a'ne jub0' ta'maa 3n3 iachai'li d3 3t3m33'?
Could you give an interlinear, since you have so many more words than the
equivalent English sentence?  And am I right that |iachai'li| is your
version of "Asha'ille"?  How did you go about calq'ing it into Ebisedian?
It's pronounced [ASA"i:l] or [AS@"i:l], depending on how carefully I'm
enunciating.  :)

>The answer, obviously, must be an instrumental NP, since it has to match
>the instrumental case of _gha'_.
Without cases, Asha'ille lets you stick in whichever word you want without
change.  The |ve'| is understood to be appended before the word, thus
making it the proper part of speech (adverb).

>The conveyant case in Ebisedian centers its vowels toward the schwa[1];
>sometimes similar-looking words blend into each other in the conveyant
>case. Sorta like how moving things[2] sorta blur in your vision. :-P
>In this case, 9 vowels collapse in 3. Other noun cases also exhibit vowel
>shifts; where 9 vowels collapse into 6. (Hmm, why is Asha'ille so similar
>to Ebisedian??)
Wow, 9 to 3 is a pretty big collapse.  Since Ebisedian has apparently had
ablauts longer than Asha'ille has, have you noticed any confusions that the
collapse can cause?

Perhaps the similarities in our languages reflects a similarity in
personality and/or other interests [eg, computers]?  Has anyone done a
survey comparing conlangs to one another than then trying to correlate that
to the conlangers themselves?

>[2] 'Cos the conveyant case is for moving things, you see. But any
>apparent connection between schwa's and blurring is purely coincidental, I
>promise!  ;-)
We believe you.  ;)

>This is done in Ebisedian with the focus preposition _iro_. In a normal
>(non-question) sentence, _iro_ emphasizes a particular noun
I suspect that Asha'ille |jhi| "yes" can sometimes function like that...
Let me see:

    Vel'vaenih monvpaerdhi canen.        The woman went outside.
    Vel'vaenih jhi monvpaerdhi canen.    The woman *did go* outside.
    Jhi vel'vaenih monvpaerdhi canen.    The woman went *outside*.
    Vel'vaenih monvpaerdhi jhi canen.    *The woman* went outside.

>lyy's iro b3z3t33' loo'ru.      It is the *woman* who went outside.
>lyy's b3z3t33' iro loo'ru.      It is outside to which the woman went.
So my |jhi| and your |iro| seem similar but slightly different...  In
Asha'ille, it merely draws more emphasis to the word; in Ebisedian, it
looks like it becomes the sentence's "subject."  It's not that strong an
emphasis in Asha'ille.  Do correct me if I'm wrong about Ebisedian.  :)

>>     Vohaerdhi aet na asha'ille.                        (ask a verb)
>>     "You do what with Asha'ille?  I have no clue."     (lower pro-verb)
>
>        ghe' jub0' 3n3 iachai'li d3 3t3m33'?
>        What happens from you to the words of Asha'ille?
>
>This one is interesting... the fact that _jub0'_ ("you", fem) is in the
>originative case, and _3n3 iachai'li d3 3t3m33'_ is in the conveyant case,
>shows that the person asking the question already has *some* idea about
>what you do with Asha'ille. So strictly speaking, this question is more
>like asking, do you speak Asha'ille, teach Asha'ille, or what?
Interesting consequence of your strange case system.  :P

>The completely general form of the question (which is also perhaps the
>least useful) requires changing all NPs to the locative case
>        ghe' jubi' zo 3ni iachai'li d3 3t3mii'?
>        What is it between you and the words of Asha'ille?
Locative because ... it shows that you have no prior knowledge of what kind
of relationship it will turn out to be?

>>     Shavaerdhi aet na noh.                  (ask for an object)
>>     "You speak what?"                       (lower object pro-noun)
>
>        3n3 ghi' d3 3t3m33' tww'ma jub0'?
>        The words of whom/what speaketh you?
>
>(Hmm, why the sudden OVS lapse here? :-P  Probably 'cos the word being
>asked about prefers to be fronted.)
Hey!  Is that a remnant of German-influenced verb-in-second-position-ness?

>[3] The difference is that _ghi'_ is a noun, and _ghe'_ is a verb. If you
>wanted to act confused, you could walk down the streets of Isi'li[4]
>shouting "ghi? ghe? ghi? ghe?" [Gi G& Gi G&] with a leap in your step.
>Pretty soon, you might find yourself alone in a nice decorated _jhi'li_
>with a _ruu'ci_ and some _3l3rii'_, looking out the _rota'ci_ at some nice
>people dressed in _Kii'_, who are _k3ki'g3_ at you. :-P
Hehehe.

>> This implies that you can insert a dummy |'e| to the end of normal
>> sentences, like an English "um".  So the declarative sentence might
>> actually come out sounding like "Shavaerdhi aet ne asha ille'e" in
>> casual speech.  It should probably have upward inflection, too.
>
>Very nice twist on the concept. :-)  Now I've to go decide what's the
>Ebisedian equivalent for hesitation.
Interestingly, my understanding of English "um" is that it belongs the
thing you want to say but can't think of.  It may be that the Asha'illens
understand |'e| as belonging to the completed sentence, hanging around
while you wait around for a new thought to come to you.

[ "I've to go" sounds strange, perhaps even British.  ;)  "I have to go" is
fine, as is "I've got to go" even though "have" and "get" are probably
redundant.  Such is the way of AmE.  :) ]

>As a sidenote, [e] is an ugly sound to Ebisedi ears; they cringe at the
>very thought of it, and stay as far away from it as possible.  They find
>English such an ugly language because of its especially ugly [eI]'s. :-)
If it makes them feel any better, one way of spelling /e/ [e] or [eI] is
<ae>, which Asha'illens consider a "harsh" spelling.  <ei> is the "softer"
one.  (Which is part of my reason for trying to change it from "Cresaea" to
"Creseia," but my sister doesn't approve and neither does one of my
friends.  <sigh>  Uncultured loafs. ;)  You can't actually substitute one
for the other wherever you feel like, though; a particular word is spelled
only one way.

I was about to taunt you by pronouncing "Ebisedi" as [eIbeIseIdeI] when it
struck me that it sounds remarkably like "ABCD" [eIbisidi].  Hm.


--
AA

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