Re: Verb-initial languages

PART I.
PART I. FOR CELTIC CONLANGERS:

Have you based your conlang(s) wholly or partially on
a Celtic language?
    I have certainly created very many languages which
in some fashion or another have been modelled after a
Celtic language. However, only one or at best two of
these has been wholly influenced by a Celtic language

 If so, on which? or combined with which?
   The major Celtic languages which I tend to draw
ideas from are Welsh and Breton. I have also looked at
Scottish and Irish Gaelic for some projects.

 What is your name and what do you call your
conlang(s)?
   My name is Elliott Lash. The languages which have
been in some way influenced by a Celtic language that
I can recall are: Silindion, Essamea, North Silic,
North Nindic, South Nindic, Hinession and Jelardin.
I’m sure however there have been others along the way
that I dont specifically remember now.

When did you start it/them?
    That’s a kind of tough question...but, I’ll try to
answer the best I can. Silindion was started in
October of 1997, and was at that time not in anyway
influenced by Celtic languages.  Essamea was a product
of the summer I spent in Cornell in 2000. North Silic
was begun in the Spring of 2002 and reworked in the
Fall. North Nindic was started perhaps in 1998 in the
Summer, or perhaps in 1999. South Nindic was started
in the Summer of 1999, although it has undergone many
many many revisions. Hinession was started in the
Winter of 2001 I think,  originally. The latest
incarnation was from the Summer of 2002, and has been
progressively tweaked throughout last semester and
this one. Jelardin was a work in progress from the
Spring of 2002.

Are you still working with it/them or have you
abandoned it or them?
    I’m still working on Silindion, Essamea, North
Silic, North and South Nindic and Hinession...those
are major languages in  my language familly that I’m
developing. Silindion is ever a work in progress and
every so often its vocabulary grows larger. The
grammar is fairly well worked out. Essamea has been
somewhat frozen in its development, however I do
occasionally work on its verbal system to some extent.
North Silic is in an easily accessible file, and will
be returned to shortly. North and South Nindic are
major focusses right now, and I’m still documenting
the sound changes which produced them. Hinession is
currently the main topic of my conlanging interests.
Jelardin is basically abandoned.

What Celtic features have you borrowed? What is the
structure of your > language? Be specific.
    It depends really on the language.
     Silindion is perhaps the least Celtic influenced.
It has a system of lenition somewhat reminicent of
Gaeic, although in many respects very differen from
it. In some circumstances, t > ss /s/, p > ph /f/,  k
> - //, s > s /s./ and f > hw /hw/. Also, enclitic
pronouns may be added to prepositions, although the
result is much more transparent than Gaelic upon which
the system was originally based. It’s much more like
Welsh really. Possession is indicated by a form of the
word to be and the allative or dative case I
believe....(I’d have to check that out).

     Essamea is essentially like Silindion in the
amount of Celtic borrowings. Both languages are much
more Greek/Latin and Finnish/Estonian like.

     North Silic is probably the least Celtic
inspired...in fact I’m not sure if it is in any
particular beyond enclitics being attached to
prepositions.
       North Nindic has a Welsh-Like phonology,
complete with affection, lenition, spirantization,
nasalization etc. It also has or had a system of
infixed pronouns similar to Old Irish and Middle
Welsh.  Example:  Old North-Nindic:  per-rwcont ‘They
surround’  >   per-th-rwcont ‘They are surrounding
you’. Vowel Affection plurals are prominent, as are
multiple other ways of pluralization...reminiscent of
Welsh in which there are many ways to pluralize words
as well. There is a rudimentary collective/singulative
category, although not developed into a full
grammaticalized series. It’s much more lexical than
Welsh. Prepositions are inflected, and are much less
transparent than in Silindion. Many individual words
have been influenced by Welsh as well, such as: mi
‘I’, y ddo ‘yesterday’ (I think?), (h)y no ‘tonight’
(like heno), and –th as the ‘you’ pronoun, infixed or
suffixed.
      South Nindic is to Gaelic as North Nindic is to
Welsh. In the older language, there were conjunct and
absolute verb forms, infixed pronouns and Gaelic-style
lenitions. The result is something that looks vaguelly
like Gaelic (although the structure of the parent
language prevents something that looks entirely like
it). There will probably also be a system of preverbal
particles like in Welsh or Gaelic.
     Hinession has been influeced by Breton, Cornish
and Welsh I suppose. Many of the sound changes are
changes which seperate Breton from Welsh. Also, the
verb has lost most of its conjugation and now used a
periphrastic conjugation like any of the above
languages: Mi ro dili ‘I see’ rather than ‘Tilai’ (as
in Nindic). The present particle _ro_  is borrowed
from Celtic, where I believe Breton as something like
that.
     Jelardin has a Breton based orthography, initial
mutations, a plural in –ou I believe and many other
Bretonesque features.

 What innovations did you introduce? (new
constructions, perhaps a new > script, etc.)
    I suppose the innovations I introduced was really
to mix in Uralic-style cases and an un-Indo-European
root phonology. There’s also several scripts, one for
South Nindic, Silindion, North Silic and Essamea,
another for Classical North Nindic and another for
Hinession.

 What features of Celtic languages (or a particular
Celtic language)  initially inspired or intrigued you?
Comment?
     The features of Celtic languages which initially
inspired me were those that I incorporated in some
fashion into my languages.

How many of you are also scholars of Celtic languages?
Scholars of other languages?
    Well, I have books on Old Irish, Irish, Scottish
Gaelic and many books on Welsh....but then again I
have books on Georgian, Armenian, Akkadian, Finnish,
Estonian, Mongolian, French, Modern and Attic Greek,
Italian, Portuguese, Norwegian, Czech, Hebrew,
Russian, German, Afrikaans, Dutch, Turkish, Persian,
Arabic, Japanese, Chinese, Middle English, Old
English, Gothic, Sanskrit, Latin and...hm, maybe a few
others. So I’m more of an eclectic language studier.
My major is linguistics.

How were you introduced to them?
   I was introduced to languages, linguistics and
conlanging through reading Tolkien’s books.

PART II: INSPIRATION BY TOLKIEN (tangential to the
questions on inspiration
by Celtic languages):

How many of you were inspired to invent a language
because of your exposure
to Tolkien?
     Me!

How many of you based your conlang on one of Tolkien's
languages, or your
conculture in Middle Earth?
    Well, not my original conlang...Flavin, it was
based on what I knew of  Latin, French and
English...however, Silindion and all those mentioned
above, with the exception of Jelardin were influenced
slightly by Quenya and Sindarin, at least as far as
phonology goes...although, they of course have their
own quirks that are not found in either Tolkien
languages. My conculture is based in my own worl;d

How many of you have a constructed world, and, if so,
does it include some
of the races we associate with Celtic or Scandinavian
mythology? (Elves,
Dwarves, medieval societies of humans, Faeries or
Fays? Selkies? Wizards?)
    Hm, well...I have the Neste who speak most of my
languages...and they were originally kind of
‘Elf-like’...but I dont know if that’s the case
anymore. They’ve changed alot in the past year or so.
There’s also the occasional dragon. :)

How many of you were inspired to examine Welsh,
Hebrew, or Finnish because
of your examination of Tolkien?
  Me!  although, not so much Hebrew, since I’m Jewish
and I have access to that through other means.

How many of you are members of the Mythopoeic Society,
or the Society for
Creative Anachronism, or other High Fantasy Groups?
   I’m part of the Society for Creative Anachronism.
However, I’d like to point out that it is not a ‘High
Fantasy Group’.  The Society for Creative Anachronism
does not include any references to Elves, Wizards,
Dwarves, Faeries or Fays. It is a group dedicated to
reconstructing the (chiefly) European middle ages _as
they actually were_. We are mostly researchers who
specialize in many many areas of the medieval times,
from clothing and textiles, to war, heraldry and food.
I don’t see how that’s ‘High Fantasy’. We’re not
running around talking about spells or dragons or
whatever.

For how many of you is beauty and/or efficiency a
factor in your
language? Or elegance? How would you define these
terms?
   Hm...beauty is definitely important, I like my
languages to sound good to me. But, I dont know if its
anything beyond subjective beauty really. Efficiency?
Not really a goal...

For how many of you is the "exotic" a desired feature
of your invented
language?
   I don’t really go for the whole exotic thing. I
mean, I’ve included Basque-like auxiliary systems, and
Georgian-esque prefixed directionality markers
occasionally, along with long strings of
Japanese-esque verbal suffixes, but all of these have
been used in languages not very important to my
central language family, which is basically European
and Uralic in design, and I like it that way.

How many of you have fashioned your language on a
particular type (Ergative,
Accusative, Trigger, etc.)?
   Again, I have done Ergative and Trigger languages
before, but only as exercizes into understanding those
features. My main languages stick closer to home.

To what degree is difficulty and irregularity of
language important to you
in your conlang? what natural language eccentricities
(or efficiencies) do
you like and try to reproduce?
          I like have irregularity in my conlangs, and
hence...Silindion has wildly unpredictable verb
conjugations, and consonant mutations affecting stem
classes along with a slightly random register
separation between High Silindion and Low Silindion
which introduces some regularity as well as more
irregularity. Nindic has multiple ways of plural
formation, which isn’t entirely regular. South Nindic
has a strange orthography...etc, etc.

How many of you started out by pulling words out of
the air, originally?
How many of you have chosen a more methodic form of
vocabulary building?
I.e., how have you gone about setting up the framework
for your words and
your grammar?
       The first thousand or so roots of the
Silinestic languages (Nindic, Silic, Silindion,
Essamea) were made up on a whim, and then abandoned.
Only two or three of those randomly created roots now
survive. In addition, one root from my first language,
Flavin was imported into Silinestic: _men_ ‘rise’,
this root was also created randomly. Roots are still
made up out of thin air, with the occasional addition
of a root from Indo-European, Greek, Welsh or some
other language which strikes my fancy. The means of
creating words from these roots is very systematic, I
just add whatever suffix I need to create a specific
word. Example: from the root  _nam_, adding the
general noun suffix –a produces <nama> ‘name’. The
same suffix can be added to many many roots. (And yes,
<nama> is an Indo-European borrowing.


PART III: THE LUNATIC SURVEY REVISITED

Why do you conlang? Who will speak it? Read it? What's
the point? What's
the beauty? what's the intellectual draw?
    Um...it’s fun, languages are fun. I’m a
linguistics major..this is like my model boat. Or
something.

To what would you compare a conlang? Is it a
miniature? Is it a model? Is
it a tapestry? Is it an act of obsession and madness?
<G> Or is it a
communicable language?
   It’s a communicable language, once I get it all
fleshed out....although it’s also a model...when I
start it.

If it is a communicable language, to whom do you speak
it?
    To myself and to the moon (yes weird I know) and
sometimes to cats.

To what extent is the opacity or "alterity" of your
language something that
pleases you? In other words, the sounds and the script
have, even for you,
a quality of being foreign, and this delights.
Comment? (I know that when I make maps of cities, and
imagine myself in
them, they delight me because they are both familiar
and foreign at the same
time.)
   Um...I’m not sure I understand this question.

This is a difficult question: how is it that a word
sounds "right" to you?
We recently discussed this. To what extent are you
finding righter, better
words for the world in your conlang? (Perhaps
unanswerable).
     Um...the word sounds right to me
when...er...um..it fits into everything else.
 Wow, this is unanswerable.

How many of you are fictive map-makers, designers of
fictive floor plans,
fictive yachts, fictive star-ships, world-builders,
calligraphers,
cartoonists, etc.? (These pursuits have been
associated with conlanging. I
've done most of them.)
    I’m a map maker and a calligrapher! :)

How many of you have a special script in your conlang?
    ME!

If you use Roman script, how recognizably "phonetic"
is your writing system?
In other words, do you use unconventional letters to
represent sounds?
Why?
    No..it’s mostly phonetic...except when <s> means
two different things in
Silindion.

This is a question Heather asked, but I also asked it
four years ago: how
many of you write in your language? What do you write?
        I write occasionally in it...not enough to
have a literature though, like I want to have.
I write poems to the various ‘gods’ or ‘goddesses’ of
the fictional culture.

How many of you started conlanging when you were a
teenager and have stuck
to the same language over many years? Why?
       I’ve stuck with my one main project: the
Silinestic languages, since,
it’s the only one that I don’t get bored with. I
started it at the beginning of
Highschool, and now it’s the end of my second year in
college.

For how many of you does your language function as a
spiritual instrument?
This is a deeply personal question--let me give you an
example. When I
first started inventing "Tayonian" in my early teens,
what I wrote were
spells and prayers. They had a talismanic quality.
Does that ring a bell
for anybody?
       Although I right prayers to ‘gods’ and
‘goddesses’, I dont really believe in
these things, so I would answer no to this question.
However, whenever I see the moon
I address it in Silindion as if it were the Goddess
Alarie...and while I know it’s not,
I do think it’s really really beautiful and deserving
of a language like Silindion. So...
um...maybe the answer to this question is it’s kind of
a ‘spiritual’ instrument.

How many of you can speak your language, at least to
yourself and your pet?
child? spouse? <G> To what extent?
      I can only say a few words to my cats like ‘File
iss niuni’  ‘Come here cats’,
words like ‘niva’ ‘beautiful’ and ‘Alarie vaurie’
‘Alarie spirit’ are on the tip of
my tongue. I could probably say something more
meaningul given time. I can
write the language pretty well, when I have something
to say in it that is.

How many of you have put up websites where your
language can be showcased?
If so, what is the website address?
       http://erelion.free.fr/

How many of you are comfortable talking to your boss,
your professors, your
family members about this pursuit? How many of you
have received
condescending or other negative responses to your
disclosure? (I have.) Or
even been called "pathological"?
       I’m pretty comfortable talking about it to
family members and friends...
maybe not professors though. Haven’t received anything
really negative.

For how many of you is the damning statement "better
to learn real languages
than invent private ones" a criticism you have
encountered? What would be
your response to such a remark?
          Never encountered this. But I’d probably
start talking about Welsh and all of the
other languages that I listed before, and leave them
dumbfounded and then walk away.
Hey...I’m not a nice guy :) But...I pretend to be one
for the list!  :)

PART IV: GENERAL DEMOGRAPHICS:

What is your age (optional--and can be general: 30-40,
for instance).
nineteen

What is your profession or your station in life (i.e.,
if you are a student,
what is your MAJOR; if a middle or high-school
student, what is your
intended major)?
  Linguistics Major.

What is your gender?
Male

What is your nationality and your native language?
American, English

What natural languages do you speak or have studied?
Depends on what you mean by Studied. I took French,
Spanish, Latin, Japanese and Russian
in school. I’m still taking Russian. I have books on
all the languages that I mentioned above,
and I know quite a bit about most of them. I can
understand Italian, some German, Portuguese
some Finnish and some Welsh. I can understand Hebrew
prayers and some simple words in modern Hebrew.

How many of you have chosen a profession in
linguistics because of your
interest in inventing languages? Or plan a profession
in linguistics?
I’m planning on being a linguistics professor.

What have you learned from conlanging?
Hm...I haven’t learned much from conlanging
specifically...but from Linguistics in general
I’ve learned that languages are infinitely interesting
and worthy of study.

What texts on language and linguistics have you
consulted to help invent
your language?
Woah....um...hundreds. Historical Grammars, Language
Grammars, Phonology,
Morphology, Syntax books. Historical linguistics
textbooks, textbooks of general linguistics...you name
it, my library (personal one that is), has something
like it.

Do you know of anyone who has not connected with the
Internet or the List
who has invented a language? (I'm firmly convinced
that "conlanging" has
been a private pursuit for many people long before the
list started, but
that the list has increased its visibility as an art).
I know one person who was on the list but is no
longer. Marnen Laibow-Koser, anyone
remember him?

Can you give me a short sample of your language with
interlinear description
and translation?

Silindion:
Id i phendenya mornë Uristienëa ievissa mirto i
nossë mirnanólmëa.

Id  i     phenden-ya mor-në Uristien-ëa
emph. the hill-plural shade-p.p. east-adj.
ievi-ssa mir-to     i noss-ë mirnanólm-ëa.
where-that fall-3pl the snow-pl winter-adj.

Behold the shaded eastern hills      where the snows
of winter fall.

Essamea:
Tilil esi si kiliiä simummä ’mi syleeve?
Til-il  esi    si  kili-iä  simu-mmä ’mi  sylee-ve?
see-2sg quest. the ship-pl. swan-like on  ocean-loc.
Do you see the swan-ships on the ocean?

North Nindic:
Ca i geina benin nowad “Ffaeddeirín” muin rath ddor
ell no ffai

Ca i    geina ben-in now-ad  “Ffaeddeir-ín”
has the type  four-th name-def. fire-tail-pl
muin ra-th  ddor ell      no ffai
for has-3pl tail  bright  of  fire

Would you object to my mentioning your conlang/and or
your name in my talk?
I will be discreet about some of the more personal
questions you answered.
Sure go ahead...if it’s not too late that is.

Elliott lash


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