Re: THEORY: irregular conlangs

Thomas R. Wier wrote:
>
> > Anyway. My two questions. What do you guys think
> > of this? And do you do this in your conlangs?
> > AFAIK, in most languages the copula verb is
> > irregular, but most conlangs seem to be very regular.
>
> Well, not all natural languages have a copula (Chinese
> doesn't).  In those that do, there's nothing inherent in the
> system making it more likely to be irregular in the way
> I've described.  Japanese, for instance, has two (2)
> irregular verbs (although whether one was a copula, and
> whether Japanese even has a copula, escapes me).
>
        The two true irregular verbs of Japanese are 'suru': to do and 'kuru':
to come. There are also some other verbs that have few other
irregularities, but most of them are completely regular. Japanese indeed
has a copula: 'da', but it is not considered as a verb (dixit my
Japanese teacher) and it indeed behaves differently than verbs. But
that's a part of the Japanese grammar that is not easy to explain
(especially for a beginner like me).

> And, speaking of regularities in general, Quechua regularly
> applies the plural suffix -kuna to derive plural pronouns:
> they have none of this mincing about with grammaticalized
> "I" but "we", "he" but "they":
>
>      qoqa 'I'
>      qam 'you (singular)'
>      pay 'he/she'
>      qoqayku 'we (excl.)'
>      qoqanchik 'we (incl.)'
>      qamkuna 'you (plural)'
>      paykuna 'they'
>
> (Thanks to Mark Rosenfelder, wherever he is, for his page
> on Quechua grammar.)
>
        Just like Japanese which makes its plural pronouns regularly by
suffixing '-tachi' to some singular pronouns (this suffix means "... and
others" and can be used on names to mean "X and others"). For example:

        watashi: me -> watashitachi: us
        anata (familiar): you -> anatatachi (familiar): you (plural)
        kanojo: her -> kanojotachi: them (feminine)

        but kare: him -> karera: them (masculine and mixte)

        But Japanese don't use them very often (seeing their length, that's not
a surprise :) ).

> > Am I right or wrong? I know many of you (as I once)
> > want an extremely logical language, one that you
> > have to invent because there aren't any logical
> > natlangs. But those of you who persue a natlangy
> > touch of your conlang, how far do you go in your
> > irregularities?
>
> The best way to make your language look really naturalistic is
> to layer regular systems over one another.  This can be just like
> I described for English above, just within one category of words
> like verbs, or it could be for pit the semantic makeup of words
> against, say, their phonetic form. So, for example, my language
> Phaleran used to be completely regular with its morphology,
> until equally regular phonetic changes came along causing
> blurring of the original patterns:
>
        That's exactly what I wanted to achieve with Moten. That's why I used
infixes for that language.

--
        Christophe Grandsire

        Philips Research Laboratories --  Building WB 145
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        Phone:  +31-40-27-45006
        E-mail: grandsir@natlab.research.philips.com