Real Language Examples: The that-trace effect in Swedish and Finland-Swedish

Time for even more real language examples. And as usual, I have dug deep in the grammar of my native language to find a belated hannukah-gift to you, my dear readers.

In syntax, a that-trace effect is a kind of blocking, where a complementizer cannot be followed by a trace. This effect is present in English, and causes this system of sentences with various transformations to hold:

I didn't think he could sing

He, I didn't know sings in that choir (arguably not grammatical)

Unlike English, Scandinavian languages permit topicalizing elements of subclauses rather freely. In English, this seems mainly to occur with interrogative pronouns. A __ will be inserted where the moved element originally stood in example sentences:

who did you think __ would finish this?

Compare this with Swedish clauses such as these:

Evert tror jag inte __ äter fisk.
Evert think I not __ eats fish.
Evert, I don't think eats fish.
I don't think Evert eats fish.

Other constituents can also be moved around:

Fisk tror jag inte Evert äter __.
Fish I don't think Evert eats.
I don't think Evert eats fish.

Here, it would be fun if we could do this to verbs as well, but alas, this is not permissible:

Äter tror jag inte Evert __ fisk.
Eats I don't think Evert fish
I don't think Evert eats fish (think this as contrasting to what he does do with fish: farm, cut fillets, cure, smoke, put in brine, make fish fingers, mong, etc, them)

Let's return to our English example "who did you think would finish this?" Let us consider two possible rewordings of this where it's "he" instead of "who", and it's just a statement.

You did think he would finish this?
You did think that he would finish this?

We find an interesting difference here, with regards to the permissibility of "that":

*who did you think that would finish this?

The hypothesis is that "that" cannot be followed by a trace of the element that has been moved left. (In essence, this means we can't have "that" and a move at the same time.) The subclause must be introduced by a null-element instead if there is a trace.

Anyways, Standard Swedish as spoken in Sweden has the same that-trace effect as English, whereas Standard Swedish as spoken in Finland lacks it. Norwegian seems also to have geographical splits on this, and Icelandic, I am happy to tell, solidly sides with my variety of Swedish. Since left-moved elements seem to be more common in Scandinavian in general, these phenomena are much more visible than in English.

Standard Swedish:
han tror jag kan simma
he thinks I can swim

As it happens, standard Swedish has V2, so this can actually correspond to _two_ different English orders. Notice that Swedish does not have person congruence on the verb:

jag tror han kan simma

I think (that) (he*) can swim (throw "he" to the left edge)
he think (that) I can swim (remove (that))

and is thus ambiguous. If Swedish did not have V2, it would be less ambiguous

he I think can swim

I he think can swim

but since Swedish does not permit this, it gets ambiguous. (There are some word order rules with regards to adverbs and auxiliaries that do, at least in part, resolve the question, but not always.)

Finland Swedish has resolved this issue in a different way, however. We don't have the that trace effect.

han tror jag att kan simma
he think I that can swim
he I think that can swim

 

This is as if English permitted

*who did you think that would finish this?

 

Since the 'att' is nearly mandatory if the subclause is not introduced by its subject, this actually fully removes the ambiguity from F-Swedish subclauses with leftwards shifted subjects.

The reason this particular difference between the two Swedish varieties has not been squashed by the education system is probably the fact that it's kind of difficult to explain something as abstract as this rule to kids.

I am kinda at awe at the level of hypocrisy "grammar nazis" reach on this thing. With one side of their face they say we should make sure the language is as unambiguous as possible and with the other side of their face they teach that this trait of F-Swedish should be eliminated - despite the fact that it objectively reduces the amount of ambiguity. Fuck them. Seriously.

Detail #422: Variations on Reflexives

I have been reading up a lot on reflexives in different languages, and this inspired me to write a little on the different types of reflexives I have encountered, and some additional types.

1. Types of pronouns 

1.1. Gaps

Some languages have gaps in the pronominal system where the reflexives would be expected to appear. West Germanic, for instance, now entirely lacks reflexive possessives (whereas Slavic and North Germanic do have them).

Thus, "he saw his car" can signify the subject's car being seen by the subject, or some other third person's car being seen by the subject. In Slavic and North Germanic, there is a reflexive possessive pronoun. In examples throughout this post, I may use "sy" and "sine" for this, analogous to this structure w.r.t. Swedish: min:my::sin:sy.

Another arguable gap in most IE languages is the lack of a reflexive subject, which could make sense with subclauses and such:

"he did not know that heself would ..."

There are other imaginable situations where a reflexive nominative also makes sense, such as in split ergative languages where the nominative also is the absolutive, or in languages where some type of quirky case or differential case marking sometimes has nominative forms in object positions. Also, in the bit further down about reference, we may find other reasons.

Another imaginable gap could be a gender-specific conflation. Imagine a language where masculines and feminines have a distinct reflexive form, but neuters do not, leaving

"the animal saw it"

 

ambiguous as to whether it's reflexive or not.

2. Person

In some languages, reflexive pronouns are person-specific, whereas in some they are entirely person-agnostic. Russian is an example of the latter, English of the former.

Thus, in Russian, reflexive arguments often are expressed by the pronoun 'sebya' in the proper case form regardless of person (although in first and second person, using the first or second person pronouns is permitted and sometimes done). In English, it's myself, yourself, himself, herself, etc.

In Swedish, first and second person use the first and second person pronouns. The semi-reflexive "själv" (obvious cognate) can follow, but is optional.

jag såg mig in the mirror = I saw myself in the mirror
jag såg mig själv i spegeln = I saw myself (emphatic) in the mirror

I would go so far as to say that "själv" no longer is properly reflexive in Swedish but rather some kind of intensifier and restrictive marker. C.f.

Jag visste att jag själv skulle bli tvungen att lösa det.
I knew that I self would have to resolve it

Han själv hade inte hunnit med det, men med hennes hjälp gick det bra.
He self had not been_able_to_do_on_time with it, but with her help went it well
He would not have been able to get it done on time by himself, but with her help it went well (or maybe "alone, he would not ...")

Otherwise, 'själv' serves the other roles 'self' serves in English, altho' sometimes in the superlative: självaste kungen/kungen själv : the King himself.

The usual reflexive in Swedish only pops up in the third person, and does not distinguish number - although 'själv' would be inflected for plural if used with a plural, and neuter when used with neuters:

han såg sig (själv) i spegeln
de såg sig (själva) i spegeln
djuret såg sig (självt) i spegeln

he/they/the animal saw him/them/itself in the mirror, -a = plural adjective/pronoun congruence, -t = neuter ditto.

The richer the congruence system on the reflexives get in a language, the more likely it feels like the reflexive/non-reflexive distinction is going to be lost and be replaced by some form of proximative/obviative-like distinction instead. Once you have gender and number and the whole shebang both on the regular third person pronouns and reflexive ones, you will very seldom need a restriction on them that force them to be reflexive or not, but rather might just care about whether there's two referents that are distinct and of somewhat different prominence in the discourse.

3. Reference

3.1 Subject only 

It is not unusual for reflexive pronouns to be restricted to subjects only. Thus, sebya and its forms, as far as I can tell, only refer back to the subject. I have no idea how this works with non-nominative subjects of infinitives in Russian, but there's space for variation there.

Natural variants of this type could be absolutive-only and topic-only.

3.2 Some other kind of reference

In Swedish, the rules for the possessive reflexive are complicated, but as an acquaintance of mine would express it: 'Any NP that C-commands the phrase with the reflexive pronoun can be the possessor'.

In fact, there's a further sort of restriction where for most speakers, the regular pronouns cannot refer to the subject (whereas the reflexive ones can; the non-reflexives do seem to be able to refer to non-subjects even in positions where they can refer to non-subjects as well.) 

Two examples:

de visade honom till sitt nya rum

they showed him to sy new room

Here, the new room might be theirs or his.

John visade Peter till hans nya rum

John showed Peter to his new room

Here, the new room can only be Peter's.

The c-command rule opens up a few other positions:

tanken i all sin förträfflighet
the thought in all (of) sy excellence = the thought in all its excellence

This could be any constituent - subject, object, prepositional object, etc. This position, however, does seem to permit for use of non-reflexive pronouns as well,

tanken i all dess förtäfflighet
the thought in all (of) its excellence

Finally, the Swedish reflexive can refer to an empty subject of an infinitive, and this also holds for the regular reflexive object pronoun

att lära sig känna sina gränser är viktigt
to learn to know sy boundaries is important

att vila sig är hälsosamt
to rest oneself is healthy

Beyond this, there is a nominalization in the plural, 'de sina', which signifies the closest family and friends.

3.3. Even further kinds of reference 

The Swedish example above is rather complicated, but we can find examples that it does not permit. Deciding whether to permit these (or to restrict some of the ones the Swedish example includes) can give some space for a conlang to grow into a detailed project.

3.3.1 Conjunctions 

"Han och sina vänner" - "He and sy friends" does not work in Swedish. It must be "han och hans vänner".

The reflexives do not work over subclause boundaries, making

"han visste att han var försenad"
he knew that he was late

mildly ambiguous as to whether it is reflexive or not. "Själv" could be added, but would sound really weird in Swedish - though more acceptable with some other verbs in the main clause and subclause. Even then, "själv" is not necessarily reflexive, as it might actually also signify that the second subject is or does something by himself.

3.3.2 Topicalization of non-subjects 

One could also imagine that topics are possible candidates for reference of reflexives, in which case you might want to be able to refer to the subject as possessed by the topic, and with a reflexive possessive at that. Or maybe even in some weird situation where the topic and the subject are the same referent, but mark different roles,

himself he gave an expensive gift.

 

could make much more sense in some languages' logic as

 

him heself gave an expensive gift.

 

3.3.3 Quirky case 

 

Of course, with quirky case you may have a non-subject in the nominative or a subject in a non-nominative case, and there may be restrictions depending on whether they're true quirky cases or not affecting whether they can or can't be the referent of a reflexive. It might be nice having objects  in the nominative be candidates for reflexive reference (and also, naturally, blocking the use of regular reflexive possessive pronouns owning the object).

3.3.4 Subordinate structures

 

It is imaginable that subordinate infinitives with an agent that is distinct from the subject of a finite verb may restrict the reflexives within its scope to refer to NPs within the infinite VP + the agent, or maybe even more restrictive, such that the agent may be blocked from being the referent of the reflexive. Thus

I helped him do his homework

could, in such a language, not be

I helped him do sy homework

 

One could also imagine a reverse effect, where the agent is within the scope of the infinitive phrase's block and prevents external reflexives from reaching it, thus if he helps his sister with her homework, it couldn't be

he helps sy sister do ...

But if the infinitive then permits reflexive reference to the agent, this would be permissible:

he helps his sister do sy homework

The situation with subclauses is of course of some interest as well, but I will not get into detail with regards to that. Similar possibilities exist as with regards to the infinitive phrase, but with a subclause you generally do not have arguments "outside of" the scope of the subclause.

4 Other considerations

 

4.1. Distinct reflexives for subjects and other referents

 

One could imagine a language that has evolved distinct forms of 'sy' and '...self' for subjects and objects (or ergatives and absolutives, or topics and non-topics, or subjects and objects and obliques, or topics and other NPs or maybe topics or subjects vs. non-subject non-topics). This seems unlikely but not impossible. I imagine this would likely include some kind of morphological marking distinguishing the two (or more) types instead of separate stems.

 

4.2 Antireflexive 

 

 I have previously considered an anti-reflexive pronoun, where the regular third person pronoun is assumed to be reflexive if there is a third person subject, and any non-reflexive reading requires an explicitly non-reflexive one.

4.3 The Finnish reflexive possessive

 

The Finnish reflexive possessive is fascinating in that it entirely lacks independent morphemes of its own. Normally, reflexiveness in Finnish is marked by itse + case + possessive suffix, so "itselleni" = self + to + my = to myself.

However, 'itse' does not feature in reflexive possession. 'Oma' can be used for that sometimes, but is not exclusively reflexive. In meaning it is fairly close to '(one's) own', i.e. more about exclusive possession rather than reflexive such, although both meanings do exist.

Third person reflexive possession in Finnish is expressed by the possessive suffix, whenever the noun is not the subject:

Hän löysi varastetun autonsa = (s)he found her/his stolen car

 

Here, we actually get a slightly antireflexive construction, because if you sneak in the genitive third person pronoun, it suddenly no longer is reflexive

Hän löysi hänen varastetun autonsa = (s)he found her/his(someone else's) stolen car

Pluralia Tantum in Dairwueh, Sargaĺk and Bryatesle

There are reasons to think Proto-BDS had pluralia tantum. However, the languages that have emerged out of it have done some interesting distinct things with them.

0. Pluralia Tantum that go back to PBDS

Although all descendant languages have developed new pluralia tantum since then, a few can be reconstructed as far back as then:

*śigdir - stars
*lixtan - any structure made from spokes
*t'undan - waves
*xajir - itching, spots
*mit'san - freckles, spots
*p'arir - mist, smoke
*t'ik'rir - fur
*t'igdar - a catamaran-style type of boat

Some cultural notes: Proto-BDS thought seems to have thought that every star consists of multiple entities, and that talking about them as agglomerates made the most sense. In Bryatesle, Dairwueh and Sargaĺk stories of encountering a shooting star generally include rather "plural" notions. It is conceivable that the origin goes back to an even earlier verb *śig, signifying 'flicker, flutter'. In this sense, even one star is "the flickers". It is also possible that the Sargalk word t'iśkɨl  - butterfly -, the Bryatesle rysih - shake, quake -, and Dairwueh sidzi - flap, slowly fall by sideways motions (like a leaf)-  originate with this verb as well.

1. Sargaĺk

In Sargaĺk, there are dialectal differences in how these are handled. In southern varieties, just set the number 'one' before them to specify that you are talking about one. The southern variety has originally had the same system as the northern and western varieties, but has simplified it a bit.

dər śixs-air - one stars.

In northern and western varieties, 'one' is further inflected with a plural congruence marker

dəy-air śixs-air : one_s star_s

the example is from a dialect that dissimilates dər-air into dəy-air

With a few other quantifiers, such as 'which', demonstratives, etc, there is a double marking: a plural marker followed by a singular marker. Far western dialects, however, just have it be in plural, followed by 'one' in plural, and finally by the word itself.

Eastern Sargaĺk has created singular forms for most non-pairwise pluralia tantum, and for the pairwise ones, "pair" - mihyor - is the singularizer. There is one further exception to this, lixtan's reflex yuśtan, which has the singularizer miśrik. A few words retain their plural morpheme as part of the root.

2. Dairwueh

Dairwueh has some lexical quirks in the use of adjective and verbal congruence, and may demand normally singular adjective stems with plural markers for these nouns, and the same holds for verbs. Non-nominative cases for some pluralia tantum are singularia tantum instead, and some speakers prefer to use singular congruence markers for these as well. For some speakers, congruence can be used to distinguish a singular referent from a plural referent.

3. Bryatesle

Standard Bryatesle uses counters to turn them into singulars; in many ways, they resemble mass nouns in Bryatesle, and in fact, the plural morphemes sometimes appear on new mass nouns. The syntactical differences between apparently plural mass nouns and pluralia tantum are that mass nouns always take some type of counter-like noun to enable numbers or certain other quantifiers, PTs do not require that for numbers larger than one and PTs always take plural congruence on verbs regardless of actual number, mass nouns always take singular congruence.

Detail #421: A Quirky Numeral Structure

Consider a language with singulars, duals and plurals. The language has a rather strict distinction between mass and count nouns, and explicitly marks different types of individuated, specific, indefinite, etc references.

Now, this entirely eliminates the need for the numerals one and two, as you would never say 'two bikes', you'd say bike-dual. You would never say 'there are two of them', you'd say 'they-plur are they-dual'.

This of course leads to problems when counting higher numbers. You have nothing to put after 'twenty' or 'thirty' when you want to form 21 and 22.

Twenty bike-SINGULAR = 21 bikes.

Twenty bike-DUAL = 22 bikes.

Probably unlikely.

Detail #420: Ambiguous Reference with Possessive Pronouns

English has some ambiguity with its possessive pronouns, but the level of ambiguity could be taken to a weirder level in this way:

reflexive third person ownership or other third person referent: singular possessive pronoun

Thus "he sees his house" can have 'his' either be reflexive or not, but "they see his house" also can signify reflexive possession.

reciprocal ownership uses a third person plural possessive pronoun

Thus "they see their house" can mean 'they see some other persons' houses' or 'they see each other's houses'.

I don't think this kind of idea is entirely unrealistic.

Detail #419: Direct and Indirect Object Case Marking: a Different Approach

Let us imagine a language that is similar to standard average European. Let's further imagine that word order informs us which NP is the direct object and which is the indirect one. Let's also imagine that there are two cases, emphatic oblique (-n in the examples below) and oblique (-m in the examples below).

I give you-m a-n book-n

"It is a book I give you / a book I give you"

I give you-n a-m book-m

"It is you I give a book" / "you I give a book"

When word order operations occur, however, some restrictions appear: in the initial position, recipients are -m, accusatives -n - but this does not prevent the other NP from taking the same marker after the verb.

Detail #418: Subtle Clusivity

One could imagine a language where certain constructions signal inclusivity, while others signal exclusivity, without there being any dedicated morphemes for clusivity.

1. Reflexives in two ways

In some languages, there is a reflexive pronoun that can be used for any person (see the Russian себя), whereas in others, reflexives are person-specific (myself, yourself, etc).

In Russian, in some circumstances you can use the person-specific possessive or accusative, but this is unusual. However, we could imagine a language in which first person plural uses the third-person reflexive whenever the listener is not included. This of course limits the clusivity to reflexive constructions, unless the clusivity-signaling reflexive is intentionally overused, maybe as a dative or something else like that, or just as a dummy object with intransitives.

2. Gender (dis)congruence

In a language where plural first person pronouns encode gender, in a system where, e.g. the masculine pronoun can refer to a mixed group (but feminine pronouns cannot), feminine first person plurals when speaking to males can signal clusivity. This is a pretty restrictive situation in which clusivity emerges, but maybe it could be taken one step further, such that gender congruence with a singular listener (or uniform group of listeners) becomes a way of signalling clusivity, rather than signalling the gender of the group.

3. Differential object or subject case on the first person pronoun

For some reason, I imagine a vocative case could actually double as an inclusive subject or object marker.

4. The selection of auxiliaries, especially ones that denote evidential information?

One could imagine a couple of near-synonymous auxiliaries, where one is just for whatever reason associated with the inclusive or the exclusive second person plural.

5. Differential object case on a noun phrase object

Perchance deriving from a historical "our", where the language normally would prefer reflexives possessive pronouns. However, this might disable the marking for clusivity if the subject is not also the first person pronoun, and it disables mixed clusivity in a clause (e.g. "we-excl sold our-incl harvest in town").

6. Word order

"Our house" = inclusive, "house of ours" = exclusive. "They us saw" = inclusive, "they saw us" = exclusive. This could very well be a statistical rule rather than a strict one, such that if the context leads to parsing it differently, such different parsing is permissible - but 90% of the time, this will hold.

For subjects, I imagine this might be less common, although I can also imagine that a SVO language could have VSO as an exclusive structure, since putting the verb first feels like a more "pressing" narrative, where the listener might be unaware of what happened.

7. Selecting between different semantically similar structures

E.g. something like the English perfect and the English past tense. I imagine a language could start associating such a pair with a distinction such as this, due to the situations in which one is likely to use one or the other: 'have done' seems slightly more likely to be used when telling someone who did not participate, "did" slightly more likely when talking to someone who did participate.

8. Dual or trial

One can also imagine that the dual / (trial /) plural distinction might, for second person plural under some circumstances become an inclusive/exclusive distinction instead. However, I want to keep the ability to use the dual/plural distinction itself, so - how about discongruence conveying clusivity. Dual + singular verb = exclusive, plural + dual verb = exclusive? This of course requires an unusually rich verbal morphology with regards to number, and we're also restricting it to elements that have congruence on the verb. Maybe the clusivity distinction becomes so important that in all other positions, the distinction is clearly one of clusivity, or maybe both distinctions are important enough that they're simply thoroughly ambiguous and only context serves to disambiguate between "we two" versus "we, but not you" versus "we several" versus "we and you".

Detail #417: Some ideas about relativization

I assume everyone knows of the relativization hierarchy by now. 

1. A Second Relativization Hierarchy

Let's instead imagine a species with a language faculty that creates two relativization hierarchies, but also permits for a systematic exception.

The first hierarchy is familiar - the relativization hierarchy. I will not even modify it for this idea.

The second hierarchy is an "external" relativization hierarchy. It, and the first one, have implications between them. I will have the same order for that hierarchy:

Subject > Direct Object > Indirect Object > Oblique > Genitive > Object of comparative

What the second hierarchy tells us is which roles an NP of an external clause can be relativized as.

Thus, if a genitive in the main clause can take a subclause in which it corresponds to the oblique, then so can also the oblique, the indirect object, the direct object and the subject. 

One could also imagine extreme things like "only the subject in the main clause can take relative clauses" or "only the subject in the main clause can correlate with anything but the subject in the subclause".

However, I imagine it could be likely for any NP to also permit an "echo" of its own role in the subclause, which would create a systematic exception. This type of exception I'd like to term a "linear" exception.

2. Subdivisions of the relativization hierarchy

One could imagine, for instance, that inanimate nouns have a stricter hierarchy than animate nouns.

3. Questions about the relativization hierarchy

3.1 Do we know where secundatives are with regards to the relativization hierarchy?

3.2 Is there any research or even any hypotheses around as to whether there's any roles that go to the right of objects of comparisons, or between the known elements?

Detail #416: Disjunctive Reciprocals

It is conceivable that a language distinguishes the following meaning-structures in the morphology of its reciprocals:

A acts on B and B acts on A > A and B act on each other

A acts on B or B acts on A > A or B act on each other_disjunctive. 

One could even imagine, then, that partial negations also could fit into this:

A but not B act on each other_disjunctive. 

This could be done by differential case or by some marker that is entirely separate from case. 

Detail #415: Reciprocals and Collective Nouns

Normally, reciprocals take a plural noun (or several coordinated noun phrases) and make the entities that make up an agent (or comparable role) act upon each other.

A rather interesting situation is the use of collective nouns and reciprocals:

?the team watched each other in astonishment

*laget såg förvånat på var-andra (literally: team-the saw surprisedly on each-other)

Yeah, no, the ? mark there is probably wrong, for a huge majority it probably genuinely is *. I am convinced that some languages permit, without hesitation, constructions analogous to the one above.

Historically, "one another" and the Russian construction "drug druga" (drug = nom, druga = acc) probably consist of two bits - one ("one", "drug") encoding the subject, and the other ("another", "druga") the object. From a purely abstract look at it, it feels like this construction might be marginally more tolerable in English? In Russian, I have it on a fairly reliable source that this is entirely acceptable.

*the team watched one another in astonishment

para obnimala drug druga 

In Swedish, some passive verbs primarily have a reciprocal meaning:

vi kysstes ('we were kissing')

vi slogs ('we were fighting (each other, but can also mean 'we fought random people')

Now, most Swedes accept

paret kysstes ('the couple were kissing')

despite this being a reciprocal with singular subject. 

However, I can't just let it stand at "this is okay in a language so there you go", can I?

We could imagine, for instance, that a language does get any number of congruence or discongruence-phenomena with this.

1) Singular forms of 'each other'.

In Swedish at least, 'varandra' is morphologically plural. One could imagine a system where a singular form appears with a singular subject. In Russian, 'drug druga' is morphologically singular, but one could imagine a partitive genitive instead on the subject noun - getting us something like 'druga druga'.

Here, an unrelated idea appears: in the dual, a language could very well have a reciprocal singular pronoun: 'both saw the other', but 'the thief and the policemen saw each other' .

2) Plural verb forms and adjectives with singular subjects.

Some varieties of English permit plural verb forms with collective singulars, but one could imagine a situation where plural verb forms only are used with singulars in situations where the singular is blocked by the presence of a reciprocal pronoun.

3) Congruentially Forced Plurals

The subject could exhibit other behaviors that are typical of plurals, including morphological or congruence-related behaviors. Maybe the reciprocality forces an explicit plural marking, so that "the groups saw each other" can signify both 'the members of the group saw each other' or 'the different groups' members saw the other groups'. Maybe adjectives need plural congruence. Maybe they are forced to take a plural article.

 

 

A Bryatesle Mystical Practice

In the Bryatesle-Dairwueh religious landscape, there is a variety of mystical practices in the religious communities. Some schools of mysticism overlap many of the faiths, some schools of mysticism are closely aligned with some particular faith, and some schools of mysticism are more or less synonymous with a faith.

Within the stedbaprian faith, a widely held idea is that humans live their lives in a state comparable to inebriation. We do not realize the true state of affairs, because this pseudo-inebriety prevents us from seeing clearly it.

There are several ways of dealing with this. Note, however, that the state is not the same as inebriation, but merely in several ways similar to it. From this emerges a notion: if a person can, during inebriation, practice his ability to think clearly, this will help him see clearly when sober - much like a swordsman will first practice with wood swords or some other less sharp implement.

Thus, the stedbaprian mystics will consume alcohol and various psychoactive herbs at certain times, and then practice a variety of cognitively demanding tasks. This tends to be done in groups of at least three.

A person who is very proficient at these tests when intoxicated will be considered more likely to be able to see the world as it is, and hence will be more trustworthy and proficient in thought, perception, behavior and skills.

Feasibility, Conlangs and a Challenge

Through the years, I have suggested some typologically unlikely, and maybe even some typologically impossible ideas in this blog. I find typologically unlikely - and even antiuniversal - systems somewhat interesting. However, I do believe there are some types of systems that we even find in some conlangs, which violate a type of constraint that I believe is a solid wall of impossibility.

In my own thoughts on this topic, I basically think of them just by the term "genuinely impossible systems". However, an issue with them is that their surface realization is possible - and there's probably multiple genuinely impossible systems corresponding to every possible surface realization.

Here's a phonological example. In antirealistic, there are two phonemes /b/ and /p/. These have the following realizations. NB: the phones themselves aren't really the interesting thing here, their relative realizations are:

initial: /b/ : [b], /p/ : [p]
medial: /b/ : [p], /p/: [b]

Why do I hold this to be unrealistic? Unless there's super-strong morphophonemic reasons to identify the [b] inside a word with /p/, and the [b] in the onset with /b/, I am very certain that any child or foreigner learning this language will identify the [b]-sounds as /b/, and the [p]-sounds as /p/. In lieu of a very strong morphophonemic relation here, there's no way a learner would identify them like that - even if the writing system maintained the identity.

A morphological example, then - and I don't think we find much of these in conlangs (unlike the phonological example seen above). In unrealistic, there are special verb forms corresponding to English -ing, and in unrealistic it's -int. However, for intransitive verbs, this consists of -i- (intransitive) and -nt (intransitive active participle), whereas for transitive verbs it consits of -in- (transitive) and -t (transitive active participle). Unless -in-, -i-, -n-, -t and -nt exist as independent morphemes but only ever occur in this context, there's no reason a learner would identify this as a complex suffix.

Syntax, then. Can anyone come up with a good syntactical example of a similar infeasible structure?

Detail #414: Passives and Reflexives

Passives and reflexives sometimes are fairly similar (and in some languages even indistinguishable). One of the Russian passive constructions is the reflexive construction, and the Swedish synthetic passive originates in a perfectly analogous construction - a reduced reflexive pronoun becoming a verb morpheme.

In some languages, the "passive" does not promote the object to subject position. This, for instance, is the case in modern Finnish (but earlier, it does seem it might have been the case). However, since the passive fulfills many of the roles the passive fulfills in other languages - emphasizing the object as the "central" participant, omitting the subject, etc - it gets to be called a passive.

This leaves open a simple way of keeping the reflexive and passive distinct, yet reuse the morphology:

noun.nom verb.refl = reflexive
noun.obj verb.refl = passive

However, there are of course reflexive constructions (and passive ones!) that do not directly pertain to the direct object - "I gave myself a surprise", "I looked at my toe", "I did it for myself". In such circumstances, I like the idea of letting a language conflate the two, or possible allow for disambiguating the reflexive by inserting a pronoun.

Further, third person pronouns could possibly have an anti-reflexive morpheme available for such constructions:

he saw.refl him.nonrefl in front of him

he₁ saw him₂ in front of himself₁

I am pretty sure the idea of a nonreflexive pronoun has occurred previously in this blog, but I am pretty sure the general idea here is new. I am considering including it in Bryatesle, since its reflexive and passive system is still underdeveloped. However, it feels like integrating this with the Bryatesle case system would be a nightmare.

Alas, Ćwarmin, Sargaĺk and Bryatesle all have sufficient passive/reflexive systems fleshed out, Ŋžädär isn't really suitable for this, and Tatediem is off the table, for now at least. Maybe I should revive it.

Real Language Details: Word Order operations in Swedish

As usual, my real life language example will come from Swedish (a habit I really need to break). This time, we're looking at word order in main clauses. First, Swedish is in many ways similar to English, but differs on a few important points:

• thou/you-distinction, and case distinction on both. I will use thou/thee and you/ye for nom/acc in my English examples.
• In spoken Swedish, 'de' (they) and 'dem' (them) have - in most regiolects - been conflated to 'dom', which I will write 'thom'.

Swedish is V2, unlike English, which means that almost always, there'll be one constituent left of the finite verb, and the rest will go to the right. Exceptions include a handful of adverbs that can go between the subject and the verb, and questions, which have a fairly strict VSO order.

Basically, some linguists describe the Swedish word order in main clauses as follows:

[fundament] V S * iO * dO *

The asterisks represent adverbs, whose rules are not all that interesting with regards to this point (but may be dealt with later). If the fundament remains empty, it is a question, but if any thing from the right of the verb is moved to the fundament, you get a statement. Adverbs can be moved, subjects, objects, indirect objects, etc. If it's a prepositional phrase that is moved, the preposition can be stranded at the end of the clause.

Now to some exceptions. For conservative speakers, objects that are personal pronouns can further be shifted leftwards to the slot directly right of the verb, displacing the subject:

then saw thee a friend

It seems there are some restrictions:

• a heavy subject is more likely to move right, or a subject that has some "association" rightwards - i.e. coordination with something in the next clause
• a pronominal subject cannot be displaced
• a definite, non-heavy subject  seems unwilling to be displaced

Now we're getting to an interesting bit, were there's two groups of conservative speakers, and the less conservative group is shitting on the more conservative group for being sloppy.

The they-them distinction, as mention, is weakened in the spoken language, such that 'thom' has replaced both. Thus, 

thom see me
I see thom

are both permissible in most speakers' eyes and ears. This causes a complication where speakers who are unsure of the written form tend to err on the side of using 'them', giving results such as

them see me
I see them

This annoys a fairly large contingent of conservative speakers - even those conservative speakers who themselves have 'thom' in the spoken form but who have good intuitions for when which form is used.

Some conservative speakers seem to instinctively correct every 'them' that is in even a slightly unusual position to 'they'. Thus,

then answered them a voice over the speaker

will be hypercorrected by them to

then answered they a voice over the speaker

even in contexts where this makes no sense. There seems to be four kinds of readers with regards to this:

1. Some readers do not react at all that anything is wrong, and will read 'them' as the subject.
2. Some readers react that something is wrong, and will read 'them' as the subject, and would correct it to 'they'. These will consider the sentence sloppily written and a sign of the modern degradation of the language.
   
3. Some readers react that the word order is wrong, but read 'them' as the object. These will consider the sentence sloppily written and a sign of the modern degradation of the language.
   
4. Some readers do not react at all that anything is wrong, and will read 'them' as the object. If they are keenly aware of Swedish linguistic developments over the last 100 years or so, they will see this as somewhat conservative.

Of course, group #4 and #3 will be aware that some writers do not distinguish they/them, and if the context has several they/them-errors, they will join #2 temporarily.

Detail #413: Object Prepositions encoding a bunch of stuff

This system might be incorporated into a conlang of mine in the future. Consider a system where direct objects often take a sort of accusative preposition, but this preposition also is inflected with information about the object and the verb.

To some extent, the inflections can be combined - but not indiscriminately so.

The basic preposition could be a syllable, say ir. Maybe we have some congruence thing going on, so it might be ar for plurals or something like that. It also is not used with pronouns - and not only not with personal pronouns, but not with pronouns in general. (Possibly with the caveat that indefinites and some quantifying pronouns may permit taking them.)

Restrictions on use

All individuated objects that are not pronouns or proper nouns require an object preposition. For perfective verbs, non-individuated objects may also take the preposition.

In subclauses, the object preposition may act as a head of a verb phrase without any actual verb involved.

Prefixes 

s- : bring into existence
w- : change the nature of something gradually
p- : change the nature of something in a way that breaks categorization
n- : destroy

sw- and sn- seem to be used by some speakers for a slow, gradual process of creation or destruction, but is far from accepted by all.

Postfixes

-k : the object in half
-kek :the object into multiple parts
-ta : the object is intrinsic, habitually recurring; the verb could be considered gnomic.
-ba : the object is temporary, accidental, occasional or incidental.

Circumfixes
Circumfixes cannot co-occur with pre- or postfixes.

k- ... -di : an object of strong desire
f- ... -ap : an object of strong hate
kus- ... -a : an action that merges objects or brings them together locally

More Research Needed: Coordinated relativizer over gaps in Swedish

In Swedish, much like in English, coordination over gaps conserves syntactical role.

The relative pronoun* 'som', for some speakers at least, seems to permit coordination where the explicitly stated pronoun is a subject and the gap is an object, thus violating the conservation of role. A similar weird sentence in English would be, _ marking the coordinated gap.

?the guest that arrived and you received _.

* There is some controversy regarding whether it even is a pronoun and has any role in the VP or is just a complementizer, but I hold that the existence of mistakes such as the genitive 'soms' (should be 'vars') argues in favour of it being a pronoun.

Detail #412: Mandatory Non-Indicative Mood on some Verbs

Certain verbs, e.g. "understand" or stative verbs that convey strength or reach, could easily develop in a way that potential aspect becomes mandatory. Ultimately, the difference in meaning between "can you understand this" and "do you understand this" is not all that big.

Here's a challenge - find other, rather "average" indicative, non-auxiliary verbs and a grammaticalization path that makes some non-potential aspect mandatory.

Detail #411: Some Nouns are Auxiliaries

Consider a system where a few nouns when they are subjects or objects instead inflect like auxiliaries. When the noun has the role of a subject, it is inflected in third person. As objects, they require the infinitive to be in some kind of antipassive-like form.

Sometimes, these auxiliaries can convey information about a subject that is a noun.

Consider, for instance, if "team" was one such noun-verb monstrosity. Now, one could for instance construct a thing like

Erin and Pekka team.3pl.pres fight monsters / E & P, as a team, fight monsters.

However, "team.3pl.pres fight.inf monsters" would simply mean "the team fights monsters". 

I team.1sg.pres fight-antipassive dummy-acc-plur would simply mean "I fight (the/a) teams" 

 

I will in a later post consider some quite different nouns that could have quite different side-effects in a system like this. 

The antireflexive: a clearer elucidation

I previously had an idea I called 'the antireflexive'. Rereading it, I think I descibed it rather unclearly. The obvious objection is:

how does this differ from just relabeling third person pronouns as antireflexive, and reflexive pronouns as third person pronouns?

The difference appears whenever a reflexive reading is impossible - person, gender or number differences, etc.

He sees her = not reflexive

She sees him = not reflexive

He sees him = reflexive

He sees else-him =  anti-reflexive

A Conreligious Detail: Scripture as Circulating Letters

This text describes a practice of one of the Bryatesle-Dairwueh religions.

Consider a religion wherein the notion of scripture exists, but is significantly different from that of, say, Christianity or Islam.

One type of scripture that is, afaict, unique to Abrahamic religions, is the letter. Christianity has, in its "primary" volume of scripture a set of letters - the epistles. In Judaism, letters do not occur in the Bible, nor do they occur in the Quran in Islam, but in the ongoing process of halakha and sharia - decisions on questions of Jewish and Islamic law - responsa/fatwas from earlier authorities - historically often sent as letters - form an important part of the source material for the decisions. The Jewish and Muslim canon is sort of closed but in some sense, the responsa and fatwa literature is an open scriptural corpus, where new - as well as hypothetical - issues are being discussed and evaluated.

This idea takes that "religious mechanic" and puts some twists on it.

Let's now rather imagine that letters with a variety of religious content - spiritual claims, ethical advice, ritual advice, political advice, eschatological claims, prayers, hymns, stories - are in circulation, but that there's a tradition against copying them.

New letters sometimes enter into circulation, and are deemed as acceptable depending on how well they conform to the known letters of the community to which it first arrives. 

When a community receives a letter, there's a festive celebration - and when they send it on the way, there's a festive celebration.  Physical copies of letters naturally deteriorate over time. A deteriorated letter is not replaced by a copy. Other letters replace it. Some ideas will be lost, some ideas will change over time, some new ideas will enter. The loss of a letter to entropy also is the cause of ritual observances.

The letter and its paraphernalia

With the letter, a rather stylized wooden pole into which the symbols of the eight first congregations to receive and accept the letter are carved (exceptions with as many as twenty congregations may be found). If there is some theme that lends itself to a nice graphical representation, this may affect the ornamentations of the stick. Sometimes, the end of the pole is shaped as animal heads, human heads, implements of war or of agriculture, lamps or candleholders, hands showing culturally important gestures, and in at least a handful of examples human genitalia. The letter itself is inside a leather pouch attached by strings to the stick. 

The pouch may also contain letters about the letter - inquiring as to the veracity of the authorship, clarifying correspondences, etc. Sometimes, ritual objects or relics may be included.

What does it take to get a letter into circulation?

Upon being received at its first congregation, the local clergy - possibly with some input from congregants, and clergy nearby, the letter is taken into consideration. The reputation of the author and of the carrier are taken into account. Nearby congregations may be consulted - and short letters about the letter may be exchanged. When some time has passed, a decision is made, and the letter is - under festive forms - bound to the stylized wooden pole that has been prepared for it, and sent onward to some other congregation.

The next congregation will, after receiving it, arrange a festive occasion for reading the letter aloud. At this occasion, the symbol of the congregation is also carved into the accompanying pole.

A congregation (or rather, its leaders) may decide that it's undecided as to the validity of the letter. If so, it is sent onward without celebration. Onto the pole, a thread is tied with a specific type of knot. If they hold the letter to be invalid, a different type of knot is used.

When receiving a letter with either type of knot, if the congregation decides to uphold the letter as worth keeping in the religion, the congregation's symbol is carved into the pole, and one knot is removed. If deciding to reject the letter or to be undecided, a second knot of the relevant type is added. If the pole receives six undecided-type knots or three reject-type knots, the letter is destroyed in an unceremonious event. Most congregations also consider the reject-type knots to contribute to the undecided sum, so four undecided and two reject-knots would sum as six undecided knots and so warrant destroying it.

Once the letter has received more than five congregational marks and no knots remain, it basically is accepted. In some cases, there's been straggling knots all the way to the sixteenth congregation, but it's unusual to add more knots once the fifth congregation has accepted it. 

This procedure does seem to favor early support over late skepticism.

The reaction of the congregation - but even more so the reaction of the leaders of the congregation - affect whether the letter gets approved, rejected or just remains undecided on. Often, the groups that primarily are affected will have a bit more of a say - if most of the letter concerns women, the women will have some say. If it concerns slave-owners, they will have the first say.

If the letter affects two groups and their relationship, the group that has the most social clout will usually get to decide - so obviously, parents, slave-owners, husbands, land-owners, clergy and nobility are at an advantage.

End of Life

As the letter is worn out by time, a congregation will at some point upon receiving it conclude that it no longer is legible. The letter is then given similar rites as a dying human would receive. A month later, a funeral for the letter takes place, during which the letter is burned. Any relics included with it are either kept at the temple or buried. The pole is returned to its originating congregation, where it too is burned in a funeral-like service.

Circulation

Often, the letters are sent to nearby congregations in a rather haphazard way. Clergy who meet other congregations' clergymen may make deals as to where to send letters over the next years. A certain randomness is inherent and seems to be desired by those who maintain the system. A small temple may have anywhere from zero to three letters in its possession at any time, a large, urban temple may have as many as twenty.

If a clergyman perceives that a certain issue is present in his congregation, he may ask surrounding clergymen to forward letters pertaining to that particular topic.

Effects on doctrine, rite and ethics

The corpus of letters in circulation is written over decades - some letters even being more than a century old - by several dozen writers over a land area corresponding to the size of the Ukraine. Naturally, there are contradictions within the corpus.

Since congregations do not keep their letters for very long, the memory of their contents also deteriorates, and teachings are slowly distorted. Thus, whenever a letter arrives and the festivities have subsided, there may be a somber day of correction, when the congregation repents for previously held mistaken beliefs that the letter corrects.

Not all letters have this effect, and in the presence of a contradicting letter, the two inconsistent beliefs will not always be held to require repentance - some congregations seem to favor newly arrived letters over letters that have been received in the recent past (and not yet been forwarded), others seem to give priority to the letter they have had the longest at the moment of reception. There are also congregations that seem to favor the newest letter in such cases. This has also been discussed in letters, and a congregations decisions with regards to conflicting content may depend on the letters it has had over recent years.

Contradictions are inevitable. Ways of ritually resolving these issues exist, and seem to provide the congregations with a strong community-building mechanism, where the whole congregation takes part both in the same "mistake" (which would've been correct had the letter arrived in the other way around), and in the same "correction", which in turn may turn into a new mistake, and correction. The ritual grief over these errors also are used to teach a form of humility - humans will be mistaken, and must learn to live with this fact.

Abuses

Certain abuses of the custom have occurred. It is not unusual that letters which make impopular demands are stolen and destroyed. Such demands include sexual abstinence, charity and kindness to the poor, kind treatment of slaves.

Another, less frequent type of abuse is forgery. Usually, this is combined with some kind of theft - going to the effort of fabricating the paraphernalia in addition to the letter itself is a bit of an effort.

At least one example where a letter containing the instruction that clergymen should consecrate marriages by having sex with the bride was forged by some clergymen in collusion.

Content

I hope to include in this blog at some point some samples of the letters, especially in the languages of Dairwueh and Bryatesle. Many of the letters contain non-religious details as well, and a rather sweet example of this is this particular passage, which lead to the popularity of Armri as a female name, and regionally nearly made the name mandatory for any girls' whose father's name was Jeris, to the extent of some Jerises having several daughters of that name:

I Jeris-at, xən-ir jera-lir xov-at Armri e-bəti-umuš side-əj.
/i je'ris-ət xə'ni:r jera'lir xovat armri ebitjumuš s:idjəj /
Jeris, about.dat daughter.dat your.dat Armri call-irrealis_active_ptplc good-3sg

Jeris, your daughter Armri being-named would be good.
≃ Jeris, Armri would be a good name for your daughter.

Here, the author clearly knew the name of a member of the recipient congregation, and apparently that he was unsure about the name to give the child in case it was a daughter.

Secondary Effects

In areas where this religion has a sizeable presence, the empire often will sponsor the letter-carrying activities, turning the religious organization into a proto-post office for the regional authorities. Even in a significantly later, secularized time, the various postal organizations carry a certain heritage from this religion.

Conclusion

The circulating letter system is a method by which religious praxis and doxis is spread, maintained and developed over time. The system permits the religion to change rather drastically over time, and introduces a slight amount of democracy, albeit rather flawed, into the system. The system also creates an internal set of tensions and regional differences. These tensions create feelings of regret, that can quickly be ritually resolved. These rituals serve to strengthen the bonds of the community.

Real Language Examples: Double Negation

 Light preamble

This post is a "double translation" - it was originally written in Swedish, and for an audience of quite a different level of knowledge about and interest for linguistics.

I think most conlangers are familiar with the typological facts of this matter, but the logical facts of the matter still probably are subject to some misunderstanding. Here, I primarily set out to correct the logical misunderstandings.

IS DOUBLE NEGATION (for a negative meaning) ILLOGICAL?

I would be as bold as to say "no!"

I fully agree that double negation in standard English or Swedish is (for now, at least) best avoided, and that in these languages, it does in fact "cancel out". However, I do not agree that languages in which it fails to cancel out are illogical, and I object to the statement that double negation somehow proves that languages are illogical.

How can this be - isn't ¬¬A ≡ A a necessary logical truth? Have I rejected the foundations of logic? Am I stupid? Am I peddling quantum woo or some super-relativist notion of truth? No, as you will see, I fully subscribe to normal notions of truth and logic - but I will investigate some unstated assumptions in the claim that "double negatives are illogical", and we will see that it does not logically follow that linguistic double negation (as a way of encoding negative meaning) is anything illogical. It is in fact an efficient and fairly safe way of handling negation.

0. Arbitrary terminological decision

For this essay, "double negation" will from now on refer to such systems where even number of negations do not cancel out. I will call systems where even amounts of negations do cancel out 'classical double negation'.

1. Mistaken assumption: which operator do languages use?

No one ever investigates the assumption that the only operator that can be used is ¬. I contend that languages where double negation is used, ¬ is not the operator in use. 

Truth table of ¬
¬T ≡ F
¬F ≡ T

However, a fully logical operator that is entirely possible in a system of boolean logic (or any other logic where T and F are values) could be this, for which I've picked ¤ as the symbol.

Truth table of ¤
¤T ≡ F
¤F = F

There is nothing per se illogical about the existence or even the use of such an operator.

This has an interesting effect! This makes the claim that double negatives are illogical per se illogical! Whoever makes the claim has not evaluated the premises, and is working from unstated - and false - premises.

The operator I described, ¤, is not much used in logic - but that's mainly because there's no need for a single operator for every possible truth table. The same "effect" can be obtained by stacking the common operators - and in fact, there are two operators that by themselves are sufficient to express any boolean logical expression, NAND and NOR. Since we generally don't use those in languages very much, any complain about ¤ not being very 'powerful' is really irrelevant.

2. Actual attestations in languages

Most or even all Slavic languages use double negation, as do several Romance languages. Finnish uses a semi-double negation system that is sort of difficult to explain. Other examples are not hard to find. In the Germanic family, double negation systematically appears in Yiddish, as well as in AAVE, and has at various times been rather frequent in the English corpus.

In some dialects of Finland-Swedish "int aldri" appears - "not never". This is, however, often the only double negation present, and should maybe be taken to be a single phrase with simply negative meaning.

3. Problems of double negation

Double negation is less powerful than classical double negation, as we are not able to express complex relationships between negated and non-negated things. However, how often do we benefit from that? It seems to me that most often, one gets worried whether whoever expressed such a statement got the parity of the negations right. 

4. Advantages of double negation

4.1 Redundancy

What if the speaker gets cut off, or what if noise (or a slip of attention) makes the listener miss a negation? What if the papyrus is degraded by 2000 years in a jar?

Redundancy is a feature, not a bug.

 

4.2 Cognitive burden

It seems our brains are really not made for keeping track of the parity of negations. The risk of failing to get the parity right due to the mental burden - or the risk of concentrating only on the negations instead of on other, pertinent content in the statement - grows pretty quickly in a classical double negation system.

4.3 Confidence in the speaker/writer

When filling out questionnaires, do you ever get the feeling that you do not trust the author's ability to keep track of stacked negatives? Certainly, it will not only be listeners and readers who fail to parse a stack of classical double negatives correctly - speakers and writers will fail to generate the proper amount of classical double negations, making parsing a sentence with classical double negations a game of second-guessing.

When filling out questionnaires, I usually do not have a problem parsing multiply negated sentences - however, I never feel confident that the designer of the questionnaire knew what he was expressing.

5. Advantages of classical double negation

5.1 Logical expressiveness

¤ are not able to combine in stacks to express a variety of complicated nested negations. However, as previously pointed out, this is seldom a good strategy for communication due to the cognitive burden it presents. If ¤ does not affect negations nested in "self-contained units" - such as subclauses - within a statement, the same effects can be obtained by utilizing subclauses and similar devices to "reinstate" classical double negation. I am actually fairly sure most languages with double negation do this. However, this advantage is pretty meagre - most of the statements that can be constructed can be constructed just as well without classical double negation. Let's imagine ! as ¤:s sister, with the difference that ! does reinstate classical double negation with regards to subclauses.

DN: n¤ one did n¤t knew she had n¤ time = no one knew she had no time

CDN: n! one d!dn't know she had n! time
Ok, so - someone knew she had time?

Why not say that then, instead of mucking about with useless negations that cancel out anyway.

5.2 Linguistic momentum of languages that have classical double negation

Tradition is basically one of the most important things in language - you can't just decide to change something as in-grained as the finer details of how negation works without running into problems. People who are very "linguoplastic" might be able to turn quickly, but it is also likely they'd quickly be turned back by interactions with less "linguoplastic" people. Besides, there's a significant amount of literature, articles, movies, plays, songs, etc where the classical double negation obtains - changing English or Swedish on a whim would be near impossible - much like changing Spanish to a classical double negation language would be impossible.

Similarly, speakers of AAVE, for instance, should probably keep using double negation when speaking with other speakers of AAVE (and with speakers of other types of English who display some kind of familiarity with AAVE, exemplified, for instance, by the ability to correctly parse the double negative*), because that is what is expected of them - and as I've previously shown, it's not illogical.

In English, most contexts where double negation is used seem to be coded by a variety of things - certain genres of music, certain regiolects, certain types of people in movies. As long as that holds, one can generally be sure to know when to parse the double negation as a double negation rather than a classical double negation.

6. Is it random happenstance that people think one defining trait of AAVE is illogical?

I fully believe that white prejudice against southerners and African-Americans is one reason why people think such linguistic structures are illogical. Well, whoop-de-fucking-do, whoever thinks these structures are illogical is illogical himself and should probably shut up about logic and go and learn instead and stop thinking of the double negative in AAVE and southern English as providing any insight into how logical AAVE or southern vernacular English is, or into the ability of southerners and African-Americans to apply logic.

Recent years have really shown how willing people are to throw "facts and logic" around with barely any ability to apply logic. There's in particular a rather shitty group of people who browbeat people all around with "facts and logic" - but I am convinced this is not just a result of them being scum - it's a result of us not only tolerating bad logic, but nurturing bad logic in the belief that it is good logic. Let's fucking get logical, take back logic from those who would defile it in such a way, and properly excise bad logic from our thinking.

 

7. Conclusion

Switching from one system to another in any language is probably not worthwhile. However, I hope we finally could drop the fallacious claim that double negatives in languages are illogical - since that claim itself is fallacious and based on a really bad understanding of what logic is.

* And that ability, of course, just goes to show a lot about their objection.

Detail #410: Degrees of Definiteness and Tension between the Degrees

English has two levels of definiteness. Definite signifies that the referent is (expected by the speaker to be an) established referent in the mind of the listener.

A third degree exists in some languages, viz. specific: an established referent in the mind of the speaker

In English, "specific" sometimes is realized identically to indefinite: "I am looking for a car" (this can be either me looking for a new car, I have not yet decided which), or I may be on the search for a very specific car, I am presenting the information so as to establish a referent in your mind. This could be followed by "The car was last seen on this very island." - the referent has been established in the listener's mind.

Other languages have no definite, only specific - anything that is definite is likely also to be definite.

There are, however, situations where definite forms are used with specific referents despite lack of frame of reference in the listener's mind: "the tea I had this morning was pretty good.", not "a tea I had this morning" or "some tea" or even just "tea". It seems restrictive attributes make specific meaning take on definite marking. The speaker does not even have to assume that the listener knows of his matutinal tea habit.

Could we draw the line elsewhere?

1) Make the marking more consistent
Naturally, we could consider the restrictive attribute by itself to be sufficiently specific that a definite article is superfluous, and have "a tea I drank this morning was pretty good" be used when it is specific. This seems even more likely if the language has a visible distinction between restrictive and descriptive attributes.

2) Have different rules in different syntactic contexts

Some languages have definiteness marked only in some contexts - c.f. the Turkish direct object rule. Here, I see several interesting possibilities:

1. First person subjects license specific marking on objects and other NPs in the VP.
2. Split ergativity, in which either the ergative or accusative side of the system has a case distinction that marks for specific/definite distinction. This might be triggered by person (see previous point), or various environments such as subclauses (maybe specifically narrative such).
3. Maybe specific and definite nouns interact with congruence in different ways. This may restrict the environments in which it is explicitly marked:
1. Maybe only subjects (or only objects, or both but not other constituents) have verb congruence that permit for this distinction?
2. Maybe the marking on the adjective also is two-fold, but splits the difference differently. Thus red.def house.def is definite, but red.indef house.def is specific. (Here, "red.def house.indef" would seem like an attractive solution as well, if we assume Adj N word order.)
   

3) Multiple levels of specific-definite-contraspecific and ways in which the specificness and definitenesses of different speech participants interact in marking.

It is conceivable, that a speaker might want to communicate that he does not have a clear idea yet of the thing the listener has spoken of, and so could mark the lack of understanding as [+definite -specific]. In such a language, clearly, both specificity and definiteness need to be marked independently - but potentially, it could be marked independently in a way that isn't always visible or always clearly distinct. Consider, for instance, a system where adjectives mark for indefinite, specific-or-definite, whereas nouns only mark "specific-or-indefinite" vs. "definite". The normal "specific" combination would thus be "specific-or-definite" adjective but "specific-or-indefinite" noun. However, in that case, an indefinite adjective combined with a definite noun would perchance convey this confusion. The locuses needn't be nouns and adjectives, could as well be verbs and nouns or other carriers of congruence. Any ways, the adjectival congruence solution is nice because adjectives are often optional.

4) Have different rules for nouns of different topical salience

One could imagine a system whereby nouns that are topics have more levels of distinction.

5) Have different rules for nouns of different noun classes or number

Plurals or inanimates or mass nouns might very well differ. The difference may be a thing that has purely cultural origins, or may be the result of sound changes eliminating the distinction for some forms. Maybe in an IE-like gender system, masculines use neuter definite markers as specific forms.

6) In some languages with articles, there are contexts where no article is used. One could consider having articles dropped whenever there is tension or uncertainty regarding [?specific ?definite], or whenever unusual combinations such as [-specific +definite] appear.

Ŋʒädär: Indefinite Address

Indefinite address in Ŋʒädär differs from that of English significantly. Indefinite address does reuse parts of the indefinite pronoun system for some constructions - but only because the dedicated indefinite second person address pronouns lack certain case forms.

1. Indefinite 2nd person

Besides the usual second person pronoun vär, Ŋʒädär has a rather special second person indefinite pronoun, 'jusa(n)' (absolutive), 'jusam' (dative). It has a rather simplified case morphology, but has a specialized morphological system. It seems fairly clear it originates with the imperative "jus", listen up.

1.1 Use

The pronoun is used when addressing (at least) one individual out of a group, such that the speaker is not aware of the identity, but is able to deduce the existence of, or at the very least suspects the existence of, a person that fulfills some given criteria. In writings, it an also address any reader that has some quality, or any reader in general. With the spread of literacy, it has especially taken to being the term of address employed when instructing any reader to do something - in letters to a specific reader, the second person is used instead.

1.2 Morphology 

The pronoun only distinguishes two cases, the absolutive and the dative. Other cases are conflated either with the second person pronoun vär, or some  indefinite pronoun (depending on context, style, time, personal preference of the speaker, etc).

However, jusa(n) has some special morphology, with some amount of syncretism in the system. It is similar to the indefinite pronouns lisar and nusar, with the exception that lisar and nusar have a full case system (with some syncretism).

	adnominal	adattributal	adclausal
absolutive	jusar, lisar	jusada, lisada	sajusan, salisan
dative	jusam, lisam	jusada, lisada	jusam, lisam

Forms such as jusaŋa, jusus, jusuk, jusluno etc do appear in speech, but rather infrequently. They do seem to elicit a certain sense of "wrongness" whenever used, both in most hearers and speakers. 

The adnominal can refer to an adjective or a noun.

jusar ŋator ('someone fast (among you)')
jusar kamma ('a/the chieftain (among you)')

lisar ŋator (someone fast)
nusar ŋator (something fast)

If it is known that at most one such individual can exist, the 2nd person plural possessive often marks the noun or adjective, i.e.

jusar kamma-un ('your chieftain' - assumed to be present)
jusar ŋator-un ('the fastest person among you')

Sometimes, the complement case is used both for adjectives and nouns:

jusar ŋatoɣ-ɣuv (in northwestern: jusaɣ ŋat:wuo)
jusar kammo-ɣuv (in northwestern: jusaš kaŋ:wuo)

In early modern Ŋʒädär and still in northern and northwestern Ŋʒädär, this marks a weakened certainty of the presence of such a person. In central and southwestern, it has rather come to be used with irrealis verb forms and questions.

Detail #409: Number and gender dyscombination

In many languages, number and gender are somewhat dependent, somewhat independent. C.f. French il, ils, elle, elles.

Naturally, sometimes there will be conflicts in marking. French is the standard example as far as this goes, and the basic mechanism is, I guess, fairly common: if there's even a single man in a group, the whole group as an entity is masculine.

In Indo-European languages, number and gender is fusional (also with case), e.g. in historical Swedish, -or is +fem, +plur (, +nom); -ar is +masc, +plur (, +nom), -n is +neut, +plur (, +nom/acc).

What if we entirely separate the number and gender markers into a more purely agglutinating system. (NB: in modern Swedish, there is almost a hint at that, if we consider -r a plural marker and the preceding vowel a gender marker.)

Let's start out with not having any zero-marked gender, or at least having the zero-marking only pop up in very limited contexts. For this part of the post, I entirely ignore ideas like case, definiteness, etc.

The setup will be thus:

Nouns: root-(gender*)-(number*)
Adjectives: root-(gender)-(number)
Verbs: root-(gender)-(number)
Determiners: (root)-gender-number
pronouns: (root)-(gender)-(number)

On nouns, some gender may be zero-marked, and the number is zero-marked for singulars. Determiners and pronouns may consist of as little as the gender and number marker with no root, although most pronouns (such as indefinites, various demonstratives, etc) do have roots. The * on gender and number at nouns signify that they're not necessarily always explicitly marked - some nouns may have inherent gender, or possibly, some gender is zero-marked in the noun morphology.

Now for the interesting parts: constructions where the gender or the number is omitted for congruence reasons. 

1 Disjunctions

Disjunctions are an obvious contender for such constructions:

Is-[]-[sg] Eve or Peter responsible-[]-[sg] for this.

Here, we could actually consider a meaning distinction encoded in the congruence on the adjective: if the number is unspecified, we leave it open that the adjective is plural - and thus that they both are responsible. Imagine, however, this type of construction:

Is-[masc]-[dual] Peter, John or Albert responsible-[masc]-[dual] for this?

Are we now asking which two out of the three that are responsible?

One more extreme approach could be having disjunctions block all gender marking, such that

Is-[]-[sg?] Peter or Evan responsible-[]-[sg?]

is the only permissible construction. I am a bit partial to that idea myself - I like having the structure per se be the triggering factor instead of the actual gender difference.

2. Indefinite pronouns

Sometimes, we know something about otherwise indefinite actants. E.g. "I saw someone outside the door" - sometimes, you did see enough to be able to specify further. Obviously, sometimes you saw more than one person; sometimes you may be unsure if the several instances of seeing people actually were the same person in slightly different times. Sometimes you have a good guess as to the sex of a person. Sometimes, you may think you've seen one or several men, but you're sure they're all men.

So, in a gender-centered grammatical system, the utility of being able to specify additional optional information - but potentially also omitting it depending on the available knowledge - should be clear. 

A distinction between "multiple persons, with several genders in the group" vs. "multiple persons, I was unable to distinguish their genders from the information I got" is possible, but I don't really prefer that kind of system in my own sketches of conlangs, because, well, introducing such a meta-distinction is just not how I roll with under- or overspecifying information in languages in this blog.

3. Non-conjunction-like grouping

In many languages, "and" and "with" basically are not strongly distinguished. In languages that do, however, we could consider a system whereby the number fails to agree with whoever it really agrees with:

I is-[]-[pl] playing music with them

 

4. Different rules for gender markers and plural markers?

We could also consider a situation whereby the scoping rules for the two markers behave differently over conjunctions, etc, so that

I-masc or they-fem will-[]-[plur] win this game
they-masc or she will-[]-[plur] win this game

In this case, the scoping rule for gender is that gender-disagreement leads to no marking, but plural marking outranks singular marking and always wins if possible.

Another possibility could be that any coordination will trigger plural marking, but congruent gender will permit gender marking:

I-masc or she will-[]-[plur] win
he or she will-[]-[plur] win
Tim or Tom will-[masc]-[plur] win

We could also consider rules like "leftmost number but rightmost gender takes precedence for marking".