Detail #444: Doubly Marked Comparison

One way of stucturing particle-based comparisons that I have not seen is one of using two particles, one for each comparand. Let's notate these as C_g and C_l, for comparand_greater and comparand_lesser. In the most basic expression, you maybe coordinate them with an 'and':

C_g John and C_l Eric is fast(er)

John is faster than Eric

-(er) might be superfluous, but what if there are several other things that could be the compared quality, e.g.

C_g John and C_l Eric sail heavy boats often.

Does John sail heavier boats often, or does he sail heavy boats more often? So, for now, I'm going to keep the -er morpheme here.

What benefits does such a system bring? It signals that a comparison is coming very early. It also permits for some ... oddities.

C_l Eric.nom counted C_g the sheep.acc.

 Eric counted fewer than the sheep. (Eric didn't count all the sheep)

One could also imagine situations where the particles are off in different main clauses, and maybe even mark non-NPs?:

John hits C_l hard and Eric can C_g take.
Eric can take harder hits than John dishes out.

 This is not meant to be a full description of a system, but just some thoughts on how to restructure comparison and maybe innovate a slight bit, as well as the possible concerns one might look at.

On Non-Finite Verbs, Chapter 2: The Basic Infinitive

How much is there to write about the basic infinitive? A surprising lot, really.

The English Infinitive

The English infinitive does happen to be the dictionary form, and is basically the stem of the verb. It has a morphological quirk, in that some auxiliaries lack an infinitive. Such lacks do happen for individual non-auxiliary verbs in some languages, e.g. Finnish lacks one for one of its verbs for 'to itch'.

What does the infinitive do? The typical response would perhaps be 'serves as the subordinate verb for another verb', but this misses several other uses, and also conflates several rather distinct uses into a single category.

Let's start out with the subordinate verb, though.

he will go
he wants to go

Already here we find a nice split - infinitives with and without 'to'. This is mainly governed by the finite verb (a certain class called 'modal auxiliaries' do not take them - but this class is not strictly described by its name - some modal auxiliaries have no modal meaning, some non-modal auxiliaries do, etc.

We do also find e.g. a modal use of the verb 'have' taking to+inf: I have to go.

A different verbal construction where the infinitive is featured is this:

I saw her dance the jig
She listened to him play the cembalo

These don't convey the same thing as a subclause; it's not "I saw when she danced the jig" or "I saw that she danced the jig". More like, "I saw the event consisting of her dancing the jig", having the agent of the subordinate verb be both the object of the main verb and subject of the subordinate one.

And further this:

He wanted us to go away
We asked him to sing a song

These four previous examples differ from earlier ones in having a different agent of the infinitive than of the main verb; this agent is not marked as a canonical subject, however, but by an oblique case. It is not very unusual in languages for infinitives not to be able to take canonical subjects, but rather to take some form of oblique agent.

Infinitives can also act as nouns that are a stand-in for the verb phrase in statements about a verb phrase:

to paint the house is quite the chore
to win is fun
to err is human

In English, both 'to paint' and the participle/gerund 'painting' can serve in this position. These can take oblique subjects, 'for us to pay these debts will take years', 'her singing at the opera tonight will be spectacular'.

The infinitive can also work as an attribute of a noun:

the will to live
the desire to seek revenge
failure to comply
a sight to see
the first woman to serve as judge
the only man to admit to being wrong

Some of these seem to be almost like relative subclauses! Further, sometimes they are passive (a sight to see), sometimes active (the first woman to serve as a judge).

Arguably, English infinitives can mark certain one tense distinction and voice - 'to see' , 'to have seen', 'to be seen', 'to have been seen'. They can also be negated, and depending on your stance, either with the 'not' before or after 'to'. Some positions seem not to license the perfect tense:

*I saw him have hit the jackpot
I saw him be beaten by a gangster
*I saw him have been beaten by a gangster

 There are more ways it is used in English, but I will introduce them later on in this post.

The Swedish Infinitive

The English infinitive has a very similar cousin in Swedish. It has even undergone a similar development after the languages diverged, where both acquired a preposition that marked them, and this preposition indeed splits the auxiliaries mainly along very similar lines. Don't quote me on this, but I suspect Swedish has more 'subtle collocations', here, where some combinations of auxiliary and main verb may deviate from the more regular pattern for an auxiliary.

 All the syntactical details above hold for Swedish as well, but here we get a bit of a deviation: in Swedish, infinitives are more often attributes of nouns than they are in English. Especially in cases where they are not subclause-like in meaning.

konsten att förföra
"the art to seduce"
~ the art of seduction

This is significantly more common in Swedish than English, with constructions like viljan att leva (the will to live), en baddare att sjunga (a whiz of singing), etc being fairly frequent in texts.

 Swedish also likes having infinitives as attributes of adjectives:

han är bra att laga mat
he is good to cook food

hon är rolig att tala med
she is fun to talk to

vi är svåra att slå 
we are hard to beat

Obviously, two of these work in English too! But the first example is weird. English prefers either 'he cooks well', or 'he is good at cooking'. 

Other than these differences, the main differences appear in some raising-structures. We will look more into such things later.

Morphologically though, Swedish differs from English: the infinitive is a particular inflected form of the verb. The suffix that marks the infinitive is -a, but this may be suppressed if the stem ends in a vowel. The imperative happens to coincide with the stem for conjugations I and III, but for II and IV, the imperative does not coincide with the infinitive. C.f. hoppa <> hoppa ('to jump, to hop'); springa <> spring ('to run'). Thus, in Swedish, -a is (sometimes) a morpheme marking the infinitive, sometimes -a is supressed.

The Swedish infinitive can be negated - with the negation going between 'att' and the infinitive (or before the infinitive if 'att' is absent). It can also take the passive -s suffix, or use any of the other passive constructions. It can also be in the perfect ~tense, but this is also restricted in ways very similar to English.

In both English and Swedish, infinitives can sometimes have "non-anaphoric" reflexives: to know oneself is important; att känna sina gränser är viktigt (to know one's own limits is important).

The Finnish Infinitive

Finnish has an awkward nomenclature, including several numbered infinitives. However, the infinitive I is the most similar to the above forms in use: it is used after modal auxiliaries and after some other auxiliaries. It is not used in constructions such as 'I heard him sing', where a participle is used instead. Even for the infinitive I, Finnish does have an analogous formation to the English 'to'-infinitive: -kse.

onnistua -> onnistuakse-

This is not used quite as frequently as the English to-forms - it is for instance not used as a subject of a statement about the verb, or as the subordinate verb of an auxiliary or such. Oftentimes, it corresponds to the English 'so as to [inf]', or 'for to [inf]', but will sometimes correspond to just a 'to [inf]' construction. However! Sometimes this will correspond to infinitive IV instead, so ... this will require further investigation in post focusing on the Finnish system.

 

The -kse-infinitive further requires a possessive suffix corresponding to the subject: onnistuakseni (for me to succeed), onnistuaksesi (for you to succeed), etc.

 

Onnistuakseni tarvitsen apua -> for me to succeed, I need help

Lui-n kirja-n oppia-kse-ni musiikkiteoria-n alkee-t.
read-I book-acc learn-kse-my musictheory's foundation-s.

 

Comparing and contrasting the Finnish non-finite landscape to the English system will be done in a later post.

 

As an attribute, the basic infinitive I is similar to Swedish with regards to things like 'the skill to cook good food' (kyky laittaa hyvää ruokaa), but the infinitive I cannot be used in an active relative subclause  type of way; however, as a passive subclause it can work: 'hyvä kirja lukea lomalla', although a different form might be more idiomatic (luettavaksi or lukemaksi, the first a passive present participle, the second an infinitive IV, both in the translative case). Here, certain adjectives and quantifiers seem to license the use of an infinitive as an attribute or as a complement of the copula. The -kse-infinitive can also be used as an attribute expressing for whom something is for doing something to: eväitä syödäksesi: snacks-part eat-inf-kse-yours: snacks for you to eat. However, the passive present participle is more often used for this.

 

As a complement of the copula, the Finnish infinitive I further signifies 'almost did', often as a near-miss accident. "Olin kompastua" - I was (about to) stumble.

 

Finnish does not use the infinitive I for construction such as 'I saw her dance'. Instead it uses the active present participle in the genitive, thus a bit like 'I saw her dancing', but actually 'I saw her dancing's'.

The infinitive cannot be passive; any passivization would instead use some kind of passive participle. The infinitive cannot be negated using the regular 'ei-' negation strategy; instead, olla +mAttA, i.e. essentially 'be without [verb]ing' is used instead.

 

The infinitive can  take the perfect tense, but this seems very rare to me - I do find an example 'olla syönyt ateria' - to have eaten a meal. Some case shenanigans actually feel more natural to me: 'To have run', for instance, could come out as 'olla juoksuneena', essentially 'to be [in the role of] having run'. The 'olla syönyt' construction does work as subordinate of other verbs, but feels odd when used more nominally.

The Portuguese Infinitive

Famously, Portuguese infinitives can inflect for person. I am not an expert on the syntax of the infinitive in Portuguese, so this will be left here for now as a sort of heads-up.

A tabular representation of some differences of the basic infinitive

This table will grow over time, with all kinds of subcases and differences, and of course several forms per language. I figure colour-coding will also help seeing what's going on once it starts growing unwieldy.

Property	English	Swedish	Finnish I	Portuguese
Citation form	✓	✓	✓	✓
Infinitive marker (like to, att)	✓ (sometimes)	✓ (sometimes)	✗ (infinitive II is structurally similar to such a marker)	✗
Dedicated infinitive ending	✗	✓	✓	✓
Person agreement	✗	✗	✗ (mandatory on infinitive II)	✓
Voice distinctions	✓	✓	✓/✗*	✓
Tense / aspect distinctions	✓ (limited)	✓ (limited)	(rare)	✓
Regular negation	✓	✓	✗	✓

* The Finnish passive is really more of an indefinite person; however,  Finnish has a significant bunch of valency- and transitivity-altering derivative suffixes, which do permit infinitives. IMHO, saying that the Finnish infinitive can't be passive is thus marginally misleading, but 'traditionally' correct.

Summary:

We've seen some differences between infinitives in four languages of Europe; the "basic" infinitives of these languages all have a core of shared uses:

• A sort of noun-like head of a verb phrase
• A verb that is subordinated under another verb in some way.

 However, we find differences as well: the use of markers like to/att, the use of infinitives as attributes, their syntactic distribution in general, and how the roles that one language's infinitive takes is distributed onto other forms in other languages.

Turns out the infinitive is not so much a single thing as a complex of things.

 

On Non-Finite Verbs pt 1: Introduction

Non-finite verbs are a somewhat under-described thing in conlangs in general. Oftentimes, a conlang will "have" an infinitive, but the author will not describe it in any detail, leaving us to assume its usage is similar to the English infinitive. Infinitives are of course not the only type of non-finite verb either.

Even within Europe, there's differences in how non-finite verbs work. Let's begin by consider a short list of terms.

• Infinitives
• Gerunds
• Supines
• Converbs
  
• Participles
• Other 

A line-up of the usual suspects (and some new acquaintances?)

Nota bene: the terminology for non-finite verb forms is very tradition-dependant. A term can be used in different languages in very different ways. Thus, we cannot derive any typological observations from the names here. I'll, however, ... yeah, ignore that a bit.

Non-finite verbs

 Non-finite verbs are verbs that (usually) cannot be the predicate of a clause. They often are morphologically somewhat 'deficient', lacking some category that finite verbs mark; however, they may also mark morphological categories that make little sense on finite verbs.

Infinitive 

The "basic" infinitive is often - but not always - the dictionary form, c.f. Latin where the present first person singular is the dictionary form. In many European languages, its most typical use is that of being a subordinate verb to an auxiliary:

I will go.
You can always hope.
He wants to learn to play the piano.

Here, we can see a few interesting things: in English, some auxiliaries require a particle before the infinitive. Also, infinitives can be subordinate to infinitives.

Infinitives are not necessarily "uninflected". In German, Swedish, Russian, Finnish and many other languages, the basic infinitive in fact has some morphological marker on it:

essen, äta, est', syödä

Further into this series, we'll look at what uses the 'basic' infinitive is put to in different languages, and we'll find that even this "basic component" varies in many ways from language to language.

Participles

Participles are forms that express something along the lines of a relative subclause: 

a singing man <> a man who sings
a destroyed house <> a house that has been destroyed

 This hides within its scope a lot of space for variation as well. Usually, participles are 'adjective-like verbs' in some sense. Germanic languages conflate voice and TAM a bit for these, whereas other languages may keep these more distinct.

Gerunds

A gerund is often something of a 'nominalization' of a verb; "the act of ...". In English, this is largely conflated with the present participle, but in some languages it's a distinct form, and even in English, regular infinitives sometimes operate a bit like gerunds.

 

Sleeping is important.
I like playing the bass.

 

Unlike nouns, they can take arguments along the lines of subjects and objects, but they may operate under other restrictions and rules for case assignment (or similar) than a finite verb.

 

Latin has a form called the gerundive;  this is a 'modally specific' participle in some sense: viz. "that which needs to be destroyed/repaired/...".

 

The Latin gerund is not quite the same as the 'gerund' in general, but will be dealt with in greater detail later.

Verb nouns 

Some sources distinguish these from gerunds, but this is a confused mess. Just generally perhaps 'the less canonically verb-like and more canonically noun-like the form is, the more justified this term is'?

Deverbal nouns

Deverbal nouns are perhaps the furthest removed from verbs, often breaking argument structure, taking adjectives instead of adverbs, etc. 

Masdar

This term is used in Arabic linguistics and in some traditions influenced by it, and is about as messy as the latin-based terminology.  

Supine

In Latin, the supine is a non-finite form that has a specific selection of cases; it often is used for the subordinate verb when something is done in order to do something else. In Swedish, it is a verb form only used to form the perfect tense.

Serial verbs 

These are verbs which derive TAM and subject and so on from a previous verb.

Converbs

Subordinate infinite verbs that provide some kind of additional information about the main verb: 'while singing', 'by poking', 'not to annoy ...', 'so as to unshackle'.

Transgressives

This seems to be a west slavic term for converbs.

Plan

I will present some of these categories in some detail, and then go into greater detail with regards to the systems present in several languages, sometimes comparing and contrasting similar languages (like Swedish and English). Later on, I may get back to a sort of 'typologizing' description of the categories. My intention is to map out at least some of the interesting bits of this parameter space for conlangers.

"Interwoven" Conreligions in the Bryatesle world

In the Dairwueh-Bryatesle world, several types of religions exist by the side of the standard religions, and have overlap of membership. How does this work?

These religions, much like the standard religions, have rituals, myths, a membership structure - often with a hierarchy, supernatural beings, and sometimes even texts. However, they differ in "magisterium" from other religions. A rather illustrative example of this are the two sailor religions.

The Dairwueh and Bryatesle are largely maritime civilizations. Sailors have always nurtured a lore of their own, and in the DB world, this lore has come to form much tighter, cohesive structures than on earth. 

However, there are two competing, major sailor religions - and these can strongly disapprove of each other's views regarding a variety of things, and crews are therefore often rather uniform when it comes to religion. Sailors come from most of the normal Bryatesle and Dairwueh religious backgrounds, and have these religions as an equal part of their religious mental landscape. Conflicts between your "land" religion and your sailor religion may be just never resolved, or may affect how you pick which sailor religion to join. Options may be scarce, however, if you live in a port where only one of the religions are widely represented.

1. The western sailor religion

Appeasement of hostile spirits is an important part of the ritual system.

Certain colours of sails are considered lucky: red is especially favoured. Passengers need to participate in a special ritual on land before embarking and are forced to wear special clothing during their voyage. This clothing in fact also has some buoyancy, essentially being a type of proto-life vest.

The ritual includes eating a small amount of seafood, confessing to the captain any sins one has committed that may anger God and cause him to prevent the ship from reaching the harbour, and a form of baptism. The idea of the baptism is this: if it is your lot in life to drown, God should take this opportunity and not pull the entire ship down for your sake.

The spirits of the sea are not considered evil or good per se, but rather neutral and sometimes ill-tempered. Areas where particularly nasty spirits are held to be present are avoided. Spirits tend not to relocate.

Former sailors are still held to be ritually valid members, and must participate in sailor rituals rather than passenger rituals (and may not need to wear the passenger-clothing if travelling as passengers).

There are no, or nearly no 'secrets' that cannot be divulged to outsiders. Family members on land are expected to participate in some land-based ceremonies and even carry out their own rituals on land, and often contribute to the production of ritual articles - including the clothing for passengers.

There is a pope-like figure, the father captain. He has quite some political clout, and can, for instance, declare embargoes against city-states or villages. The clergy consists of the captains.

If circumstances allow, there are regular religious services on the deck - nearly every day. Even those sailors who are confined to the brig are permitted to be on the deck for this. Some parts of the rituals are not permissible for passengers (but can be witnessed). The service also includes judgement in case such is needed, and the administration of minor punishments may occur during or immediately after the service. Rewards, promotions and the sharing of plans occur during these services.

The services include tales of sea monsters and spirits, singing, often a shared meal, and sometimes a sermon. This sermon may include any kind of advice, not only ethical: "in our next harbour, avoid the bar at the western pier".

Songs are sometimes veiled in metaphors and allegory, but this is not a mandatory feature: the message can be clear.

2. The eastern sailor religion

Appeasement is considered an invitation; therefore, they instead try different types of ritual exorcisms. The lore teaches that there are two basic sides of spirits at work over the seas, and these blocks are basically "cohesive". Thus, there is one evil block and one good block. Evil spirits do not counteract each other (generally). Good spirits, are not to be invoked willy-nilly, and may demand quite a hefty price if invoked in vain.

Routes where evil spirits largely holds sway are avoided; however, a ritual exorcism may be successful, and an area may become acceptable again. Evil can also retake areas.

Some groups within the religion even make up plans for how to wage the spiritual war against evil spirits. There is no top leader. Sometimes, the dozen or so grand boatswains gather and hold synods. Individual grand boatswains may abstain from adhering by the decisions. Captains are also important authorities, but do not hold a comparable religious function as boatswains do, and are way less involved with the rituals of the eastern sailors.

Travelers are expected not to participate in the rituals, and the less a voyager knows about the rituals, the happier the sailors are. Former sailors are considered (respected) outsiders and must no longer participate in rituals. Family on land are expected to abide by their land-based religion and not to pry into the secrets of the seas.

The full crew seldom participates in services and rituals, but rather it tends to be subsets at any time. In harbours, however, some full crew services do take place.

Many songs sung to synchronize the work have lyrics that refer to the tenets of the religion; however, these are often shrouded in metaphors so as to prevent voyagers from being able to figure out what is what. 

3. Pirates

Some pirates have subverted both of these religions in a way similar to how e.g. some forms of satanism subverts Christianity in our world. They may seek to collaborate with evil spirits, or even control them. They attempt to bind or prevent good spirits from doing their thing. There are both 'eastern' and 'western'-aligned (anti-aligned?) pirates, but the dividing lines are not as strict, and subverting both at the same time is possible. Western and eastern pirates thus have a weird ecumenism.

Interactions with land-based religions

Most of the land-based clergy respect the sea-based clergy, but there are a few minor conflicts. The main conflicts are between the western captains and the Kaildaper clergy. These religions have some shared roots (since kaildaper evolved among western fishermen), historically, but differ on how they interpret the traditions in rather conflicting ways. Despite, or maybe due to the even greater theological distance to the eastern sailor religion, there is no conflict between the kaildaper and eastern sailors.

Some crews are purely kaildaper crews for this reason.

Eastern ships grant land-based clergymen the right to minister to voyagers aboard, western ships do not. Western ships expect even clergymen to participate in western ritual. This is seldom, but sometimes, a problem.

Modern times

The long-term effects of these practices include:

• The emergence of two main sailor's trade union organization 'family trees'.
• Rather different structure of division of responsibility between the upper parts of the crew hierarchy in the two different unions.
• Many of the rituals survive even though few know or care about their meaning.
• Many superstitions about dangerous spirits on the sea are still held by significant numbers of sailors.
  

Herder religion

Among shepherds and other herders, certain ritual practices and beliefs are commonplace. Dogs are granted burials in dog burial grounds. Dogs that died fighting a predator get special rituals and special markers at their graves. Small sacrifices at dog burial grounds are a regular occurrence.

There are also rituals - some of them very short and low effort -  to participate in when slaughtering a sheep; when acquiring sheep; when acquiring an already trained dog; when acquiring an untrained dog; when going to sleep in the fields; when acquiring new pastures; when selling pastures; when having pastures; when encountering thunder; when encountering fog. The use of willow flutes also has some religious significance, as does the use of horns made from sheep or goat horns.

Although not fully uniform, the similarity of herder practices over the entire Dairwueh-Bryatesle word is remarkable.

Early industrial-worker religion

As industrialization lead to urbanization, rural practices entered towns and were mixed - and as living conditions changed, the practices also adapted to their times. Organized religion conserved some of the rituals and practices fairly well, but those beliefs and practices that were outside of the scope of the major religions quickly morphed. Traditional wolf-scaring rituals morphed into carnivals full of revelry; the springtime celebrations of the first harvestable edible things morphed into slightly less intense celebrations full of revelry. In general, industrial-worker religion tended to be quite full of revelry - but early industry in the DB world was quite lethal compared to all other work except that of the sailor.

Due to the amount of revelry involved, university students adopted some of the industrial-worker practices as well, but there is an amount of distrust between workers and students, as they often come from quite different class backgrounds. 

Miner religions

There are several mining-related systems of lore and ritual. There are even systems with miner monks. The miner religions are closely linked with mining engineering, the clergy essentially being mining engineers - but with required knowledge of the supernatural lore and rituals as well. Some miners are closely aligned with one or another system and will avoid working at mines where other ritual systems are prevalent. In some way, these are competing mining guilds which guard their knowledge carefully.

University religions

Universities tend to have their own identity, ritual systems, orders and hierarchies, and even beliefs. In the Dairwueh-Bryatesle world, the similarity to religion is even stronger than here, and in some sense the university ritual systems are essentially parallel religions. The university religion of course has two clearly separate blocks - the teachers and the students. Mostly, these have their own concerns, but on some occasions, the two blocks meet on an almost even footing in ritualized forms. Often including some level of revelry.

Medical doctors

In the DB world, medical doctors also have their own rituals, hierarchies and myths. Beliefs exist in this sphere as well, but evidence-based beliefs are mildly tolerated if they conflict with the historical medical dogma. Students of medicine do study at universities in the DB world, but tend to have their own separate system within the university world, unlike the other subjects.  

Detail #443: Doubly anchored kinship terms

 Some languages have compounds of e.g. "father" and "son" that express a group consisting of a father and a son. However, one could imagine a situation where a noun in fact conveys a single person (or multiple persons), characterized by their separate relationships to the speaker and the addressee or to some other referents.

Let's consider three generations, from oldest to younger: Anna, Beata and Cecilia.

Anna is mother and grandmother to Beata and Cecilia. Beata is daughter to Anna, and mother to Cecilia. Cecilia is daughter to Beata and granddaughter to Anna. 

Let us now imagine there being a word each of these can use when talking to the other to express both persons' relationships to the third. A simple compound could do the trick - grandchild-child, daughter-mother. This might sound a bit weird, but on the other hand, let's consider a different relation: grandchild-niece (Beata's sister Diana's daughter Emilia).

Of course, one could also consider how the relation to whom is marked - is it just 'our grandchild-niece' or is it "grandchild-mine-niece-yours"? If the simpler approach, does the grammar force some certain order? The oldest generation first? Some particular closeness first? Higher status first?

Maybe some of these words even have specialized lexemes that are not portmanteaus or compounds, but indivisible stems - that perchance are doubly possessed in a particular order?

And maybe it goes beyond relatives, and includes certain kinds of other formalized relations - spouses, in-laws, but also perhaps sworn allies of some kind, and as society progresses even colleagues?

 

Detail #376 Revisited: Quirky Adjectives

 In quirky adjectives I considered some quirky things adjectives can cause. Some new ideas that have occurred to me are:

• Offset gender, number or definiteness marking on the noun
• Specific adjectives that force plural marking on collective singular nouns
• Adjectives that cause nouns to have special case marking in comparisons
• Adjectives that force explicit plural marking (or explicit singular marking) on numerals.
• In a language where numerals are followed by singulars, consider 'the_pl honorable_pl five_pl members of this committee', and for a language where they're normally followed by singulars, 'the_sg honorable_sg five_sg member of this committee'. For the case with forced plural marking, consider the case 'the_pl honorable_pl one_pl member_pl of this committee'.
• Adjectives that change the scope of negation and quantifiers around them, while also having actual adjectival semantics. E.g. 'no student solved every ADJ task' - imagine the adjective here is something like 'damned', but also pulls along a change in scope such that it now means 'no student solved any task'.
• Words that syntactically are adjectives, but semantically are voice operators, so that e.g. a certain adjective specifies that the noun in fact is the marker makes both marks 'this clause is passive' and the agent of the clause by its mere presence. This could also perhaps work with e.g. tense as adjectives instead, such that e.g. multiple contrasting subjects of different tense (or even objects) could coexist. This isn't tense of NPs, this is tense of VPs marked as an adjectival marker inside the NP.
  

A Cwarmin-Ŋʒädär family universal

In Ćwarmin and Ŋʒädär and related languages, the fingers of the left and right hand are differentiated grammatically.

Those of the right hand are mandatorily possessed. Those of the left hand are, if applicable, mandatorily of the same degree of definiteness as the person to which they belong.

In certain eastern Bryatesle dialects, the same setup has emerged out of Bryatesle influence.

Dairwueh and Bryatesle: Subjects with adpositions and nominative postpositions

There are constructions in Dairwueh and Bryatesle where adpositions mark subjects. This is especially common in subordinate clauses, but not entirely unusual in main clauses either. Let us start out with the ones that work in both sub- and main clauses.

This essay has probably sat in the drafts folder for eight years by now so I figure it's time to publish it even though it's a bit rough.

1. The Dairwueh preposition 'teu'.

'Teu' has several uses, but the meanings nearly all derive from 'kind of'. A kind of, the kind of, some kind of, this kind of. It is very common when making categorical statements: teu darat tsem [...]

Its nature as a preposition is clear from the following facts: 

• its complement is in the locative-instrumental
• it can be coordinated with certain other prepositions
• it can take a preprepositional.
  
• The preprepositional argument marks the use for which the kind(s) are meant - e.g. kaubeng teu dorule = health kind-of food ~ types of food intended for  health
• It also marks a supercategory of which the thing is in a category "salar teu balin" - animal kind-of horse 'an animal, specifically a kind of horse'

2. Dairwueh burn and melt/dissolve

Not even in modern times does Dairwueh normally distinguish 'dissolve' from 'melt'. However, in chemistry and other contexts where the difference has some significance, the subject of 'dissolve' is often marked by the preposition yil (sometimes lo or əre), whereas melt tends to be reflexive. Similarly,  chemists tend to distinguish two types of burning by marking the subject with a preposition.

A fire with visible flames has a normal subject, chemical corrosion uses yil or lo.

 3. Bryatesle 'few'/'little'

In Bryatesle, 'few' operates syntactically as a postposition.  It normally takes the accusative case, with the ablative used when expressing the sense of 'too few'. They are also found in coordinations with the following postpositions or in similar positions

• with, without (as in 'in association with')
  
• full of
• instrumental adpositions

It cannot stand as the subject of a transitive verb, but can be the subject of an antipassive construction.

4. The Bryatesle 'associative preposition'

Although Bryatesle primarily has postpositions, the grammaticalization path that lead to the associative preposition caused it to end up on the other side. The associative preposition simply is a marker of metonymy. Not necessarily mandatory whenever metonymy is involved, but quite often used for that purpose.

5. Sometimes in comparisons

In both Bryatesle and Dairwueh, it happens that both the comparanda are marked by the comparative marker.

6. Presence of vocatives

The presence of a vocative in a clause can cause the subject to be marked by adpositions in both Bryatesle; primarily the postposition '(+abl) gyner'.

7. In some subordinated coordinated structures where subjecthood is unclear

8. Resumptive pronouns

Resumptive pronouns in relative subclauses almost always have the postposition 'gyner' in Bryatesle.

9. In subclauses specifying the place or time of something.

10. The Dairwueh preposition 'ne'.

This preposition can be used with subjects and objects, but has several functions, and is not triggered by things "outside of" the NP, unlike the previous examples.

 

So, in what way are these subjects and not adverbs that just are topicalized?

The main reason would be their syntactical effects. I will list the very subject-like ones first:

• Permit reflexive reference
• Cannot be coordinated with adverbs
• Can be coordinated over gaps with subjects
• Have subject-like scope
• Undergo raising like subjects do
  

However,  things that may look non-subject like include

• They block congruence on verbs
• The presence of an adpositional subject requires an adposition also in the complement of the copula in Bryatesle
• The preposition blocks the use of genitive for definite subjects in Dairwueh, and the neuter-ergative is blocked in Bryatesle.
•  Explicitly transitive verb forms are nearly never permitted
• The Bryatesle 'few', for instance, requires a detransitivized verb whenever the English corresponding sentence would have 'a few ...' be the subject of a transitive verb.

Tense in Sargaĺk

Sargaĺk's tense system (ignoring the topic of aspect) has a few complications:

Different basic underlying systems for different verbs
Some verbs in Sargaĺk have a past-present-future system going, e.g. 'to be', 'to go', 'to snow', 'to prepare for a fishing excursion', 'to remember', 'to remain', 'to vow'. Some verbs have a past vs. non-past system, and some have a non-future vs. future system. Further, some verbs have hodiernal and even hesternal forms.

The poverty of marking
If we count all forms distinguished or permitted by at least one verb, we reach about a dozen tenses:

hodiernal non-past, hodiernal past, hodiernal future, hodiernal non-future, hodiernal present, hodiernal future, hesternal, regular future, far future, regular past, far past, present, wide present

Despite this, there are only these morphemes in use:

-mab-:

future  or non-past, when reduplicated it can indicate hodiernal or crastinal future, depending on the verb.

-nek'-

past or non-future, when reduplicated it can indicate hodiernal or hesternal past, depending on the verb.

The hodiernal non-past or non-future is often unmarked with a tense marker, but this does differ with some verbs. 

A few verbs do not form the basic tenses by suffixes, but by stem suppletion, e.g.

non-past sab, past kasa: raise, heighten, lift
non-past rorn, past jita: sleep
future: ingar, non-future nasan, grow, turn, (become)
future: p'ulk, non-past: uluŋ, cease, give up, give in,

These verbs distinguish the greatest number of tenses: both stems can combine with both the future/non-past and with the past/non-future marker. The resulting samnek'- signifies hodiernal past, whereas kasnek' signifies a hesternal past, kasmab signifies a hodiernal fuure, samab signifies a crastinal future. Reduplication leads to far past or future tenses.

Aspect

Aspect has certain dedicated markers; however, derivative morphology sometimes interacts with aspect markers - either by making them superfluous, or by causing other particular markers to be used. Aspect is somewhat lexical.

Comparative Linguistics
In Dairwueh, '-mab' has a cognate in 'maptə', soon (perfective), and 'maviŋa' tomorrow. 'Mab' thus clearly relates to future spans of time in Dairwueh.

-nek' has several cognates in both Dairwueh and Bryatesle - ynykt is yesterday evening in Bryatesle, usually in the ablative definite ynykənt, 'a duration during last evening)'. There's also an adverb 'any(k)tmin', which signifies at some indeterminate time during the last few days. In Dairwueh, you get ənken 'yesterday', as well as -ənk suffixed to numbers signifying 'days ago', and the adverb nəkne, 'a while ago'. For both languages, there's thus evidence indicating that -nek relates quite clearly to a time during the previous day.

Detail #442: An Obvious Split Alignment

Consider a system whereby any VP with exclusively third person arguments form your average nominative-accusative (or even erg-abs or whatever) structure. However, whenever a first or second person is involved, the system is inverse instead. Thus, the inverse and the direct markers also are, in some sense, a person marker: they signal the presence of at least a first- or second-person participant in the VP.

However, let's imagine further that even the presence of an indirect object in the first or second person triggers this. Let's, however, still have the inverse alignment be the only role-assigning marker even in that case.

Bryatesle: Personal Pronouns

The personal pronouns of Bryatesle form the following table:

Singular
	nom	acc	dat	abl
1st	nëm	(n)a	(n)ek	(n)ïty
2nd	tvem	tëku	tërsi	tërty
3rd masc	en	menak	mersi	merty
3rd fem	emi	enyk	enir	enam
3rd neut	es	es	syn	sity
plural
1st	vli	vilku	versi	versi
2nd	xnivim	xnu (xinku)	xnërsi (xersi)	xnërsi
3rd	tivi	teku	tevsi	tevsi

Historically, tevsi has been tërsi - thus coinciding with the 2nd person singular dative, but these have since dissimilated. The dissimilation in part pushed along the conflation in central dialects between masculine, feminine and neuter plurals, as 'tevsi' previously was the neuter form. 

This change has been spreading from the central dialects over the recent century, and has not hit all regions yet. In far western dialects, tërsi remains as the 3rd person plural dative form, but tërty has spread to be 2nd person singular dative as well. Most educated writers - even those who speak dialects that conflate them - distinguish them in writing. As for the gender distinction in the plural third person pronouns, it remains in northern and western dialects, but has been lost in the east, south and central areas. These forms vary strongly.

Pronouns also have secondary case markers, but these exist as phonologically independent words, albeit with very restrictive syntactic distribution. Definite forms exist as well, and the interpretation of these are not necessarily entirely transparent.

In 

Usage

Third person reference resolution

 

Over the span of modern colloquial Bryatesle, reference resolution differs regiolectally and chronolectally. Capital region Bryatesle from middle-modern to late-modern roughly follows these  principles: any contextually prominent singular noun phrase of the correct gender or number is a candidate for reference. The more recent, the more likely to be the correct referent, except that the previous clause has its own ranking system: there, subjects outrank other potential referents, and clause-initial non-subjects are second in rank. A definite noun raises the likelihood that a pronoun will be parsed as referring to it. Demonstratives do not have this effect - instead, demonstrative pronouns are likely to be used to refer to nouns which have been expressed with demonstrative determiners.

A significant amount of lexical information may affect interpretation of reference - e.g verbs that are associated with animal subjects (e.g. at. garʋer / tel. gerʋar - roar, at. tepʋer / tel. tapar, 'to gallop', at. nʋusir / tel. nʋesar 'to sniff' (of dogs)), will generally be interpreted to refer to a suitable candidate animal even if other pronoun parsing rules would prefer a different referent.

Third person pronouns cannot refer to a noun that is introduced in the same clause, in such a case the noun must instead be referred to by a demonstrative. The Vartaky school of philosophy's writing rules demands a curve be drawn in writing to connect such references in text for clarity, other varieties have gone in for pretty wordy disambiguating parentheticals. The Capital court language demands the use of a compound consisting of the demonstrative and a regular third person pronoun for such reference in writing, although it is usually only the demonstrative that is read out.

The plural is more complicated: the third person plural may even refer to multiple, separate noun phrases of singular or plural or mixed numbers that need not even be in syntactically similar positions or even in the same clause. However, in legal and philosophical texts, wherever it is unclear which nouns are referred to, they are often presented between two copies of the pronoun, all in the same case, e.g.

teku, parde-le dynke, teku.

them, poor(sg)-and rich(sg), them

 

There are certain indicators of higher likelihood of mixed-positional reference: verbs that indicate social interaction, competition, comparison, attempts at contrasting, communicating relations, either with the antecedent or with the pronoun, may indicate that the reference is to multiple antecedents - unless a plural antecedent that clearly fits the bill could be found. Nouns that denote persons or things that belong to some kind of culturally important set - the family, the village, the crew, the functionaries of certain events, are likely to be interpreted as being referred to by one pronoun.

As for the plural pronoun, the use of a definite marker after the pronoun tends to indicate as 'narrow' a possible interpretation of the reference: noun-phrases that at the very least were coordinated, preferably maybe even just one noun phrase.

Pro-drop permits for even stricter reference resolution in the plural: if no pronoun is used, a verb with plural subject must have as the referent a single plural NP (or coordinated noun phrases), preferrably if possible in the previous clause, or a recent plural subject of some verb. Third person singular pro-drop reference is similarly restricted, but does naturally not resolve the 'multiple simultaneous references' issue

 

Second and First Person Number

The number of the second person pronouns may not exactly respond to the number of the addressee or speaker, and may also deviate from the number marked on the verb. The verbal number always correlates to the 'actual' number in these cases. The most common situations where such divergence is marked are these:

• A person seen as a representative of a group.
  
• One person in a group is seen as of primary social importance even outside that group. Thus, e.g. a king and his entourage can be spoken of in the singular.
• In reported speech, plural is often preferred over singular for subjects.

First number can also deviate from the number of the referred people:

• One person having particular ownership of the action. This only really can be 'transparent' with subjects, and so isn't really a thing with objects. With non-subjects, this deviation arguably does not exist.

Bryatesle: Traces of the Vanished Copula

Although Bryatesle's copula is mostly absent, having been replaced by other intransitive verbs that take complements, it has left some traces in rather specific syntactical contexts. Meanwhile, several dialectal copulas exist, with rather stunningly different origins. This essay covers a fair share of copula-adjacent shenanigans.

The proto-Bryatesle-Dairwueh copula

In an early stage of proto-BD, one can posit that the copula had the following forms:

sg pl

1 ji(tju)n jitjam

2 ji(tju)r jihine (jitjune also for pl)

3.I jider jides (jitju also attested for both singular and plural)

3.II ji(tju)m ji(t)ver

3.fem jiden / jiden (or jitjen)

The copula did not have a perfective/imperfective distinction, but did have a past tense form, and an exceptional feminine form:

 sg pl

1 tin tim

2 tir tine

3.I ta tas

3.II tem (t)ver 

3.fem tiden

The feminine form seems mainly to have been used as a third person feminine marker, but sometimes, it has been used in other persons as well.

A different non-verbal copula was used for punctual past, viz. invariable "kund", a word whose cognate "gan" serves as a contrastive conjunction ('but') in Dairwueh, and the cognate "kul" serves as an abessive marker in tarist.

2. Retentions of the copula forms

In comparisons

In comparisons, the standard of the comparison often is followed by a simplified copula. The person marking has been reduced to jir (sg) vs. jes (pl). This still follows the number of the standard of comparison, regardless of the case it is in.

Resumptive functions

The third person forms are sometimes used as resumptive subject pronouns in subclauses.

Some subclauses

These forms can all book-end (i.e. introduce or end) certain types of subclauses, e.g. relative subclauses, that-clauses (complements of 'say' and such, especially when the speech is not a direct quote).

Some adverbs

Some adverbs have -(j)im- or -ta- as a derivative affix. Examples:

jimuake 'it is enough'

jivruake 'they are enough'

jimarta 'fortunately'

jindegug 'already' (sometimes ingidug)

jimkanu, jinkanu 'still' 

takyrs 'certainly' ('was yes')

Strong affirmation

The third person forms sg jider, pl jides (f jiden) are often used as a positive enforcing verb, coordinated with the main verb. However, the feminine form is restricted to formal speech and a few dialects, being replaced by the masculine in most dialects and registers.

Negating existence or presence

The negative particle, when negating existence or presence of a subject or object, can take a prefix jim-/jid-.

Presence or location

Some locative expressions take these as suffixes to denote being at a location. This can be used to closer tie a locative to the subject, in case the relation between location, subject and other argument is unclear. So, e.g. 'kauda' means 'at home', but 'jirkauda'(sg)/'jinkauda'(pl) specifically means '(the subject is) at the subject's home'. As opposed to 'we visited him at home'. If the subject is first person, you sometimes get 'jinkauda', and this is also a common answer as to the question where someone was, if they were at home.

Verb suffixes

Some verbs clearly derive from the copula affixing onto a stem. This can be found at both edges of the stem:

kerjider - has a certain duration

 jidranu - persists, endures

Such verbs often have slightly irregular inflection.

Copula-like words

These are the copulas or copula-like words we find traces of, each having at some time, in some dialect or in some cognate language taken on a copula-like function:

• sikn > siku, an essive postposition, from an adjective meaning 'similar', even previously from a word meaning 'face' (sargalk cognate: šek'an > ch'ešn, 'chin', Dairwueh cognates sinzet - 'facial expression', but also sinze - 'in front of'); in Tarist, the cognate (sik(n)) is the stem for the copula. The 'heyday' of this copula from a Bryatesle vantage point was proto-Bryatotarist. Western Tarist uses it both as a copula and an essive marker.
  
• kund, a contrastive conjunction (like English but), which eventually came to be an emphatic copula in some southern dialects. The cognate gən in Dairwueh signifies 'and then', in Tarist, kund signifies 'without'. In northwestern Bryatesle, kund is sometimes used as a past tense copula, and was more widely used as such in early Bryatesle.
  
• yan, (P-BD zgam) an originally essive preposition. By Proto-Bryatesle, this had mainly become an affirmative particle, but also a resumptive ~pronoun. The cognate in Dairwueh, zam, expresses 'emphatic self' as well as exclusive specification, and is also the origin of the -ŋa-series of passive present markers. In some insular dialects, this is still used before nominal complements of any verb that is used as a copula. In older texts, and southeastern dialects, this sometimes is used as a standalone present tense copula.
  
• The "continuous value copula" of proto-Bryatesle-Dairwueh:
  ıtıwn | ıtırw | ıtıw
  ıtıkw | ıtıwv | ıtıwvə
  which however early on lost its first and second person forms for a uniform ıtıu > jıtju, from which new forms emerged (the present tense table given above). In Dairwueh, the cognate hidze is used for expressing quantities and durations, and in the causative is the stem for the verb 'to count'. The Tarist cognate itsju expresses 'exceed' in comparisons. No known Sargalk cognate.
  
• The Proto-Bryatesle-Dairwueh binary state copula,
  k'ıx | kı'rp | k'ıxw
  k'ıko | k'ıwo | k'ıwə
  which similarly lost all forms but kıxw > kıvu by Proto-Bryatesle.
  In Sargalk, a cognate tš'i- is used both for polar questions and emphatic confirmation. In Bryatesle, it has come to stand in either-or-questions kıvu A kıvu B?
  
• The existential particle nıd, whose Tarist cognate nidi- signifies "be alive". In Sargalk, the adverb nurne, signifying 'even now, still, continuing' might originate with the same stem, as might the verb nuvu- 'to remain, to be alive, (to wait)'. Dairwueh nirzes - nourishment, and neze - 'for the duration of' might also be cognate. This particle also is part of several Bryatesle nouns and verbs, such as nidmar - nourishment, nidtul - to survive, nidnyr - birth. Beyond its role as an (emphatic) existential particle in Bryatesle, in some southern dialects it can be used as a locative copula. At the border towards Tarist, its use as a general copula is attested.
  
• The demonstrative ~verb 'siš' ('is this one, this one is, here is ..., ... is here') - the dairwueh cognate 'hise' is a reference disambiguator: when a pronoun refers to a following noun, the following noun usually has 'hise' introducing the NP.
  
• A fairly formal synonym for 'become' seems to be derived from 'was not, is' - datajir (no was is)

 

Conreligions Checklist: Magic, Politics, Science

     Magic

• Religion and magic often skate very close to each other, however ...
• ... so did science and magic back in really old times.
• ... the differentiation between religion and magic is not necessarily all that clear.
• both are (or at least 'can be') supernatural practices, in some sense.
• not all cultures necessarily differentiate them!
• however, a distinction between sanctioned and non-sanctioned magical activities is rather likely to exist. 
• ... the differentiation between magic and science/engineering is not necessarily all that clear.
• Depending on how science develops, it too will be about
• causing effects
  
• explaining cause and effect
• developing a terminology that permits discussing things
• Practitioners of engineering may not necessarily understand the underlying science, and in the modern world, we do see a fair share of people whose understanding of science is basically just a substitute for religion. (I am not saying science is a substitute for religion, but if you reason about science in certain ways, your understanding of it is probably not much better than religion. Consider, e.g. someone who thinks that evolution has an explicit purpose, or that e.g. quantum mechanics proves that your attitude to outcomes of random events can influence them, etc.) 
• Practitioners of engineering thus may end up using formulas for calculating whether a bridge will hold a certain mass as a sort of magic incantation that tells something essential about the bridge.
  
• ... both religious rituals and magic contain an idea of causation that differs from a naturalistic idea of causation; however, medieval magic did assume quite a different idea of causation in the first place.
• If you don't understand where language came from, language might be seen as an essential, objective part of nature (rather than as a human phenomenon); if language is understood as such a part of nature (or rather physics), ... then linguistic acts might well be "naturalistically" thought to affect nature. Reality 'hears' what you're saying, and reacts to it. However, maybe your language is considered degenerate for whatever reason, and therefore less efficient.
• We find some modern people too have strange notions of causation, see e.g. Masaru Emoto
  
• This actually leads to an interesting notion of what the term "magic" might mean in modern times: "magic" is a term used for any system that assumes an outdated or otherwise rejected notion of causality!
   
• European and Middle Eastern Magic had several different forms, not necessarily recognized as branches of a single 'magic':
  
• The conjuration of spirits
• More generally, things that have effects on spirits in various ways - mazes by that made their obsessive minds get stuck, etc.
  
• Altering the properties of a thing more directly by carrying out certain actions (amulets and talismans)
• Utilizing the properties of a thing by carrying out certain actions
• "As abo
• In most of human history, religion and the state have been two legs of the same creature - the narratives and rituals of religion have justified and regulated the state, and the state has sponsored and sanctioned religion. A few religions, however, have become 'superstate' religions, i.e. their reach crosses state borders and can impose political clout onto several of them - this is maybe especially clear in pre-colonial India, post-Roman Europe and the modern world.
• ve, so below" - by doing something here, the order in the heavens is affected; the order here, is further affected in accordance with how it's affected above.
• Some of these did have somewhat reasonable assumptions:
• We can see that tides are affected by the sun and the moon; thus, the sun and the moon clearly have some kind of invisibly transmitted effect. From this, a mistaken understanding of what that effect is may easily lead into a variety of notions of magic. However! This misunderstood notion probably is not all that far from the roots of our understanding of invisible forces either. NB: I wrote roots, not implying that our understanding and theirs is similar, but that there is a historical continuity from one to the other.
  
• Is prayer magic?
• Depends on what prayer is supposed to achieve.
• Consider the Jewish notion that prayer should be an activity where you consider your own conduct and judge yourself and commit yourself to improving.
• OTOH, Jewish prayer also contains appeals to G-d to improve situations in the real world.
• The atheist view on what religious people do prayer for is is often rather lopsided towards 'people asking for stuff'. Prayer tends to have many functions:
• praise
• restatement and affirmation of doctrine
• personal commitment to improvement
• something somewhat like 'meditation'
• communal bonding
• this may include teaching and reinforcing beliefs among the community's members (e.g. a leader of the congregation prays aloud, and everyone else hears this and possibly repeats it)
• of course, this may also contain an aspect of curtailing freedom of thought - "you've confirmed, vocally, that you believe this every day your entire life, so why won't you believe it now?")
  
• ineffable things (silent prayer, prayer as music without lyrics (hassidic niggun)) - this does probably work as some kind of emotional vent

Science

• Scientific terminology is by itself not necessarily "true": if a religion by tradition uses a word to denote a class of things, and science uses the same word to denote a slightly different class, this is not necessarily a disagreement. It is merely the use of separate definitions. This is a normal phenomenon, and even scientists use words differently - ask a cosmologist and a metallurgist whether sulphur is a metal. Words are arbitrary labels that we apply to things, and sometimes, two groups have different use cases for these words.
• However, both sides of this coin may disagree with the idea that words are arbitrary, and see any failure to adhere to specific definitions as 'wrong'.
• Thus, imho, whenever an atheist use arguments like 'bats aren't birds yet the Bible thinks they are', I'd really like to tell him in private that his argument is making us atheists look dumb, and that he should know better - a language may well have a word 'bird' that basically includes all warm-blooded winged animals. We don't actually know the exact meaning of 'bird' in KJV-era English!
• However, the same type of arguments coming from a religious person is just as dumb. If a muslim argues that science is wrong since it doesn't agree that the liver is a kind of blood, ... well, 
  
• Thus, the terms by themselves don't hold truth value, they're merely a label. Yes, scientific terms often try to catch some kind of relatedness between concepts, ... but this is again dictated by use-case.
• Thus, disagreements as to whether something is a fruit or a berry, a fish or a mammal, etc, ... might occur, but this would be the result of either a religious group or a counter-religious group trying to impose one use terminologal use case onto the entire language, sometimes even onto every language.
  
• Some religions have narratives, rules or other conceptions of reality that go against objective reality. Science attempts to figure out something that is close to reality. If scientific findings and religious dogma contradict, this may lead to the kind of conflict we see in some circles w.r.t creationism, but it may also
• Cause reinterpretation in all kinds of mystical / metaphorical ways.
• Cause rejection of a narrative.
• Cause the believers to think they don't "understand" the narrative deeply enough.
• Cause believers to hold out hope that scientific findings currently are a fluke, and soon enough the True Truth will emerge.
• If the religion isn't all that interested in maintaining belief, but rather maintaining praxis, this might not be an issue at all ... unless scientific findings show that the praxis leads to the opposite results of what's expected (e.g. a healing ritual that is strongly carcinogenic).
• Sometimes, people are able to keep conflicting ideas in their heads, and if they do not perceive the conflict between the ideas to be important, this might not even lead to particularly strong cognitive dissonance. I know I have some conflicting beliefs w.r.t. some obscure maths, but it's not anything that gives me any stress.
• Consider examples like 'reconstructionist Judaism', which holds that Judaism is an iron age civilization that has survived into the present by morphing from a territorial civilization to an ethnic minority group kind of civilization. For such an idea about 'religion', the truth value of the religious scripture is really not all that important: to them, the Jewish Bible is a family hierloom which tells them how some particularly influential members of the civilization viewed itself and its challenges 2200+ years ago, and this volume has had a considerable impact on the culture, which is another reason to keep it around and sometimes even read it. For such a religion, the science/religion conflict seems totally irrelevant. For conservative Christianity, Islam and some branches of Orthodox Judaism, however, the conflict can be all the more threatening, as cherished truths are questioned and possibly even shown to be entirely untenable (or only tenable by extremely far-fetched solutions).
  

Politics

• A common notion today is "keep religion out of politics". Over most of human history, this would be almost laughable.
  
• Clearly, if divine beings exist and interact with mankind, pleasing them may be of some political relevance.
• As previously mentioned, in earlier times, causation was less clearly understood, and if your best understanding of causation says 'we need to sacrifice sheep to ensure rain', your culture will sacrifice sheep.
• Organized religion almost certainly emerged not as a result of politics, but as politics.
  
• Democracy in some sense does imply imposing by some kind of regulated manner, the ethics of some voters onto other voters. If some voters' ethics are based on religion, it's not weird if this does impose some religious values on the non-religious as well.
  
• In most of human history, religion and the state have been two legs of the same creature - the narratives and rituals of religion have justified and regulated the state, and the state has sponsored and sanctioned religion. A few religions, however, have become 'superstate' religions, i.e. their reach crosses state borders and can impose political clout onto several of them - this is maybe especially clear in pre-colonial India, post-Roman Europe and the modern world.
• Pre-state or sub-state religions naturally also exist, but also require some amount of social cooperation. And in these, there also tends to be justification of the social order - chieftains, shamans, gender roles, etc. And this, of course, is politics.

Detail #441: Naming the nights

 In several cultures, there's a cycle of names for days, and of course English is a trivial example of this. Now, imagine if there were separate names for the nights!

It could make sense, for some reasons, to have a separate cycle length for the nights: if the night is named by the group that is responsible for the night guard, it might be desirable that different groups cycle out to be able to participate in daytime religious obligations.

Conreligion Checklist Sidequest: Religion as an analogy of language

Language is not merely a vocabulary and a set of rules for how to generate and parse well-formed sentences. A proficient speaker also knows how to express himself idiomatically and in a culturally appropriate way. It also provides metaphors which can help a speaker express ideas.

A language is not a question of belief - normally, a speaker doesn't have to "believe" that 'nutmeg' is a spice derived from a certain plant's grated nuts. It's a question of convention. A speaker doesn't "believe" that it's rude to say certain types of utterances in certain contexts, it's rude by his understanding of the conventions of the speaker community.

In some ways, religion provides a similar set of conventions. Sometimes, some of these conventions may seem odd and superstitious, but as a shared set of conventions, they may help provide some way in which to parse human interactions, as well as render them somewhat more constructively predictable for other participants in the interaction.

Let's consider one example - sitting shiva. In Jewish culture, upon someone's death, there are many rules that govern the behavior of the nearest family of the departed, as well as how the community is expected to behave with regards to them. After the funeral, shiva begins and lasts for a week. During this week,

• You are expected to visit those who grieve.
  
• You don't start a conversation with them; you let the grieving family start conversations if they like.
• You can bring food. (NB: Of course, this is expected to be kosher food.)

There are more rules than these - and the rules may seem onerous and nitpicky. But ...

• They provide a clear 'manuscript' which to follow; you don't need to worry about what to say to the bereaved.
• They provide a clear, understood way of how to express your sympathies. You know what to do, the bereaved know what you'll do. This is a bit like having a shared set of vocabulary, and using that shared set of vocabulary. You don't need to come up with your own attempts at showing sympathy, and risk it being misunderstood.
  

In Jewish mourning, there's several other minor rituals - some of which are somewhat physical (and maybe cathartic for that reason, e.g. tearing a cloth,

Sitting shiva has a very specific time frame - a week. Other parts of the mourning last for a month, and finally some parts a year. This might seem odd to regulate, but this too provides people a 'manuscript' to go by. No matter how important a person was to you, life must go on. Providing rituals and specific dates as a kind of roadmap to grief may in some sense help manage the emotional baggage.

Probably, other practices besides funerary one provide similar contexts to people - even less dramatic ones like, say, festive holidays. These provide a shared language for joyous interactions, without having to come up with a great deal of explanations why I'd like to get someone drunk.

Conreligion: Lirbexper Funerary Rites and Beliefs

In Lirbexper belief, the afterlife begins as a member of a war party in the battle against various supernatural entities. Some parts of the ritual praxis and religious literature  in part is meant to prepare the members for this battle. However, as mentioned, this is a party. Not just one person.

Upon death, a person undergoes a short primary temporary interment, waiting for a full party to be assembled. At this interment, ritual symbolic weapons and devices for resting are given. The actual ritualized part of it is very short. The afterlife is not considered to have begun yet - this is a gray zone between dead and alive, and for certain types of religious observances, one is considered alive. (So, for instance, the family should still mention their recently dead in certain rituals.)

After this, the body is left to wait until a sufficiently large group of dead is assembled - usually 8 or more, depending partially on ages and status of the dead - preferably, someone who has achieved certain religious ranks should be included, in order to be able to ensure the strength of the party. Once a sufficient group is assembled, the actual funeral is performed for the entire party, and the families of the dead will arrange a celebration where the whole community together wish the dead luck in their raids, and also reminisce about them.

The date for the funeral is decided based on several types of divination, including astrology. Certain communities may also decide the burial place depending on the results of divination. Usually, a shared monument is raised at the place of burial.

Rituals

There are fairly standardized liturgies used at the first and second funeral; the bodies are clothed and equipped after a standardized manner. Symbolic weapons - and sometimes real weapons - are given to the dead at the second funeral. At the first funeral, the gifts are meant to give the dead person rest until the challenges ahead.

Complications - found bodies, lost bodies

Certain kinds of accidents or injuries may cause the body to be lost, and may sometimes even leave mourners unsure as to whether a person even has died. This may especially be the case with travelers who die far away. After a certain time, an effigy of the lost person may be buried with a group, but is not counted towards the full number - in the case of a mistake, the effigy would otherwise reduce the actual number of participants, and this must be avoided.

An unknown, found body is likewise sometimes buried with a group, but not counted: the body may already have been included in effigy elsewhere. Also, in case he is not a member of the community, it is assumed he will not be participating in the party, as the afterlife is assumed to work differently for other communities. If the body seems to be very recently dead, it will be left to wait at least a month. This can be cause for postponing a burial of an established group.

During this month, inquiries may also be done to other communities, to identify the corpse, in which case the originating community may take care of the body instead.

In both of the cases where the corpse is buried with a group, the officiant will also read a petition for forgiveness - in case the ritual causes additional bother to one who already has undergone it or in case the ritual causes irrelevant bother to someone who is not meant to participate in it. In case an effigy is present, an invitation to any non-buried dead of the faith is also extended in case the intended addressee does not need it.

Controversies

In more modern times, the question of whether you really have to be buried together with someone who you fear appeared. Especially people who had been abused by certain other members of the community may fear having to endure a considerable chunk of their afterlife with their abusers. Originally, clergy opposed such considerations, as it was against tradition, as well as against the will of God: had he chosen that you should die near the time of another person's death, he clearly wanted the two of you in the same team.

However, the undeniable evidence that noblemen, clergy, and even just generally rich people always had been able to get their wishes respected, including wishes such as not to be buried with commoners, or to be buried with particular types of people - to the point where people sometimes were killed in order to accommodate such wishes, medium-conservative clergy would over time start accepting such requests from commoners as well.

Conservative clergy, however, would reject these concerns. Radical clergy held that the afterlife was a myth, and the burial ceremonies were just a way of illustrating very clearly that we are all the same in the face of death, regardless of behavior or achievements, and for this reason worked hard to remove the privilege of choice from the upper classes instead.

 

 

 

Detail #440: Generalizing V2

V2 is a peculiar syntactical structure present in western and northern Europe, which governs where the finite verb goes in a main clause. Historically, it has had some presence in some Romance and Celtic languages, is still present in almost all Germanic languages, Estonian, and is also present in a few other languages worldwide. There's differences in whether these languages apply V2 to subclauses or not, (or even to what types of subclauses they apply them), and how strictly the V2 rule operates.

When trying to come up with new ideas, I like to 'parametrize' a concept and alter the parameters.

The first parameter of V2 that occurs to people tend to be the number, and of course, increasing that to 3 is an obvious idea. And naturally, one could even go further, to 'V4' or whatever, but such seems to require increased numbers of mandatory arguments, dummy arguments, or permitting V3 and V2 in circumstances where too few arguments are present.

However, there's a few other things we can do. Besides, grammar in general seems to be bad at counting past two. However, it seems to be rather good at counting both backwards and forwards. Thus, we could have V-2, where '-' denotes minus, and I'll parse that as in python list comprehension - i.e. counting from the end. This could signify having the verb always being the penultimate word.

This could lead to VS but SVO, but also SVAdv, etc.

However, there's a different parameter we can change: S2 - subject second! VSO, but also permitting OSV, AdvSV, VSAdv, etc. O2 is of course also conceivable, (or erg2 or abs2 or whatever), but in the case of O2 or Erg2, we do run into the question of how to deal with intransitive clauses.

We could also have a more general NP2, where any noun phrase qualifies. One could imagine having a subset of possible arguments: (S or O)2, or even weirder pairings like (Adv or V)2.

In Swedish, there's a handful of adverbials that can go between the subject and the verb, or at the beginning of a clause yet be followed by SV. Such lexical exceptions can of course also be considered for a conlang.

A different parameter we could imagine changing 'where does the rule apply'. For now, V2 applies on sentence level. We could imagine a similar rule that applies in a verb phrase or in a noun phrase, e.g. 'article comes second' or 'TAM marker is the second constituent of the verb phrase'. I am aware of some such rules in some languages, esp. w.r.t. articles and e.g. Wackernagel-position clitics in Latin and Russian.

 

Detail #439: Quasi-parts of speech and quasi-constituents and the Locus of the Abessive

Different languages are analyzed with different sets of parts of speech and constituents/parts of sentences. To some extent these boil down to grammatical traditions, but to a great extent they also boil down to actual grammatical phenomena. However, if we were to compare, say, Swedish and English, the differences are largely superficial: both descriptive traditions work with barely any modifications to describe either language. A trivial example: Swedish grammar tradition has "subjunctions", which in the English tradition are subsumed under "conjunctions". Subjunctions are words that introduce subclauses, i.e. subordinating conjunctions. A description of English would be marginally different if this concept was introduced.

In some languages, however, distinguishing adjectives from nouns - or adjectives from verbs in some other languages - makes way less sense. Applying such a distinction would be looking at it through a decidedly foreign lens. Sometimes, which part of speech a word belongs to is hard to pinpoint: a word may be both a verb and an adverb, or a noun and an adverb, or a noun and an adjective, etc.

A thing that interests me, however, are a variety of ways in which constituents and parts of speech may behave in ways that justify considering them some kind of quasi-PoS or quasi-constituent, constituents that show some kind of uniformity, but cut across other constituents.

One such example I have been sketching over recent months is what I chose to call "the locus of the abessive". This locus is marked by a certain case (which however also is used for some other constituents), but can appear as subjects, objects, indirect objects, possessors, possessums and other constituents. The abessive itself could also be considered a type of quasi-constituent.

The syntax of this entity gets complicated. First of all, the locus can be any of the following:

• topic
  
• subject: I miss her
  
• object: he deprived them of shelter
  
• indirect object: they gave him no food
• location: there is no joy in Aylesbury
• possessor: the orphan's mom
• possessum: the man's widow
• infinitives of various functions: there's no reason to hate him

What if the locus of the abessive could be coordinated over gaps, even when it isn't the same role? 'They deprived him of shelter and gave no food' would then have 'him' as the indirect object of 'gave'. This could get really tricky once possessors and possessums and infinitives start getting involved.

 

About Bryatesle and its relatives

About Bryatesle and its relatives

Bryatesle is a dialect continuum encompassing about 30 million native speakers. It is the lingua franca of about 40 million additional speakers, has a rich literature - fictional, scientific, philosophic, religious and instructional, in both poetic and prose forms - liturgies in multiple religions, songs, humor, word games, and a variety of other linguistic devices. Dialectal differences are sufficient that several ends of the dialect continuum are not mutually intelligible, but the standard forms of the language provide common ground for scholars, businessmen, clergymen, government officials and regular people.

Short history

The pre-historic connections between Bryatesle and its kin languages indicate a rather sudden expansion from the Dairwueh-Bryatesle urheimat about 3800 years before the present year (bpy), after a previous split from Sargalk.

Bryatesle tribes started forming city states sometimes roughly 1800 bpy, at which time also writing systems were adopted from Tatediem cultures to the south. Maritime and fluvial trade networks led to about 40 city states forming around the sea of Sadgal and the sea of Gudnyt as well as the great lake Pajik over the next 800 years. Expansion both east- and northwards included assimilation of some Cwarminoid and Tatediem populations. Westwards, Dairwueh tribes partially resisted Bryatesle expansion, partially stood as equal partners in trade and industry, partially stood in political unity, partially expanded onto Bryatesle areas. Several westwards city states in fact were bilingual, and conflicts were not necessarily as much between Dairwueh and Bryatesle, but rather between distinct alliances of dairwobryatesle states.

About 1200 years ago, a stronger political unity over the dairwobryatesle world emerged, with  Ykred emerging as a capital of sorts. This unity lasted 300 years, but after 200 years of dissolution and strife, the last 700 years have seen a somewhat less centralized, but still united dairwobryatesle world, now under the domination of the city-state Sţesar. Although some consolidation of the various standard Bryatesle dialects has occurred due to improved communications, significant differences persist.

Geoculturopolitically, there are occasional confrontations with the Ćwarmin civilization to the east. In the far east, the Ŋʒädär have some trade relations with the Dairwuobryatesle. Southwards, we find the Tatediem engaging in trade, diplomacy, proselytization and sometimes war.

Related languages

The Sargalk-Bryatesle-Dairwueh family consists of the following languages and major dialects (italicized)

• The Hefnarač-Sargaĺk Branch
• The Sargaĺk branch
• Sargaĺk
• northern Sargaĺk
• Inraj Sargaĺk
• Geʔamik †
• Tudiluk †

• The Hefnarač branch
• Hefnarač
• Sindeʔʔet †
• Bidlahʔa †
• The Rilgouz branch
• Simiz †
• Rilgouz
• The Adrk languages
• Adrk
• Tarts †
• Vimil
• The Dairwueh-Bryatesle Branch
• The Dairwueh Branch
• Dairwueh
• Western
• Central
• Bundur
• Vist †
• Kappeuje †
• The Nerazg Branch †
• The Bryatesle Branch
• Northern
  
• Bryatesle
• Western Tarist
• Southern
• Tarist
• Kurelwai †
• Trinzlye †

The Hefnarač-Sargaĺk Branch

The Hefnarač-Sargaĺk branch consists of three extant languages, Hefnarač, Sargaĺk and Inraj Sargaĺk. , Inraj Sargaĺk is moribund, with about 500 speakers. Hefnarač and Sargaĺk each have about 20 000 speakers, but language change towards Dairwueh and Cwarmin are weakening them both. More extinct languages are hinted at from old sources. Geʔamik, Tudiluk, Sindeʔʔet and Bidlahʔa have all gone extinct during the last 100 years. Small word lists for about a dozen other languages that probably were also related have been compiled by scholars and missionaries. The time-depth of the relation between Hefnarač and Sargaĺk is probably on the order of 3500 years or more. The most recent common ancestor between Hefnarač-Sargaĺk and Dairwueh-Bryatesle is probably about 4500 years ago or more.

The Rilgouz Branch

The Rilgouz languages are spoken on islands west of the main Dairwueh lands. The total number of Rilgouz speakers probably is about two million, with Adrk and Vimil having about 3000 each. Whether these languages diverged earlier or later than the HS/BD split is unclear, and even then it is a bit unclear which branch they diverge from: there are isoglosses that pair any two of the three branches, exclude the third - both for sound changes, semantic changes and grammar changes. There even are lexemes that single-handedly occupy conflicting isoglosses.

The Dairwueh branch

An overwhelming amount of shared innovations indicate that the Dairwueh and Bryatesle branches are closely related, having diverged at most 3500 years ago. Dairwueh and Bundur separated about 1500 years ago, Vist and Kappeuje were arguably divergent dialects that have since merged into Dairwueh leaving substratal traces.

The Nerazg branch

A few moribund languages with clearly para-Dairwueh/para-Bryatesle features have been assigned into this family. Research is ongoing, but the evidence is unclear.

 

The Bryatesle branch

Bryatesle's nearest living relative is Western Tarist, which diverged under the last 1000 years or so. Trinzlye and the southern branch encompassing Tarist and Kurelwai diverged about 1500 years ago, only to see Kurelwai mostly assimilate back into Tarist (but also to some extent into Bryatesle).

Trinzlye was largely assimilated into Dairwueh, where it has left some traits as well.

Arguably, there is a dialect continuum between Bryatesle and Western Tarist.