Tatediem: Verbs as Adverbial Attributes

Tatediem verbs can form a kind of adverbial by simply taking the object/adjective that is congruent with the subject of the participle-adverb. These verbs cannot take objects with any congruence marking - an object will be directly after the adverbial verb, and will not be preceded by any affixes.

ne-hus-ðéspa Marwuq  e-yurme Dasti

3sg.m-silently-walk Marwuq 3sg.m(obj)-sleep Dasti. 

Marwuq walks silently, Dasti sleeping. (Here, a 'because' would be inferred.)

These verbal adverbs often relate causes, things going on simultaneously or in relation to the main verb, things resulting from the main verb, or even contrasting to the main verb. Whether the main verb or the adverb is the main semantic content can vary - a fronted adverb of this kind generally is the most important verb from a semantic point of view, pragmatically speaking.

ko e-sekarm Karum, ne-sekarm Siŋun.

Karum not guarding, Siŋun guards.

(Depending on context, this could be parsed as 'why can't Karum guard, when Siŋun does his duty as a guard?', or 'Karum sucks at guarding, pick Siŋun for guard duty instead', or 'It isn't Karum guarding right now, it's Siŋun'. The last alternative is maybe the least likely one, as this is a somewhat marked construction - the quite neutral statement would simply coordinate the statements that Karum does not guard, but Siŋun does so.)

Tatediem: The "Grammatical Noun Class"

The noun class that I have termed "the grammatical class" has several important functions in Tatediem. Conjunctions, certain other particles, and quite a few adverbs are marked by it. Gerunds also are marked by it, and in some constructions numerals too.

The grammatical class prefixes are:
singular: re-, ur-
dual: rá-, ur-
plural: ráx-, ur-
mass: re-, ur-
where the rightmost is the object form, as well as the form that goes on adjectives. The ráx- form sometimes causes metathesis, e.g. rekém - rákxém (not at that time, never).

Gerunds are always marked by it:
regómn (from the verb stem gómn, guard) 'guarding, to guard'

With gerunds, using the dual or plural forms can be a way of indicating iterativeness or habituality:
ráxktìk (from the verb stem ktìk, rise) 'to rise often, repeated rising'
rábampù (from the verb stem bámpù, cook) 'twice cooking, to cook twice', but more specifically the preparation of a certain crop requires cooking it twice, and rábampù most specifically refers to the preparation of this crop.

As for adverbs, some lexemes take ur-, some take re- or even ráx-.

ráxtúim - certainly, surely, truly

urmá - quickly

rewrù - soon

rakxir -  for ever

ráŋum - again 

The demonstratives, when taking this set of prefixes go from being determiners to having a meaning closer to 'here', 'there', etc.

nebán nekús = this stick (note: the demonstratives use the same prefixes as the nouns, not the same as the adjectives)

rebán = here

sarján sartìpí = yonder mark, that mark (visible to the speaker and listener)

reján = (over) there

gemgán gemedùliŋ = those peaks

regán = in that place, there (a distant 'there')

Plural prefixes are possible, but unusual. "Raxbán raxgán" is a common expression for "all over the place". "Raxgán" sometimes is used to signify "lost, in an unknown place". The plurals may also be used to signify boundaries, i.e.
"ku-nitìsp rax-jàn k-u-(u)r-ùtur, ne-bán ne-timb, ses-jàn ses-kúmcé, sesjàn sesràm, gemgán gemegís"
neut1.sg-border gram.plur-there neut1sg-gram-stretch.along, masc-this masc-river, neut4-yon neut4-forest, neut4-yon neut4-road, neut3-that neut3-lake
The border stretches along these: this river, that forest, that road and the lake.

More later on the constructions with numerals, on particles and conjunctions as well as probably more adverbial stuff in general.

Tatediem: Noun Phrase Orders

The most unmarked order in Tatediem is verb-initial, but rearrangements of the order does occur. Auxiliaries tend to cause the main verb to move beyond the subject, but this is not a hard and fast rule. Not all auxiliaries are (from a morphological point of view) verbs, but even non-verby auxiliaries tend to cause this type of shift.
E.g.

ne-ra-tali Kúmpeni

3SGMASC-3SGFEM-be.uncle Kúmpeni 

Kumpéni is her uncle. 

ya-xème-hépòk ya-kompòké

 NEUT2.PLUR-DUTY-grow NEUT2.PLUR-acre

The acres grow, as is their duty 

Adjectives tend to follow the noun, but discontinuous noun phrases also can occur:

ya-kompòke l-ónta (from uninflected root mónta)

NEUT2.PLUR-acre NEUT2.PLUR-big

big acres, the big acres 

Likewise, numbers and other quantifiers follow their nouns:

ŋwu-tali ŋwu-párt 

nephews  three

 kù-rutkí ku-ppàr

 assistance lots (as seen from the point of view of the provider of the assistance)

 ŋwú-rutkí ŋwu-ppàr

assistance lots (as seen from the point of view of the recipient) 

By moving these to phrase-initial position, with subjects they are either turned into a predicate, and can then also take other verbal markings:

ses-irbum-pàr ses-kàhà

NEUT4-prevalently-lots NEUT4-wheat

There's always lots of wheat 

or emphasized, in which case they cannot take most verbal markings (although ones encoding for evidentiality are permitted):

ses-sèlx ses-magŋú

NEUT4-four NEUT4-carriage

carriages, of which (we have/there are) four 

This particular order is common in accountings of things.

Adjectives and quantifiers that operate as object complements are placed before the object phrase:

verb subject ye-tagé ye-mébdè

verb subject NEUT4-for_sale NEUT4-house

subject verbed the house (into being, or from being, or due to being, or into continuing its being in a state of or similar) for sale. 

Similarly, dividing or merging things or making them shrink or grow may have quantifiers preposed along the same pattern.

Relative subclauses tend to go far to the right in the sentence. They begin with the verb, having the same gender marking as the main noun, and a relative prefix, ku-. Adpositional attributes likewise tend to follow the adjectives and numerals. Owners tend to be extracted from the noun phrase, and exist as a slightly aloof noun phrase with no obvious syntactic connection to the owned phrase. A prefix on the owner agrees in gender with the owned object.

Demonstrative attributes tend to follow directly after the noun, or be displaced to a position close to the predicate.

Phrase order is not set in stone, and discontinuous phrases appear as well, and the restrictions on when they appear is an chapter all to itself.

Dairwueh: The Third Person Verb

The Dairwueh verb, for most tense-aspect combinations have two third person forms, labelled quite clearly 3rd person I and 3rd person II. Since the II-form does not distinguish number, the following indexing is practical: 3_sg, 3_pl, 3_II. The use of the 3_II form requires some elucidation.

Generally, 3_II is formed with the least actual morphology out of the third person forms. If the verb, inflected for tense, ends in a bimoraic syllable, that is that is also the 3_II form. However, if the last syllable is monomoraic, it gains a second mora in some way.

It is used in the following circumstances:

• with non-explicit subjects
• with impersonal constructions
• non-topical subjects
• relative subclauses (where the subject is relativized), and other subclauses where the subject is not present in that particular subclause)
• on verbs that are not the primary predicate of the clause
• sometimes with indefinite subjects

Non-explicit subjects include 'pseudopassives', i.e. just not having a subject.

hāg - (people) do.PRESENT-3_II (that)
(from hag, 'to do')

erŋe sawnī - thing-PL.ACC buy-PAST.3_II, things were bought, the things got sold

It does not include pronoun dropping though.

In relative subclauses, it is possible for the subject to be present outside of the clause but not within it. In such cases, this too blocks the regular third person marking in the subclause. Non-primary predicates tend to mark meanings along the lines of certain English adverbs. These might have an impersonal subject or the same subject as the main verb, but are marked the same regardless whether impersonal or not.

Indefinite subjects are more likely to have this form the less topical they are.

Tatediem: Some Morphology and also "Tense, Aspect and Mood: Not Quite Categories"

Tatediem's verbal system has a slot for TAM, which applies to all verb forms except infinitives. However, the TAM marking there comes in only four flavors: zero marking for non-future, and an often assimilated -də- for future, -ki- for imperative/hortative/optative and -ek- for tenseless irrealis. The extra subject congruence, of course, also codes for a somewhat specific aspect-tense thing.

Tatediem can encode information that encodes a much richer TAM system, but they are distributed in slightly weird ways. We find four slots in the verb slot system - manner, intensity, direction and the infinitive slots - where TAM-like information can be encoded. A slot can only ever take one prefix in it at a time.

The intensive slot can take the following quite regular markers:

-əŋu- non-committed, un-eagerly, weakly, slowly,
-oppo- intensely, strongly, quickly, obsessively (somewhat likely to be habitual)
-kauto- skillfully, gracefully, strongly
-habbi- sufficiently, suitably
-akriw- perversely, shamefully, like a madman, like a ferocious animal
-igŋu- pervasively, with lasting results (somewhat likely to be perfect)
-irbun- pervasively, with constant prevalence (somewhat likely to be gnomic)

In addition to these, the following also can appear in the same intensive slot and mark TAM-like meanings:

-iŋrul- optative
-kugbik- non-immediate future 

The voice slot does some non-voice stuff as well:

-gaf- (also -ŋaf-, -ŋav-, -gav-) passive present progressive
-daw- passive momentane
-raf- passive past
-lef- reflexive past
-lew- reflexive momentane, reflexive past
-tu- other third person subject than previously
-as- causative (adds an object slot after the regular object slot)
-ŋam- 'same subject and object as previously', leaves both slots empty. Aspectually, it also forms a kind of 'consecutive' tense. Historically a conjunction that turned into a prefix.

The manner slot can take the following markers, some of which tend to a more mood-like or evidentiality-related:

-hak- appears to be
-run- pretends to be
-sib- strives to be
-sok- is rumored to be
-cakŋi- "presently in preparatory stages for the verb"

 -nkurnke-  "enjoying the results of the verb, at the relative time spoken of" -gadun- "regretting the results of the verb, at the relative time spoken of"-stun- doing by cooperation
-stig- doing competitively
-hus- doing silently
-kagi- doing carefully
-xeme- doing due to duty
-sawin- doing as a gift to someone
-emek- doing in order to pay off an obligation or debt
-hayin- a chieftain-related causative
-kega- causing a change (reflexive or causative)

And finally, directions:

-ŋigi- homewards
-megs- outwards
-rigi- upwards
-rragi - turning upwards
-mags- turning clockwise
-tags- turning anticlockwise
-ŋiŋu- away from home
-nalk- downwards
-nnalik- turning downwards
-mis- in the role of, often present or past
-úli- turning into, often slightly future
-sud- in several directions, habitual
-irpi- towards an adverbial of location
-ahpi- away from an adverbial of location
-ippi- at an adverbial location
-kugi- towards the subject
-sagi- towards hunting grounds, present tense in times of hunting, past or future in times when hunting is not common
-nyagi- towards farming grounds, present tense in daytime, past or future in nighttime

Tatediem: Complements and Copulas and the First Hints of the TAM System

Tatediem does not have one verb that corresponds to English 'to be'. Instead, different strategies are used for different types of complements, and different types of distinctions can be found in those as well.

Adjectival predicates basically are given verbal inflections. Three verbal templates are commonly used with such predicates: Subj (Ind Obj) Voice STEM (Subj), Subj (Intensity) (Direction) (Manner) STEM, and Owner Subject (Direction) (Manner) STEM. There is one particular marker, -ére- that tends to go in the voice-slot that basically marks that the verb is a copula. The direction-marker can either be a zero morpheme or a translative marker -úli- (that shows acquiring the quality the verb-adjective encodes). For verbal adjectives, there are four manner-morphemes that often pop up:

-hak- appears to be

-run- pretends to be

-sib- strives to be 

-sok- is rumored to be 

For nominal predicates, it depends a bit on what type of noun we are dealing with:

Titles of authority tend to be objects of the verb sarwan, which means 'occupy, master, possess, have authority over, rule'. The manner slot of this verb is then -pel-, which in this case turns it into a slightly abstract sense. Thus, ruling a captain is nekoptan ----etensarwan, being a captain is nekoptan -----epelsarwan.

Family members and professions tend to have separate verb roots.

Being some more general noun is often expressed using the verb turw, with no object congruence and often no manner marker (although the four given for adjectival predicates above also do appear with turw). Direction also can have the translative -úli- marker to show turning into something.

Interestingly, -úli- is turning into an aspect marker (with hints of inceptive as well as progressive to it). Other markers in the voice and manner slots are also having a tendency towards aspect and tense marking, which means the tense-aspect marking system in Tatediem is not marked in any single spot in the verb morphology template.

Turw also is used for existential statements. Without any prefixes at all, turw also can be used as a confirming response, essentially 'yes'.

Dairwueh: A Short Description of the Case System and its Use

Dairwueh has a case system along these lines:

nominative | accusative | dative | genitive | locative-instrumental

The nominative serves a rather restricted set of uses - subjects, nominal and adjectival complements, arguments of prepositions that are semantically similar to complements of copulas, vocative uses, sometimes also topics that have semantic roles that are rather far from anything that could be the subject.

The accusative serves as direct objects, object of a few adjectives and prepositions, subjects of the verbs 'naxmal' (expect), 'rəntigi' (withstand), and 'drumal' ('repeat'), and complements of objects.

The genitive serves as possessors, definite transitive subjects, certain objects (of the verbs 'surdəl' 'to burden with, to be burdened with', 'gəš' 'to disapprove', 'əseaŋl', 'to marry'), pre-prepositional nouns and the objects of several prepositions.

For this purpose, a pre-prepositional noun is a noun that kind of forms its own hanging utterance in a sentence in combination with a prepositional phrase:

Kadŋi ori i sembern, tauhat ma derilŋa

sit-3sgI he at table.dat, beer.gen in glass.loc-instr

Often, pre-prepositionals are body parts, clothing articles or tools: coat on him, hat on head,  knife in hand, hand on oar, foot in air. One adposition only ever appears with both preprepositionals and a regular complement - vas - which basically works a bit like 'being', the complement always basically being a descriptor of the preprepositional. If the subject is a pronoun or otherwise markedly definite the preprepositional is assumed - especially if a concrete noun - to be the possession of the subject or otherwise under it control.

The dative serves as indirect object, object of several prepositions, subject of several verbs, object of several verbs, possessors of certain nouns (generally highly animate ones), direct object of verbs that have an intensifying dummy object.

An intensifying dummy object is a semantically bleached object whose only function is to intensify the verb. These often are grammaticalized expletives:

Šamgito si xaugna mešdar

rule she INTENSE.acc husband.dat - she rules her husband strongly, xaugna originally being the name of a really minor demon in Dairwueh myths.

The locative-instrumental serves to mark place and instrument, but also manner with abstract nouns. It appears with some prepositions and as object of a few verbs. In many dialects it also marks possessums, overruling most of the case rules given above - in most dialects that have this, there's still the exception that subjects still tend to be nominative or genitive when possessums.

Intensifying Adjectives, Verbs and Nouns in Barxaw

Barxaw does not have comparatives or superlatives (although it does have comparative constructions), but it does have particles that intensify certain adjectives. These particles also serve to intensify verbs, and sometimes can serve by themselves as (intensive) adjectives with specific nouns.

tìì - intensifies adjectives denoting spatial smallness, weakness, cuteness, childishness, shortness, lack, but also limberness. Certain negative looks for men - scrawniness, lankiness, etc.

ťɛn - adjectives denoting fastness, strength, might, richness, coarseness, manliness, handsomeness or any adjective describing a male's looks in a positive manner.

ćá - femininity, beauty, but can also be used to insult a man.

ťáć - longevity, durability, amount, stability, endurance, fitness, quality, skill. Also for verbal time span, and can combine with 'do' to operate as a compound preposition 'ťáć do λip řú

pil - fine, rich in detail, refined, textured. Also with verbs of cognition or thought, perception or the playing of musical instruments as well as song. 

kçup' - intensifies mainly verbs of a kinetic nature. It is also a noun that is used as the head when forming compounds denoting huge measures. 

ɟɛ̀m -  a catch-all intensifier for other positive adjectives

zágì - a catch-all intensifier for negative qualities 

ʝáp - a verbal intensifier for 'social verbs' (verbs denoting behaviors, relationships, approval or disapproval, participation, religious adherence and legal obedience)

suλɲ̟ò - a verbal intensifier for productive verbs (verbs denoting activities such as fishing, farming, harvesting, cooking, building, ploughing, ...) Can also, as an adjective denote a productive person. 

Tatediem: Various subordinating conjunctions

As you may recall, Tatediem has a slightly peculiar 'and' - morphologically it is a noun. (Oftentimes, though, conjunctions are absent in coordinated noun phrases. In addition, the 'and' also serves a few other roles as a particle.) Most other conjunctions, likewise, are nouns. In fact, certain distinctions are made by noun morphology.

One common subordinating conjunction originates with the word Tatediem word for 'event, case, circumstance, occurrence'. Normally, this is a neuter 2 noun, (ye)med-, but sometimes it is given the grammatical class marker instead, giving remed-. This has a few uses, depending on which cases are applied to it: instrumental - as a mass noun: if, remest, absolutive - whether, remedo, dative - in order to, remesti. As a singular definite partitive remeti, during. Remedo mainly functions as a direct object of verbs such as know. A form remesti is used for 'regardless if' or 'whether' in constructions like "whether he arrives or not is of no relevance". 

The word for 'and' likewise has a nominal origin, in the noun 'group, tribe', (ku)el.

Reflexivity in Tatediem

Tatediem has a complication with regards to its reflexives. Transitive verbs come in two varieties, and for want of a better term I will describe these as endoreflexive verbs and exoreflexive verbs.

Endoreflexive verbs mark reflexivity by the usual object congruence system - when the subject and object markers code for the same gender-number combination, the verb is understood as reflexive.

For exoreflexive verbs, the same construction would be parsed as referring to another entity.

endoreflexive:

Lìwkàmíl sar-ra-m-pìx 

Liwkamil fem.sg-fem.sg-present-wash 

Liwkamil washes her(self)

exoreflexive:

Tíkunam né-é-m-pág 

Tikunam masc.sg-masc.sg-present-see

Tikunam sees him

To obtain a separate object for endoreflexives, an external object is needed:

Kewmokin sar-rá-n-dàket ra-pék

Kewmokin fem.sg-fem.sg-present-"argue-in-favor-of-object" fem.sg-object.particle

Kewmokin argued in her (someone else's) favour

Kewmokin sarrándàket = Kewmokin argued in her (own) favour. 

For exoreflexives, the external object instead codes for reflexiveness, and is prefixed to the object marker -tèb. Further complications exist with regards to things such as congruence when reciprocals appear; there also are some verbs where reflexiveness is assumed for intransitive constructions.

Tatediem morphology: Gender congruence on nouns, adjectives and verbs

1. Gender and Case Marking

Since the gender and case system of Tatediem is inspired by Bantu-style morphologies, it has taken me a lot of effort to break out of the squarely European-style patterns I am used to.



The gender marking on the noun is a prefix. For most genders and cases, this is only present for the definite form. There may be complicated tone sandhi effects caused by the prefix. This morphophonological detail will be dealt with in a later post.

Most prefixes are monosyllabic, along the lines of ku- or sar-. Two are longer, and there are also asyllabic prefixes, t- and l-. The "grammatical" category contains a finite set of rather functional words - conjunctions, a few special adverbs and such. As far as morphosyntax goes, these tend to behave somewhat like nouns, and they also may trigger congruence on verbs and such.

Table of nominal prefixes:
           sing           dual     plural     (mass)
masc    ne-|0         wan-   lan-      (re-)
fem      sar-|0        xan-    lan-      (re-)
neut 1  ku-|0         t-        tsi-       (kku-)
neut 2  ye-            ya-      l-         (l-)
neut 3  gah-         geme-  gge-       (ske-)
neut 4  sse-         setem-  t(t)ew-     (ske-)
gram.  re-            ra-    rax-     re-

(Or n3s: ye-, n1p: l-)

Finally, neuter 1 sometimes uses ye- as a gender marker on indefinite nouns. The partitive is not definite, but sometimes causes gender congruence. The 0-prefix on masculines, feminines and neuter 1s does cause tone sandhi.

Adjectives take a somewhat less detailed set of prefixes:

e- wa- a- de-
ra- ra- la- de-
ke- ke- ke- kku-
ye- l- l- l-
ye- gge- gge- gge-
ye- ye- ye- ye-
ur-   ur-  ur-  ur-

Adjective congruence disregards definiteness and is thus present even in indefinite noun-phrases.

Verbs use the nominal prefixes for subject congruence (and for owner congruence for the owner-subject-... paradigm), and the adjectival prefix series for object congruence (but for subject congruence in the owner-subject-... paradigm). A bunch of reductions and haplology is applied.

Indirect object marking only exists for masculine and feminine, and has its own series:
masc: -ek- -wak- -lak-
fem :-sak- -xak- -lak-
Mass nouns cannot be indirect objects.

Revisiting Bryatesle: Phonology and nouns

I have now postponed updating Bryatesle for almost a decade. Since it was (and still is) a language with some potential greatness, I will now go on developing it on this blog. But first, an overview.

Phonology

Bryatesle basically has these vowels, all showcasing length distinction:

i  ɨ   u

ɛ   

     ɑ

The following consonant phonemes are present:

p b ɸ ʋ m t̪ d̪ s̪ z̪ l̪ n̪ t̙ʲ d̙ʲ rʲ̙ ɕ lʲ̙ n̙ʲ k g x 

Orthographically, these are represented as p b f w m t d s z l n ţ ḑ ŗ ş ļ ņ k g h. Some morphophonological alterations happen between some of them - especially, short words tend to avoid having two dental or two postalveolar consonants of the same kind of articulation close together.

For the moment, allophony will not be presented in any greater detail, nor will phonotax.

Grammar

The Noun

The noun, like in Indo-European languages come in three genders - masculine, feminine and neuter. This is fairly boring, but opens some fairly intriguing possibilities. Bryatesle's case system consists of two partially parallel systems. For lack of a better terminology, I have decided to call these primary and secondary cases.

Primary Cases

The six primary cases line up in a kind of two-by-three system: nominative vs. accusative, dative vs. ablative, vocative vs. exclamative. 

The nominative and accusative distinguish subjects from objects. Nominal complements of verbs also agree with the subject or object noun that they pertain too. Neuter nouns do not distinguish nominative from accusative; however, neuter subjects of transitive verbs take a masculine nominative determiner, essentially forming a kind of periphrastic ergative.

The dative and ablative both figure in ways quite typical of Indo-European languages; 

The vocative and exclamative form a pair of opposites. The vocative is used to attract the attention of someone - usually a person - to the listener, the exclamative on the other hand draws the attention of the listeners to a person or a thing. These are not all the uses of them - they also have uses that verge onto information structure, pragmatics and social interaction.

Secondary Cases

The secondary cases come in a much more haphazard bunch. Some agglutinate, some are more fusional. The full list consists of possessed, definite, partitive, the reciprocal object, the secondary subject, negativity agreement and suggestion marking. The possessed secondary case marks nouns that are the property of, or otherwise in some significant relation to another noun, usually some salient argument in the phrase or a nearby noun in the dative. The exact uses of the partitive will require a post of its own, as will the reciprocal objects and secondary subjects. Suggestion marking is often used with the exclamative, but also with some other cases. Its main role is to communicate that the statement is a suggestion. The definite case is fairly similar to English 'the', but with more syntactic restrictions.

Number

Bryatesle has singular and plural numbers, and to a small extent an undefined number. This final number is highly restricted in usage - mainly appearing in compounds. The undefined number distinguishes two cases, nominative and non-nominative.

Morphological tables will appear at some point.

Onwards with the Tatediem verb

Now, if we look at the verb table given in the previous post, we may notice it is fairly boring:

Subject	(Object)	(Ind. Obj)	(Voice)	TAM	STEM	subject agreement or question particle
	(Intensity)	Direction	(Manner)			question particle
Owner	Subject	(Direction)	(Manner)
Infinitive classifier	(Intensity)	(Argument)

The unusual things include the Owner-Subject thing, and in part the Infinitive markers occupying the same spot as the subject marker. Having the TAM occupy one spot rather continuously is also not particularly interesting, and restricted markings on the infinitive is not unusual.

What else could we do to increase the amount of variation in this verb? Some ideas I may try out:

• have the subject and object markers possibly also code for indefiniteness of subjects/objects, rather than any specific gender (however, do maintain an animate/inanimate distinction), as well as wh-questions. 
• 
  
• certain gender markets in indirect object position basically are parsed like tools, certain are basically parsed like locations. In direct object position, certain gender markers are parsed as ablatives.
• have certain gender marker complications where some culturally complex possessions can cause gender/possession complication - two specific genders whose markers can be interchanged based on what something is from whose point of view - a separate post on this idea will be posted in a bit.
• have possessor congruence for subjects (e.g. mine- instead of it-) with a somewhat less detailed gender system in place

Finally, I've been considering moving something that usually is not marked on verbs onto the verb, as in throwing in dummy verbs for some kind of thing - definiteness mayhaps, or something.

I've been bothered for about one day with two things I thought up for this post having escaped my mind entirely, will probably edit it once (or rather, if) they reappear.

A number of lexical complications in Tatediem

Tatediem has a relatively large gender system - obviously due to its vague Bantu influences. There are two genders that otherwise do act a lot like your average genders, and indeed most of the words in them are fully unremarkable as far as this particular thing goes. These two genders have, however, a number of words that have near-synonyms in both.

Examples:

kucende - gift (from the perspective of the giver)

ŋwucende - gift (from the perspective of the receiver)

kusunne - obligation (from the perspective of the person who is expected to perform the obligation)

ŋwusunne -  obligation (from the perspective of the person or group or so on who is expected to benefit from the obligation)

kurutki - assistance (from the perspective of the one giving the assistance)

ŋwurutki - assistance ( from the perspective of the recipient)

For a few words, the lexemes are not related, yet the same relation is definitely there:

kusatwis -  fatherhood (from the point of view of a father)

ŋwurehmuc - fatherhood (from the point of view of the offspring)

A number of family terms also come in two versions, although many family terms also have regular masculine or feminine versions, sometimes not lexically related at all.

kutali - uncle

ŋwutali - nephew

kusami - sister

ŋwusami - the brother or sister of a sister

These two genders also have unique congruence classes for possessed reference on verbs:

-kulo[se|ke|ne|ŋe|swi|kwi|nwi|ŋwi]- (basically 'the thing of this gender of mine|yours|his|her|ours|yours|theirs')

 -ŋwulo[se|ke|ne|ŋe|swi|kwi|nwi|ŋwi]- 

For object congruence, the prefix is

-hul-, -gul-.

Some dialects permit using the same [se|ke...] morphemes in combination with those two, but most do not. For most dialects, the owner of -hul- or -gul- is instead market in a variety of periphrastic ways. Finally, oftentimes further references to humans first referred to by nouns in these genders agree with the 'natural' gender, unless a very strong emphasis is placed on the type of relation.

 And here the  complication appears: -kulo- and -ŋwulo- both can refer to the same noun, if nouns that have 'siblings' of this kind are present in the sentence. In that case, a subtle shift in meaning may appear, e.g. the obligation now shifts from x's obligation to do something to y's privilege of receiving the benefits from that obligation, or the challenges and rewards of being a father to the perception of the father that the offspring has.

The long-term project: more draft-stage ideas

On with the isolating conlang I have been planning. At some point soon, there will probably be a post related to it that violates one of the main rules I have for this blog, though: "no phonology drafts".

As mentioned, this will be an isolating language, so there is not much in ways of morphophonology that can be enabled by clever phonological things, but some sandhi-like processes still could be interesting.

I want to avoid the standard Chinese-like sound that one would expect from a conlang, and even avoid tones. However, a detail that I want to incorporate is having bisyllabic verbs have high pitch accent on the first syllable when perfective or inchoative, and low pitch accent on the second syllable when habitual. This would not be recognized in most prescriptive grammars of the language, though.

The language has a congruence-like thing with topics and subjects, where sometimes, a pronoun may appear after the verb:

TOPIC₁ (SUBJECT₂) VERB PRONOUN₁ (OBJECT₃)

The subject often is the topic, but only in those cases will the pronoun agree with the subject in some manner. The manner of congruence is often noun-class based (but at times, the doubling pronoun may be a demonstrative that does not distinguish the same amount of noun-classes).
Now, a special quirk is, if the topic is a postpositional phrase with a pronoun, the preposition may be left alone at the onset of the sentence, and the pronoun appears in the congruence position:

GAP₁ POSTPOS (SUBJECT₂) VERB PRONOUN₁ (OBJECT₃)

In sentences with no verbs, the location of the congruence pronoun is less obvious, but statistically it appears somewhat more often in such sentences than in sentences with a verb.

This also prompts a discussion of the pronominal system of the language. The pronouns come in two forms: emphasized and subdued. These are basically results of stress-related sound changes - the subdued forms are strongly reduced: talokt (we, masculine), teu (we, masculine), reɣin (those), ran (those). 

The post-verbal topic/subject congruence spot invariably has the reduced form. When appearing as a subject, a topic or fronted focus, a pronoun always is in the emphasized form, otherwise it mostly appears as a subdued form. If confusion as to whether a pronoun is coreferential with the topic or not, the emphasized form is preferred.

Detail #23: Conjunctions with dummy pronouns

This idea has some similarities to this old post, but with quite a different locus of marking and even basically a different function altogether: this time, conjunctions no longer serve to mark the relation between two verb phrases (or even two nouns, by way of implicitly coordinated verb phrases), but marks something about a single verb phrase or noun phrase.

In some language, (I would especially like it in one where conjunctions are followed by an oblique case along the line of what English does, only with non-pronouns as well - alternatively, case marking is sensitive to context), there could be a commonly used construction with dummies carrying grammatical information about the VP or NP in which they occur, so, for instance,

A bit like if "... and shit" was grammaticalized, but for a more wide range of meanings: TAM, case/adposition-like things, adjectival things for nouns, indefinite determiners and quantifying expressions, ... some other expressions could be formed likewise with and + noun.

(obviative) it and (obviative) it : some 

 ran around and it.obl : ran around intently, ran around (perfective)

stone and them : stones (if the language lacks, say, morphological plural for inanimates or somesuch)

bean and it: some beans (with uncountable nouns, to express large quantity) 

we thought and at it (locative case of some kind) : we considered, but did not reach a conclusion

 we thought and in it (locative case of some other kind): we considered carefully

we thought and it.acc : we concluded

we traveled the land and it.acc: we passed through the land

This would probably go at the end of the vp?
Examples with nouns instead of dummies:

bean and bag : a bagful of beans

 fish and net: a catch of fish

water and pitcher: a pitcherful of water

To obtain the meaning "and" usually would entail would require reversing the order of the nouns:

net and fish: some/a fish and a/some nets

bag and bean: a bag and some beans

 ...

Over time, the conjunction easily could turn into an affix, and sound changes could obscure the relation to the conjunction.

A longer-term project: Bringing some ideas together

Few conlangers (except engelangers and auxlangers) ever make isolating languages. I surmise the reason for this is that isolating languages are felt to have less of a potential for things to develop - the lack of morphology feels stifling, and all isolating languages are felt to be grammatically the same as Mandarin.

I have long intended to make an isolating language that differs from Mandarin and such without being too much like English either. So let me start out.

These features I have already mentioned will be included:

• Wackernagel adpositions under some circumstances
• Suppletive auxiliary congruence 
• As much of the indefinite pronoun thing as I can reapply to an isolating context
• Some impermissible possession
• Some unusual ordinals
• Something along the lines of verbal classes
• Implicative obviatives or whatever to call them
• A rich set of conjunctions

Seems like a set of features that could combine nicely and provide for a rich and detailed grammar.